It started with the blower motor fan. Which will blow hot or cold air faithfully. All the time.
It never shuts off.
Unless you pull the fuse.
Which is what I ended up doing after two years of the fan blowing full blast, which finally wore out the poor blower motor to the point where it screams like a child being ripped away from an ice cream cone on a summer day. Oh it will still blow air, if you don't mind all the strange looks and stares as you drive down the road. Unfortunately, the humidity here in Oregon often requires me to put the fuse back in to defog the front window. Unless we are headed out of town. Then we can drive fast enough the ambient air flow will s-l-o-w-l-y carve a peep hole in the windshield fog so we can see enough to drive relatively safely.
Then came the mysterious flooding on the drivers side. A mystery leak I blame on the stupid pine tree at the moldplex. My theory is that a hose is clogged somewhere with dumb pine needles. We tried to blow out all the obvious ones with the air compressor. 3 hours later we were no closer to finding the clog. We consulted a mechanic who suggested a body shop and a fog machine (but all I heard was $$cha-ching$$). Forget it. I'll wet vac the carpet every time it rains. Ok, maybe once a week, since this was winter and you know what that means in Oregon....
Then the brake lights decided that they needed to stay on. Always. Let's keep the motorists behind us guessing. Let's mess with their depth perception.
The problem with this is that even when the car is turned off, brake lights stay on until battery goes dead.
$200 later worth of batteries, and the nice man at the battery shop notices the brake lights staying on. (I'm always driving the car and never noticed them). I found that you could "jiggle" the brake pedal and 99% of the time they would go off. This worked for a few months until one day she got smart and made me think I had jiggled the lights off, when really, they were still drawing power. Another dead battery, another trip to the mechanic.
While at said mechanic, the alarm system decided to just randomly start going off for no apparent reason. Ah-hah! I stay one step ahead of this crazy car and just not activate the alarm! I will lock my doors the old fashioned way and not use the key fab. Viola!
This worked for a couple weeks until one day I went out and the battery was dead. When we went to jump start it, the alarm starting going off hysterically. My guess is the poor thing went off while we were at work the night before and kept going until the battery died. It's a good thing our neighbors are weekenders :)
Another trip to a different mechanic where he determines the alarm system has water leaking into it. The cost to fix this car is more than the blue book. But we still need the car. We have summer guests coming!
What do we do? Well, we are the proud owners of a battery charger as well as a quick start/jump starter. Too bad we forgot to throw those in the trunk when we went crabbing last weekend. My dear husband thought he would be smart and use the key to lock the doors (even though I told him you HAVE to just manually lock each door the old fashioned way by pushing down with your finger). This activated the alarm system (minus the horn honking), which drained the battery. Good thing it was only a three mile walk home. And we were able to walk the beach the whole way. And it was nice outside. And I only forgot sunscreen on my feet.
Based on the rapidly expiring Concorde, and the fact that we want to start doing farmers markets next year, we took advantage of the 1.49% interest rate we were granted on an auto loan, traded in our red car, and made this (scary) purchase:
Meet Ron:
My sister, Heidi, knows the story behind the name (shhhhh, don't tell)
Anyone else care to guess?
Oh, and does anyone want to buy a Chrysler Concorde with lots of "personality"?
