Posts tagged freelander

Well, my car is in the shop again. Yes, I was stupid enough to take it back to the Land Rover dealer, BECAUSE I think they should cut me some slack. They charged me $1,119 in October to replace a few bearings and told me I needed tires.

Fine. I bought two new tires. That’s the best I can do considering I had to pay them $1,119, right?

Which actually helped the problem for few days. And then over the last couple of weeks the rumbling and shaking and thundering and shimmying and bouncing has gotten worse. So I took it back in yesterday.

Now, now now NOW I’m told the front drive shaft is broken. Broken! Undriveable. Non-drivable? Shouldn’t drive it. And they’ll only charge me $1,064 to fix it.

What. The. Fuck. Am. I. Going. To. Do.

You know, the rest of their customers might wipe their asses with brand new dollar bills (Jaguar/Land Rover Dealer) but I’m not made of money.

So Buck is “checking out the parts thing” which means exactly what? That he’ll fix it if he can get the parts? I CAN’T DRIVE IT! What the fuck am I supposed to do? Casey’s telling me they should pay for it because they screwed up the first time. Oh sure, but they’re not going to listen to me. Where are all these menfolk when it comes time to eyeball this guy and listen to his double-talk?

Fuck.

Somebody is going to have to go down there with me. Somebody they can’t bullshit.

Fucking dealership service departments.

Nov 1st

I should know better by now.

How old am I?

So I went to pick up my car today, now that I can hand over half my paycheck to pay for it. And I take the first corner and rumble rumble shudder shudder SHIT. Not as bad as when I left it. More like when it first started to fail. I drove it another couple of miles to make sure it wouldn’t just settle out and then took it back. They were all apologetic and patting me on my widdle head. So I requested the department manager to take a drive with me and assure me after that is was safe to drive.

He tried to tell me it was the viscous coupling overcompensating for the one good tire against the other three not-so-good tires. I wasn’t buying it. That might cause the warped-tire feeling when you drive it, but not the horrendous vibrating shudder when you take off and corner. Then he took it for a test drive and put it up on a lift and low and behold they missed a cracked part that holds the rear of the drive shaft in place. That’s the ticket!

They’re going to replace the part this afternoon – free, as a courtesy – and gave me a brand new Land Rover as a loaner until then. Damn well better be free! I asked them to fix a specific problem and they told me it was done and I paid in full. If they missed something, that’s their responsibility.

Service writer spelled it carior bearing. Carrier bearing dumb ass. This is a Range Rover/Jaguar Dealership, you’d think they’d have a higher class of grease monkeys. Grease orangutans maybe.

This is the last time I take my car to a dealership. I need to find a local repair shop that I can trust. Gee, it’s such a shame that I don’t know any MECHANICS!

My car is ready

Oct 20th

but I’m not. They called last night and the final bill is $1018, which is less than I thought. I managed to gather a little more than half that so I’ll go in this morning and see what we can work out. I can pay the rest on the 1st, just not today so if they won’t take a post-dated check for the remainder, then they’ll just have to hold the car and I’ll use what I have to rent one until then. I have no choice.

I do know that if I ever buy a new car again it won’t be an Impala. That’s the loaner they gave me and I’m not impressed. It’s nice, just not right for me.

Never get involved in a land (rover) war in AZ.

Oct 16th

Got the estimate on all the crap wrong with my car. I’m up shit creek without a paddle, or a boat for that matter.

$998 carrier bearings “have failed” and must be replaced. Ok’ed
$458 rear side window – I don’t need it, just jam it permanently closed.
$800 moon roof tracks – I don’t need no stinkin’ moon roof.
$89.95 oil change – gimme a frakking break.
$18.11 center brake light bulb, again.
The permanently lit SRS and TC lights were a computer glitch. Thank gawd.

So I’m doing the bearings, the oil change and the light bulb. The rest can wait. Plus he says the tires are bad, but I should get sale tires somewhere else. The brakes are good, supposedly.

Now, I have NO idea how I’m going to pay for all this. I have a call out to Casey to see what he can throw into the pot, and I know I can get a $500 loan and I’ll call Max later and see if he can throw something in. I have to have this fixed. Fucking Land Rover. Fucking imports. Something will come up, it always does. The power of positive thinking.

Poor Ginnie dropped a tumbler on her toe knuckle last night and can barely walk this morning so I think she’s staying home from school. And she shattered my favorite Disney tumbler, too.

Oct 15th

I took my car in to the Land Rover dealer to get it fixed. We’re having serious issues with something underneath. It shudders and grinds really bad when you corner and when you take off from a stop. When I drove Enormous and Jack to dinner the other night they both were freaking out so I figure I’d better get that fixed. I also left a long list of other crap that is wrong with it so I can get estimates on everything. Plus an oil change. Of course, I have no idea how I’m going to pay for all that but I can’t keep driving it the way it is. Crossing my fingers that some of it is still under warranty. I’m about 300 miles short of 70,000 miles. In the meantime, they’re paying for a rental so I’m not out of a vehicle.

What a crappy day!

Jun 22nd

So I went to get tags for both vehicles, not noticing that mine (of course) needs emission testing before I can get the registration renewed. And that’s late already, so there’s also a late fee. And I’m advised by my husband (the mechanic) that I should really get the oil changed somewhere before I take it in for the emissions test. Somewhere besides here at home – where it ain’t allowed and where he works – because he can’t do private work their either. D’ya know how long its been since I’ve had to find and/or pay to have my oil changed? I can’t tell you. So I stopped by a Big O to price it and because its a Land Rover they have to order a special filter and use special synthetic oil and it will be close to $70. My sweet ass!

So I called the man and he’s going to pick up the stuff and do it himself. Damn Skippy.

And its supposedly 108°F out there today. It seriously feels hotter than that.

Yesterday morning when I left, there was a fire truck and four police cars ranged in front of the house across the street. This morning when I left there were two police cars and when I got back home later this afternoon there were two more. I’m nosy but I have issues with walking up to the police car and asking. But my neighbor did and she says the 16-year-old girl who lives there is on house arrest and is apparently a handful. *smirk*

Mine isn’t. Mine got her first real paycheck today and opened her own checking account. Me so proud.

freelander, ginnie

Nothing interesting here, move along.

Mar 2nd

Still can’t understand most of jhirat_dai‘s recordings. *sigh* Its not a language thing, its a garbled feed thing maybe. Who knows. And I sure hope all the podcast bandwagon doesn’t derail the LJ bandwagon. We ~~need~~ ~~want~~ like y’alls written updates, too.

Had a dream this morning about Max. Not really about Max, though. Its March 6th and I’m wandering around some local Army base trying to find someone in charge to find out if Max made it back to the States okay because it seems to me that traveling in Iraq is when it is the most dangerous. And there’s tons of cub scouts, and (for some odd reason) Russian prisoners, and regular Army guys that actually look like vets in old Army clothes, but no actual soldiers much less Officers.

Last time I talked to Max, he told me he’s leaving there on the 6th and going to Alabama, where his girlfriend lives. He’s meeting her family and then they’ll drive out here by the 13th. His 21st Birthday is the 14th.

Weird thing. A while ago one of windows on my car took a shit. Goes down but won’t go up, just clicks away. Which is fine when it was stuck in the UP position, but over time it jiggled its way into cracked open and occasionally more open than that. And until Wednesday, you could shove it back up and it would stay that way for a while, but the FMs at the car wash did something and now it won’t stay up. So Buck was supposed to call the Land Rover people up in Snottsdale to price the part needed and whatever. The weird thing is when I came out of the grocery store yesterday, tucked under the wiper blade was a card for some Snottsdale Land Rover repair shop. Twilight zone timing there. Buck came home last night and said the part would be over $200 so I’m voting he just figure out a way to jerry-rig it so it stays UP permanently. He’s gonna check with this other place first.

And the windshield has three chip repairs needed. I don’t know how many chip repairs you can get before you should just replace the frakking windshield (windscreen) but this one is special (heated windshield? who the fuck needs a heated windshield in Arizona?) so I’m sure its beaucoup expensive, too. And the rear window doesn’t always work correctly, either. Some moron designed it so when you open the back door (gate) the window lowers about an inch and when you close it, it raises back up that inch so the top is tucked under a plastic cover. Cute, but when the raise/lower mechanism doesn’t work properly its damned hard to get the door open. And my speakers are starting to rattle. Ginnie sure likes her bass.

Buck wants me to trade it in and I haven’t even had it a year yet.

freelander, max, podcast

Arizona weather

Jul 26th

There are three kind of weather in Arizona. Hot, fucking hot, and monsoon. Last night was monsoon. My favorite weather to drive around in. This is why I’ll never have a regular car. I need that coupla-times-a-year sloggin through the puddles in my 4-wheel-drive. Puddles hell, last night was absolute rivers of water on the streets around here. Hella flooding. I love it. And no it’s not a gas-guzzling super SUV, it’s a little Freelander, so bite me. Had this storm been in daytime so I could see better, I’d be out in the desert mudding. At least two rather large trees came down in our complex. Couple more storms and the playground won’t have any shade trees left. They were both pretty big trees, seriously top-heavy for AZ where the dirt is dry and hard and they can’t develop proper root systems against the occasional wind storm. We’re paying for all that rain with a monster humidity level today.

The only problem is my computer tends to slag down after a good rain. Its been driving me nuts all day. Must have something to do with underground cable or something.

Today was an interesting day.

Jun 24th