It's April 15. Tax day. 10:13pm. Doesn't matter, we've already filed, gotten our return and spent it on a van which we don't actually have at the moment.
Yeah. Used to be the saga of the tv. Seems to be the saga of the van, now. In the interim, the dealership has stepped up -- much to my surprise -- and has had the van for a week and a half. Seems they paid a buncha money for a repair that wasn't done, or wasn't done right, and so their customer (us) is raising hell with them. So we had the van towed there, and they're fixing it...or at least fixing something. To explain:
I crawled under the thing, and found that it's leaking transmission fluid from where the axle goes into the final drive housing. And I could wiggle the axle up and down with just two fingers -- not good. We had a local transmission shop look at it, and it seems there's "The Pin." There's a pin inside the final drive that holds in the spider gears. The spider gear holds in the axle. The pin wears out, and it lets the spider gear wiggle, and it lets the axle wiggle. And that's happening. It's about a $500 repair.
If we just replace the oil seal and keep driving, the pin keeps wearing out, then starts backing itself out, and hammering itself against the final drive casing until it punches a hole into the main transmission, and then we're out something like $2000.
My worry is that the dealership's "guy" is going to make sure that an axle replacement is done, because that's what the dealership paid for...leaving us with a $500 repair we still have to fork out for. With any luck, though, the repair the "guy" was supposed to have done wasn't that specific, and he'll acknowledge what OUR shop said (they never do...) and he'll fix the underlying problem, etc etc etc. I see us still needing to have the van towed back, and spend another week or two at yet another repair shop.
Why bother? Well, after all this is taken care of, it seems like (cross fingers, knock on wood veneer) this van is basically all right and not beat on, and should serve us well. Once this foofaraw is all taken care of.
Well, at least I can cheer up because it's spring. Oh, wait. Not. It's been snowing for the last two weeks. Week before last we got something like 18" of snow over three days. There was just this massive storm that parked over Lake Huron and dumped like 8" of snow per day on us. HOoray. It's been in the 40's for a couple of days and the white dodo is melting, at least.
Yeah, it's going to be June before I can even THINK of begging my wife for bike insurance. By the time the process can be completed, I'll have about 36 hours of riding season left before the August blizzards hit.
Gloom...doom....despair......
DH and I sponsor a child with the Christian Children's Fund program. We just received our packet for our new little boy - he's such a cutie pie! The last boy we sponsored has moved on with his family, so we now help another in need. I certainly hope that our contributions are being used right. You know, I really wish they'd allow more direct gift giving, you know like simple things....some sports toys, clothes/shoes/neat little trinket type gifts. I'm certainly not intending those "unnecessary" type items be used as a replacement, but rather in addition to what we do contribute. You know, just those "thinking of you" kinda gifts.
The mystery box also had a tiny FM receiver you wear around your neck, some fridge magnets and a 3-pack of styluses for a Compaq iPaq that I don't own. (Now it's Shiny Toy Guns' "Le Disko)
