My car has this funny rev pattern before it’s warm. Up to about 3000 rpm to 500rpm very quickly over and over again. It’s been making me crazy for about 9 months. I’ve tested just about everything I can think of, but I can’t isolate it. So I finally get it down to the point where it’s one of two things. It’s either the Electronic Control or it’s the Fast Idle Valve. I’m hoping it’s the Idle Valve because the computer is expensive. The Valve is over $100 and that’s the cheap part.
So I order the part and wait the week. When I finally get it, I take it outside and pull the car apart enough that I can see where it’s supposed to go. I make sure the hoses that go to it are all okay before I pull them off and destroy them, and figure out where it actually goes. This is where I notice that something is not quite right.
If you’ve ever been under the throttle body of your car, you know two things. 1) there is not much room between the intake and the engine, and 2) everything goes in a certain way so that it all fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. so when I notice that the part I have in my hand is not like the one I have in the car I know that there’s no way to just “make it fit”.
Monday morning I call the place that I ordered the part from. I wont’ go through the whole conversation but let’s just say that after about 5 minutes the words “let me talk to your boss” came out. Now when you’re on the phone with someone and the phrase “let me talk to your boss” gets played you have two options. 1) you let them talk to your boss. 2) you don’t. I can respect you if we have a disagreement and I go to your boss, even if I lose I can respect that. What this guy does is just stupid though. “the boss just went to lunch. like just now….”. Fine. I mean that in the I’m going to stop talking to you kind of way. I mean that in the – we have a disagreement and we’re going to agree to disagree kind of way. I mean that in the best possible way.
After I hang up, I immediately call the front desk of this dealership and ask for the parts manager, who just happens to be RIGHT THERE. I calmly tell him what happens and my situation and he says that he’ll look into it. The next time I called this dealer I asked to talk to Mr. The boss just left and he’s now “in a different department”.
Here’s the problem, they won’t exchange the part I have unless I give them a 25% “restocking fee”. Which basically make the part more expensive than if I’d ordered it from the dealer down the street. Add that to the fact that I actually have to go to the dealer to pay for the part as I order it and you get price of the part, plus two trips to the dealer in crappy traffic, gas money (which at this point is almost $4 per gallon) and a weeks time between order and receiving it. Plus I’m only mostly convinced that this is going to be the answer to the problem.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this town, it’s that the phone is one of your best friends. Back home, if you’re looking for a part you just go to the store. If they don’t have the part your looking for you go to the next one because they’re not that far apart, they’re mostly on the way to each other and they’ll probably have it. Here, you call ahead. no store is close to the other stores, they’re not on the way, they may or may not have your part, and you can spend hours in traffic trying to get anywhere. So I spend about 50 minutes calling every dealer in the metro area.
I find one dealer who will order the part without pre-payment, have it in 48 hours, and isn’t marking up $100. They are also in a 90 minute drive away. I can live with all of those things. I order it. Two days later I go pick it up in the worse rain storm I’ve seen in about a year and I get lost in a part of town I’m never in. When I finally get home, my wife is happy to see me, happy to see I have the part, and happy to know that I’m not a raving psychotic yet.
Once I get a little food in me, a little drink in me, and rest up a little, I say I’m going to install this part on my car today. A huge groan goes up because this means I’ll be under the hood for the rest of the day. Not to mention that it’s raining and I really shouldn’t be working on a car in the rain. But I’m determined. Out under the hood I go with a 10mm socket and extension, a screw driver, a pair of pliers, my new part and my rain coat. It took me all of 20 minutes to pull the part and replace it.
It took me 20 minutes to replace a part that had been making me crazy for almost a year. 20 minutes to install a part that cost me about 4 hours on the phone either finding it or getting yelled at by people who supposedly talk on the phone all day. 20 minutes, and I hadn’t felt that good in weeks.
I guess the moral of this story is that if the anticipation is intense enough, even 20 minutes is ultimately satisfying.
Demigorge 