either they love me or hate me

[kaigou]

I just got back from Sears. My little veedub, the longtime trooper, has been having sluggish starts on some mornings. I rephrase that: in the morning, it won't start at all. By noon, or midafternoon, it'll start... sluggishly. Last time I tried, I think I flooded the engine or something, and figured I'd let it sit, then have it towed over to get a new battery. But today, it started on its own (by around 3pm, after a half-day in the winter sun), and I said, oh, hell, I could use some chocolate, let's go to Sears.

Me: I need a new battery.
Sears Guy: *opens hood*
Sears Guy: *looks at car*
Sears Guy: .......
Me: *not paying attention* Y'know, I'm thinking, I can't remember ever getting a battery for this car.
Sears Guy: .........
Me: It's a '96, and I got it in '98...
Sears Guy: .........

This is where I look around and realize there are now six Sears Guys all flocked around my engine compartment. Which sounds really obscene, but carrying on.

Me: Hello?
Sears Guy #1: We don't sell this battery anymore.
Me: You don't? That sucks, because it's been a great battery. I was gonna ask for another just like it.
Sears Guy #1: I imagine it's been the best battery anyone's ever seen.
Me: Hunh? It's a regular Die Hard. Aren't you supposed to change them like, I don't know, once a decade?
Sears Guy #2: *does the math* Or about every fifteen years, in your case.

All the other Sears Guys look shocked. I think some of them even looked positively reverent.

Sears Guy #1: Ma'am, batteries are expected to last about three years.
Me: Really?
Sears Guy #1: Really really.
Me: ...
Sears Guy #1: ...

Everyone else joined in the moment of silence, and then:

Me: Maybe I did change it and forgot.
Sears Guy #1: No, we discontinued this type.
Me: What, like a year or two ago?
Sears Guy #1: Like ten years ago.
Me: Wow. So I really haven't ever changed it.
Sears Guy #1: You're either doing something really right with this car...
Sears Guy #2: ... or really, really wrong.
Me: Can I go with "right"? I like how that sounds.

When I left -- with new battery in place -- four of the guys were arguing over where best to display that positively ancient battery in a good location of honor. I'm not sure whether to be flattered, or worried.

Comments

[dejla]

Yeah, those little veedubs just keep going and going and going... You had the Energizer Bunny in your car!!

[kaigou]

From the way the Sears Guys were reacting, I think I had the Grand High Poobah Master Overlord Energizer Bunny in my car!

Really, what did they put in those "specially for european cars" batteries, anyway?

[hokuton_punch]

... that is amazing. o.o

[kaigou]

...and also kinda worrisome. I mean, I know I can be absent-minded but I didn't think I could be fifteen years of absent-minded. I'll do my share on a car, if needed, but batteries are the one thing I've never bothered to change. (Cue CP in the background saying, they're the easiest thing to do on a car, and that's the one thing you've not done? ...I'm sure he's certain this says a lot about me.)

Still. I keep thinking that maybe I did get a new battery. I had to have. Didn't I? But I can't think of a single time of the car dying from lack of battery. I don't think I've ever even had to jump-start it. No, wait, once I did! After it sat in a parking lot in Baltimore for a week, and got snowed on, repeatedly... and when I got to it, it was after midnight and encased in two feet of snow and another inch of ice. Had to jumpstart it, but first we had to de-ice the locks and shovel out the doors, but the airport security guys were really helpful.

Okay, and one other jumpstart, when I went off on business trip and left the back door just a hair more than completely closed, and the interior light stayed on. Naturally, battery died, I got a jumpstart (again from the long-suffering airport folks) and after that... not a problem.

I'm gonna be up late pondering this one, I know it.

[branchandroot]

*deeply amused* That's really funny. And clearly you're doing something very right and have a magical car to boot.

[kaigou]

I think I probably need to give it a bath soon, so it doesn't start getting ideas about wanting anything else new. Or take it personally that I traded out the battery after it's been such a faithful... battery. Sometimes my car seems to take these things personally. I swear it skipped the clutch on me a few times, in the first month after we got the Honda. Not because the clutch was going bad, just to make me pay attention. And I did! And it stopped. *shiftyeyes*

[onyxlynx]

I added this to memories, onaccountabecause reverence. Also, wow!

[kaigou]

Hah. Yeah. I did something right... AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT WAS.

[okaasan59]

It's a shame everything sold now has such a short life expectancy. Ah, planned obsolescence, how I hate thee.

[kaigou]

Yeah, but I don't think "fifteen years per battery" was quite the manufacturer's intention. I mean, there's planned obsolescence and then there's "you do have to change these things once in a while, ma'am."

Only now I'm worried my car will blow up tomorrow because it doesn't like the taste of the new battery, after so many years perfectly happy with the old...

[dragonhand]

When something like this happens, it seems to happen to you. *laughing* Gear head. Of course you did stuff right. The other option isn't even a consideration.

[kaigou]

Really! IF ONLY I KNEW WHAT I DID.

I would patent it and bottle it and sell it for like a million bucks.

But I have NO IDEA!

Now I'm all worried I won't be able to do it again, and I'll be back for another battery in like three years.

of course, this is assuming the little car is still running in three years, but I CAN HOPE.

[margrave]

This is absolutely amazing. And I could not stop laughing.

You are an unique snow-flake.

Also, the Sears Guys are hilarious.

[kaigou]

Yeah, I'm a unique something or other. I'm fairly certain the entire reason I'm unique is because most people I've met would willingly suffer extended durations of Three's Company on repeat rather than contemplate the notion of there ever being two of me, but hey! Unique FTW! And stuff!

I've dealt with the Sears Guys for tires three or four times in the past two years or so, and I suspect they're getting used to my sense of humor. And my marvelously bizarre and yet wonderfully does-not-freaking-die go-go-gadget veedub.

[starscream]

You're going to go back and they'll have erected a shrine around it in honor of the Machine God.

[kaigou]

I DEMAND ROYALTIES.

Or a percentage of the shrine god's take.

[the_future_modernes]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!!!

[kaigou]

Heh.

[nagasvoice]

Now I'm wondering about what happens to other things placed in your car.

[kaigou]

Well, it's still got its original clutch plate & clutch mechanism, at almost 200K. (The clutch cable broke last fall, though.) It's got a new gear shift box, replaced about two years ago... but most everything else is original.

Although things have been known to be put in my car and then just stay there for months at a time. It's that selective recollection thing -- things left in the backseat tend to stay in the backseat...

[love]

Dude, all I can say is, WOW.

[kaigou]

No kidding, and the thing is, I spent most of last night, and pretty much all of this evening, with the question in the back of my head as to whether I ever had the battery put in and completely forgot. I mean, there's like a year's leeway, so it could be only nine years old... but that's still three times the, uhm, legal limit.

Any way you cut it, it's pretty amazing, and just adds more fuel to my desire to never let this car die.

[taithe]

Ahahaha this is fantastic. Too bad they don't make them like that anymore (unintentionally or not).

[kaigou]

Ehehe, no kidding. To make matters worse, the cost ended up being about triple what I'd expected... and then one of the guys, overhearing me exclaim at the price, said: "Well, when you average it out over fifteen years, it's a real deal!"

*grumpgrump*

A'course, that's assuming the car lasts another three years. So it might be moot anyway, but I'd still only about 8K from cracking 200K, and I really wanted to beat my father's record on his Volvo, which made it to 250K. I doubt I'll ever beat the record on my mother's Rabbit, though, which somehow limped along to over 300K.

[morkeleb]

... *cracking up now yes*

Note, I don't even have a car (or a driver's license) and I don't know that I would even know how to refill the tank (though that doesn't seem TOO hard, but... hidden tricks? What do I know.) But the convo is still hilarious.

[kaigou]

You would THINK that given all the work I've done on cars in my life, I would've KNOWN to check the battery regularly. Or that it should be replaced every three years. But I honestly never even thought about it. If the car starts, what's the problem? I mean, if the battery's dead, then the car doesn't start, so you know to get a new battery. And since my car always started -- or, on the rare time I left light on or it sat in two feet of snow for a week, I got a jump start and then it started fine after that -- it really never even occurred to me.

I'm waiting for my dad to call in from Sweden, so I can pass along the news that I might've beaten his record of putting 250K on a single clutch-plate. (Another feat that had mechanics absolutely scratching their heads.)

[billie]

Only with a veedub, seriously. *laughs*

I love your car stories. Really I do. You're partially to blame for the fact that I've started to tinker with my bicycle (for lack of a driving license or, y'know, car), and that I started to pay attention when my father attempts to explain machine-related things to me.

Incidentally, his old VW Passat had miles to the moon and about one or to quarters of the way back by the time it gave out, so here's to a lot more life of your car. :D

[kaigou]

*doffs cap*

I am just here to serve! Or failing that, to entertain!

Yeah, cars and mechanical things are... a constant wonder, when they're not a constant annoyance. And tinkering is good for the soul, and I say that as a pretty devout apatheist.

[mongrelheart]

Magic battery!

Either that, or some kind of gitch in the space-time-continuum...

[kaigou]

I'm going with either a glitch in the time-space continuum, or possibly that the car is simply possessed... and has decided on absolute loyalty considering that when it does need attention, I do everything in my power to give it the best treatment I can afford. That, and I constantly tell it that it's the best car EVER and even if there is a new Honda in the driveway that this doesn't mean anything to me, I still love the little veedub the best.

(Also, I've found that discussing other cars while driving in your current car is a fast-track to something breaking down, mechanically. Cars do get jealous.)

[love]

So... what VW do you have? Doug keeps telling me not to get one because he says they're always breaking down, but you seem to not have that sort of problem...

[kaigou]

Uhm, maybe he's thinking of the old veedub Beetles? Which weren't really breaking down so much as drivers drove them severely and kept them way past any shelf-date.

Me, I drive a '96 Golf GL, with a 2.0 liter engine, gas (not diesel). The more recent VWs have larger engines for greater turbo boost but lower horsepower (and heavier weight), so you probably won't get the gas mileage I do -- which is really a function of car weight + engine, not just engine.

Previously, I had a '92 Fox, I think it was, which was also a real workhorse, except that Fox/Jetta seem to have an incorrigible problem with their belts as they age. Start one of those up, and the belts scream like a stuck pig. It's pretty embarrassing in the early morning, to be honest. Other than that, Fox/Jetta are sturdy cars.

And I learned to drive on an '83 Rabbit, which kept going until it died an honorable death somewhere around 300K or more. That puppy also had to deal with my mother and my sister, who are both vicious on clutch pedals. Honestly, that car was on heavy rotation for clutch problems, mostly because for some reason my sister and mother never seemed to understand the entire notion of using a clutch. Short version: if you test-drive a used VW and there's the remotest chance it was driven by a teenager, DO NOT BUY. You will be replacing the clutch and brakes within the first six months, if they haven't been replaced already (and probably not, knowing most dealers).

Oh, and I had a Porsche 914, which sounds fancy but its engine is really just a VW-4 Bus engine (automatic, bizarrely, given the car itself is manual!) ... and again with the absolute workhorse, went until it finally rusted out in a glorious pile of orange paint and unhappy metal. (It was the New England and Colorado salt-in-winter that really did it in.)

VWs are historically cars that just do not stop. I can't speak for the latest batch, but it's usually pretty hard to find them used because owners simply don't trade them in. And of all the veedubs I've known or owned, only that '83 Rabbit was anything close to a lemon, and that was just its first year of issues. Once those were licked, after that it was a regular energizer bunny.

Honestly, you can't beat 'em for reliability. Gas mileage, though... that's dropped, because of the weight of the cars and the way they're designing the turbo engines now. They're more efficient than they would be, otherwise, but that's not the same as marvelously efficient. If gas mileage is your priority, along with price, then I'd recommend a Honda Fit, instead: it's effectively the same size and reliability as a VW, but better price and way better mileage.

If, however, your priority is the actual driving experience, then you can't beat a VW with a Fit even in a month of Sundays. The Fit just doesn't have the engineering to handle things like really curvy country roads, or tight turns, or really punchy acceleration regardless of speed. The Fit is fast off a stop, as is the VW (and the Fit is lighter, so it's actually a little faster off a dead stop than the VW) -- but if both cars are doing 70mph on the highway, the VW can stomp the pedal and in a heartbeat be doing 95mph... and the Fit will catch up in about five miles. Even with my car as old as it is, it still has better acceleration in the highest gears than our year-old Honda Fit. Since fast-response high-speed driving is of major importance to me, I stick with the VW for driving whenever possible.

Mostly, my suspicion is that outside of some cars with reputations for breaking down (hello, Jaguar!), most "those break down all the time" are due to driver error, not the car's engineering. If you treat the car well, and you take it in for an annual check-up even if it's doing fine -- which for both VW and Honda will run about $300 or so, in most US cities -- then you won't have major issues other than the usual eventual wearing-down of some parts that would have to be replaced anyway. Change the oil regularly -- if you use natural, do it seasonly or about every 3500K, and if you use synthetic, you can go longer, but it's still wisest to change seasonly if you live in an area with extreme seasonal changes -- and make sure you always say "yes!" when the mechanic suggests changing out any gaskets or rubber parts. Lubrication is the heart of the engine, and after that, it's the gaskets that act as buffering.

Oh, and try not to smash the car into anything. That's a major part of making sure it keeps running for a long time... post-accident, it'll never be the same, and even a minute change in body-structure alters the tensions between the parts, and creates new patterns of wear that in turn put stresses where they didn't exist previously. So, no running into anything, okay?

here ends today's reading lecture!