| Friday, September 21, 2007 |
08:32 - But the animal is inside out. <poom> ...And it exploded.
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I've been without wheels of my own all week. Why? Both my cars are in the shop.
First, the Lotus is getting smogged. I don't know what's involved with this, nor do I really want to. All I know is that it keeps throwing codes related to the emissions system, such as "left AND right catalysts below efficiency", which I know can't be right because one is original (2000) and the other was installed in 2003, and besides they both started failing like this immediately after an episode a month or two ago when a fuse blew preventing the engine from starting. I replaced one of the four O2 sensors at the time, which made some of the engine codes go away (namely the ones that were specifically related to the O2 sensor in the little lookup table); but the shop wants to replace all of them now, just to ensure that downstream systems aren't getting bad data. Which makes perfect sense to me; I just wish they didn't have to spend a whole week tracking down versions of these standard GM O2 sensors that are manufactured with the proprietary Lotus wiring harness on the end. I just got a universal one and soldered it to the old wiring harness. (Then again, maybe having that much solder that close to that much heat isn't such a great idea anyway.) Either way, no Lotus for me for a while; but at the end of it all I will allegedly be able to register the damn thing and drive it legally.
What, then, of my other car? Well, the A3's climate control last week surprised me by flipping on its ECON light, which effectively means "try to cool the air as much as possible without running the air conditioner". I'd press the button to turn off ECON mode, and the light would go off while the button was pressed in, but it would turn right back on as soon as I released my finger's pressure. I felt air conditioning right when I turned the car on, but it would disappear a few seconds later and go back into ECON mode every time.
Off to the Audi dealer, who told me that the air conditioner compressor had failed, and I'd need a new one. It would have to wait until the next day.
The next day I called for a status update. "Oh... right. Well—you see, the new compressor arrived, but it was broken. We'll have to reorder. It'll be tomorrow."
He also told me, to my great entertainment, that the compressor had failed in such a way that it had essentially fallen apart, strewing debris and components throughout the ventilation system, such that not only did the compressor have to be replaced, but so did the condenser and all the tubes and ducts that make up the ventilation system, pretty much all of which had been trashed all to hell by some cataclysm that I swear I never heard or felt while driving. I mean, I get going pretty fast on those Saturday morning drives, but... I don't think I was squeezing it hard enough to make my air conditioner disintegrate like a moon crushed by tidal forces into a new layer of rings for Saturn.
Ah well. Next day (Wednesday). I called again. They said the new compressor and condenser had arrived, and that they'd installed them, and turned on the system to test it... and the new compressor disintegrated. Again. Ruining the new condenser and all the pipes. Again.
So now they're ordering a third set of parts and performing an even more thorough flush and rebuild of the system, after which the car will (so they said) be ready today. I suppose it would be cynical of me to imagine that this is not how things will go down?
Ah well—the good thing about all this is that it's all under warranty; so I get to just sort of sit back here and smile in bemusement. But how much fun would it have been to be a fly on the wall through all this? I'd have been found out for sure, thanks to all the tiny fly laughter.
Think I might have to cancel tomorrow's drive?
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Brian Tiemann
