View From the Bushes

Well, after spending all that money on a new engine, I wasn't very eager to have the transmission looked at, so I waited another year or so before I got around to it. The problem was that when I started from a stop the gear would frequently not engage, which left me revving the engine until eventually and with a lurch the gear would finally engage and I would roar away from the stop sign/light. What made this problem something I could ignore for more than a year was the fact that as long as the overdrive was turned of it (mostly) acted normally. Well, after a long period of procrastination, I finally decided it was time to take it in, which I did on Thursday -- the day I started this story. I had high hopes that it might be something simple (read "cheap") but alas, that was not to be.

When the mechanic called me, he said that the transmission was slipping when it was in second, and that they were going to have to overhaul it. For some reason "overhaul" sounded cheaper than "replace," so for a moment I thought it might not be as bad as I had feared. Then he told me the price: $1900, and I realized that whatever else "overhaul" might mean, there was no sense in which it meant that it would cost me less money.

So all told I've put over $5000 into this van, which is almost as annoying as having to buy a van in the first place. Of course, I could not have bought a better car for $5000 (though it would be close) but if I had somehow been blessed with a full prescience of what was going to happen then I certainly could have gotten a better car for $5000 plus the initial purchase price. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20. As it turns out, the story continues with the car I borrowed to use while the van was in the shop, but I guess I'll have to get to my cross-country destruction of city property on Monday.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross