Starting with July 10, we had an autocross and by the end of the event, we knew the club's Ford F550 crew cab with 11 foot steel reenforced flat bed wasn't going to start. We need that truck to tow our 46 foot gooseneck trailer back to where we store it. That started the search to find a company that could tow the trailer while I called AAA for the truck.
You can imagine how amused a bunch of car geeks were when a Ford F550 truck arrived to flat bed our F550. The guy tried valiantly to get it on his truck, but ultimately bailed on it. He called for a medium duty truck to come.
The medium duty truck arrived at the same time as the heavy duty truck arrived to pull the trailer. The medium duty truck, another F550, looked at ours and effectively refused to tow it or flat bed it, leaving us high and dry.
When the medium duty truck left, the heavy duty driver called his dispatcher for another truck to tow our F550. These guys lift 18 wheelers, so we knew that picking up our F550 would be no problem. And their motto on their truck says, "Relax. We got this." Sure enough, they picked up both the truck and the trailer like they were toys, and hauled them where we needed them to go. And they cut us a price break, too. They were awesome.
Little did I know that there was a little foreshadowing in that picture... but before I get to that, it turns out that with every phone call I received from the Ford dealership, my bill was getting worse. But I had to have it done ASAP because I had 2 events scheduled that weekend! The kicker was when they had fixed the initial issue, started the truck, shut it down, then tried to fire it up again to test it, and it failed. That fix cost my club's autocross budget $1300 alone. The service manager cut me a $500 break, and only charged me $5000 for everything... OUCH.
Although our event on Saturday was fun, an event the next day had us headed out early to get home. As I was driving, I heard a rattle in the engine of my WRX. I looked down at my temperature gauge, and it was nearly at the hot zone. I pulled over as fast as I could, took it out of gear, and drifted on the shoulder until the car shut itself off. I drifted to a stop on the 175 ramp towards Columbia. Hi, again, AAA.
$100 later, my car was sitting at Hampton Automotive so that Gary could confirm for me what I already knew... I'd blown the engine. We had plenty of offers to drive cars at the event the next day because the autocross community is *awesome* like that, but we chose to just stay home.
Good thing we did stay home because I ended up helping Ernie and George with the yard regrading. Plus, Ernie took out some overgrown landscaping for me. Ernie dumped the extra stuff behind our fence line, effectively creating a 5 foot berm to combat what the land owner removed. See, we can play with big machines, too...that's a whole other story. Anyway, both DJ and Elektra loved watching the Ernie drive the backhoe!
Meanwhile, I had asked our electrician to come fix a couple more things we thought weren't quite right on Tuesday. He said he'd come Thursday or Friday. Thursday he texted me that he'd come Friday. Friday came and went, no electrician. Saturday, nothing. So now it's the day before insulation and drywall is supposed to go in, and he tells me that it's all fine and to code. I'm sure it is, but come and walk Steve through your work, answer his questions. No, his work is fine. I told him that Steve was ready to cut him loose at with only the payments we've given him, but I was giving him an opportunity to earn his full fare. He said to call another electrician. He had fired himself.
Awesome.
Ok, get that it's an hour to drive here from where he is, but for the money he was leaving on the table, I'd drive the hour every time! Steve called a friend who is in the home theater business (and apparently is a master electrician). We didn't hear from him Sunday, so I postponed my contractor another week. Ross came by on Tuesday, fixed the issues we had, and gave Steve guidance on others. Steve was MUCH happier.
Having posted my frustrations on Facebook, Steve's Uncle Kenny saw it and said he'd be over with his son (and Steve's cousin), Ryan, to help Steve finish the electrical work. We thought Kenny and Ryan were only into HVAC, else we would have had them come do the whole job!! I wish we had known about Ross, Kenny, and Ryan earlier!!!
Experience is what you get right after you need it.
Thursday, I was braking hard to a complete stop in the Outback, and it stalled on me. I tried replicating the scenario under my own terms, and it stalled again. This could be a sign of a transmission failing. I had already made an appointment with Hampton Automotive for Friday to have him recharge the A/C, so I asked him to look at that first. I wouldn't fix the A/C if the transmission was dying.
Yesterday afternoon, Gary called and said he couldn't replicate the stalling issue, but he ran out of time to recharge the A/C. So he kept the car to work on it until Monday.
Last night, on the day in which the outside temps hit 106 degrees, our air conditioner failed to start after BGE Peak Rewards cycling. We never signed up for that; our previous owner did. I wrote George and told him to come over on Saturday to take that thing off!!! No more! Our house got up to 88 degrees last night, so we slept with all of the fans and windows open. The house got down to 80 by the morning but uuuugh it was humid, too.
It turns out, Ryan used to work for BGE, can install and uninstall those things in his sleep, and was coming over this morning. Kudos to Ryan for troubleshooting the problem, fixing it, and removing the Peak Rewards thing!!! It has taken the house over an hour to cool down 1 degree.
Admittingly, with the way this week (and this remodeling project) has been going, where everything I touch dies, I was convinced we would be shelling out for a new HVAC unit. Glad I'm not... yet.
When it rains, it pours.
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