03.23.11 - 11:00 pm

this was supposed to be just a heroic milestone. not a death sentence.

but sure enough, mere days after i crossed the threshold, my kia lay crippled. she whined. she struggled. she screamed in agony as i pushed her just a few more miles. and then just a few miles more. what once was a vehicle tireless and reliable, now accelerated asthmatically. redlining with even the slightest pressure to the pedal. a low dry wheeze drumming out the exhaust. all of this unexpectedly one morning. driving to work she handled startlingly poor. i knew it was time i have my step father intervene.

he drove her off and out of my works parking lot. hooked it up to a diagnostic machine and coincidentally enough isolated the exact same problem that had incapacitated my sisters car just days earlier.

cam shaft sensor. that and some other sensor. fuel rhinosensorsomething.

easy deal, he would say. almost two weeks went by. and for just over a hundred bucks, it was drivable again. albeit, just as hobbled as it had been. maybe slightly more improved. i drove it anyways, even though it was torture to do so. going up hills was nearly impossible. i thought for sure id melt the engine with any sort of rapid acceleration. this was not going to work.

the next morning i had planned to take it to a repair shop for a formal diagnosis. the kia, still struggling to fake a smile, drove about 100 feet before collapsing in a puddle of its own shame. my neighbor ted would help me push it safely into a parking spot, muttering theories of timing belts.

the old timer was right. a $259 dollar timing belt repair was authorized. grownups pay ungodly amounts on auto repair every year. you cant consider yourself an adult until you bitch about how much your car costs to fix. but while in there, the mechanic found a single, golden ribbon. it ran deep into the depths of the engine, somewhere out of sight. so he began to pull that ribbon....

the timing belt failed. as it failed it caused the valve rods to bend. the only way to find out how damaged they were and which ones would be to remove something that costs $250 to remove and $250 to reinstall. then when that thing is removed, they could possibly find the head is cracked from the bent rods colliding into it. if the head is cracked, it will have to be replaced. and that costs....

hey wait wait wait. hold on.

im already $260 into this and the car isnt even drivable. another $500 to take a look at some maybe broken valves. to replace the valves its something like $20 a tooth for some many toothed valve thing. then, once those are fixed, if the heads cracked, thats another $1000 to fix. so thats like $1800 plus to fix a car i was planning on selling.

selling for $1800 to $2000.

ugh. no thanks. ill take the $260 and walk. i hate to do it to such a beautiful reliable woman, but she gave up. threw in the towel early. coincidentally early i might add. coincidentally immediately following 100k miles. seems a little suspicious. whatever. ill donate the anemic hag to NPR or goodwill, collect the tax money and bail. use the money saved to put down towards an upgrade.

toyota, tell me why i need a rav 4.