Where am I? I’ll give you a hint. It is on my list of least favorite places to spend time. On that list it is below anywhere employees are wearing white lab coats and stethoscopes, art festivals featuring paintings by cats, and bagpipe chamber music, but above pretty much anything else. I’m at the local Jeep dealership waiting less than patiently, while I watch the hours roll by and our checking account balance steadily drop. Not my favorite place. I apologize in advance for the long post – but I have plenty of time…
Routine Maintenance - Out with the old, in with the new.
Let’s back up a bit to understand how we got here. The Jeep that we hope to take to Alaska and back this summer just turned 110k miles. That milestone brings with it a long list of recommended maintenance items. These are things I would generally ignore, but given the prospect of breaking down somewhere in the Yukon Territory and being gored by a rabid moose, it seems prudent to give these items some attention.
Over the years we have developed some basic mechanical aptitude and the unearned sense of confidence that often goes with it. I broke the maintenance list down into three categories:
Category 1: Things we can easily do ourselves, such as…
Inspect front and rear differential fluid.
Inspect transfer case fluid.
Category A: Things we can do but are a little ambitious…
Change spark plugs.
Replace PCV valve.
Category Next: Things we have absolutely no appetite for (mostly because they tend to be super messy) such as…
Transmission service.
Coolant flush and fill.
The spark plugs live down there somewhere - under all that stuff.
The Category 1 items were quickly and easily dispatched. But changing the spark plugs proved to be challenging. I am still cursing the engineers that design modern car engines. The spark plugs are buried under layer upon layer of hoses, electronics, brackets, and panels that all have to be removed before you can get to the spark plugs. Once you get to the plugs, replacing them is the easy part. Then comes the tricky part of putting it all back together – further complicated by a steady flow of curious neighbors stopping by to inspect the progress. One such distraction resulted in a leftover part. Fortunately, we discovered the omission before we got everything put back together. We only had to undo about half of the work to get the wayward part where it belonged. In the end, we prevailed.
These are all the bits that had to come off to get to the spark plugs.
Next up – the PCV valve. If you don’t know what that is, that’s ok. Suffice to say it is a mechanical do-dad necessary to keep the engine running properly. It is a very simple part. To remove it you only have to disconnect one hose and remove to screws. It should take less than 15 minutes. The only problem is it lives on the back of the engine, snuggled up to the firewall, protected by a layer of additional tubes and hoses. I should have known that we were in trouble when I couldn’t even find a YouTube video showing the whole process. (Although I did find a few videos that showed a trick to get to the bottom of the two bolts – it involves removing the front passenger wheel and the front fender.) Even Pati’s superior patience and slender fingers were no match. After an hour of cursing, busted knuckles, and scraped arms this project got reassigned to Category Next.
The PCV valve lives deep back there - snuggled comfortably between engine and firewall.
I really try to avoid dealerships once a vehicle is out of warranty. To have the transmission serviced I decided to use a shop in Orlando that had done some mechanical work for us in the past. They have always done a great job, with very reasonable prices. I made an online appointment a few days out and showed up at the scheduled time. I was greeted by one of the shop workers, “Good morning, how can we help you today?” A pleasant start.
“I have a service appointment for an oil change and transmission service.”
Puzzled look. “Oh, we don’t take appointments.”
Puzzled look. “Um. I did it on your website. I even have a confirmation email.” I gesture to my phone.
“Well, that’s a corporate thing. We don’t look at that. But that’s okay, we can work you in. But we don’t do transmission service. We can, but we recommend you take it to a transmission specialist.”
“You don’t? Your website says you do. It has a whole page dedicated to it.” You can probably guess where this is going.
“Well, how many miles does it have on it?”
“110k miles.”
“Oh, we don’t do anything over 75k miles.”
“Um, the manufacture specifies 120k miles, I’m actually ahead of schedule.”
“Well, if we do it, you’ll have to sign a waiver that it comes with no guarantee.”
At this point, I have already decided that I am not getting the service done today, but she insists I talk to the mechanic. He was very honest. He said that they had been burned too many times with folks coming in with a poorly maintained vehicle, having it serviced, and then blaming them when the transmission crapped out a few weeks later. That’s fair. But how about updating your website!
So on to the dealership. The visit ultimately cost about 7 hours and close to a thousand dollars. This included the transmission service, PCV valve, and cooling system flush and fill. Oh yeah, and $180 to replace the radiator cap! ($14 for the cap. The rest in labor and “diagnostic” charges.) On the plus side, the service advisor was very nice and even took pity on me – he took me to Wendy’s for lunch and picked up the tab! So, I try not to think of it as being boned by the dealership, but rather just an extremely expensive, crappy sandwich. Another treat – as we returned from lunch, we cut through the service area and I spotted the Jeep – hood back with a technician buried in the back of the engine compartment with his legs sticking almost straight up! It looked like the Jeep was eating the guy headfirst. I chuckled to myself, “PCV valve.” Maybe it was worth it.
Unfortunately, this story doesn’t end at the dealership. As soon as I got on the interstate headed home, I heard a loud “thwunk, thwunk, thwunk” coming from the front end. It took a minute to register what was going on. The technician had failed to secure the hood of the Jeep and it was bouncing up and down violently against the safety latch. No big deal. I got off at the next exit, checked under the hood to make sure nobody was trying to get out, secured everything, and got back on the road.
That's supposed to be latched. It's a Jeep thing.
A few miles later, “ding!” The check engine light pops on. I mutter something highly offensive under my breath. At this point I’m closer to home than the dealership, so I just go home and pull out my trusty engine code reader. The code, “Air Intake Sensor.” Fortunately, I know where that is from our experience disassembling the top of the engine to replace the spark plugs. Sure enough, they must have had to do some disassembly of their own and forgotten to reconnect the sensor. Easy fix.
That wire dangling down. Yeah, it's supposed to be connected to something...
But we still aren’t completely done! The next morning, I decide to go for a little test drive to make sure the code was clear and there were no other problems. But I can’t find my keys! I know I had them last night, but now they have somehow disappeared in the 400 square feet we call home. After several minutes of throwing things around and saying more questionable things a realization slowly creeps into my head. “Idiot! You must have left them in the car.” And indeed, I had. In the ignition. In the on position. Resulting in one very dead battery.
Fortunately, my good neighbor Alan was home and let me borrow his battery charger. A few hours later I was finally on the road for my test drive. But it now appears that I have a cooling system leak. It could just be some leftover mess from the system flush. I’ll keep an eye on it. But I don’t think I’ll be taking it back to the dealership.
If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with this excessively long post. You are a trooper! Support your local mechanics. You may still get screwed, but at least it won't be by a stranger.
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