Mitsubishi

I had a dream this morning that included a longish, jumbled preamble that I don't remember very clearly, but now I'm riding shotgun in my wife's Mitsubishi Endeavor. My dad, who has been dead for ten years or so, is driving. We're on our way to the automobile dealer's service department. We aren't going to the same place that I went to in the jumbled preamble, this time we are going to the actual service department. We pull into a large white prefab metal building. The interior is laid out like a parking lot with spaces for fifty to a hundred cars or so. Nobody is working on cars here, this is just the holding area, the actual work is being done in an adjacent area. My dad talks to the service writer and parks the car. I get out and see the service writer heading towards the door. I intercept him and start telling him about the car's problems, which include a screwed up window regulator in the front passenger side door and a seriously malfunctioning right front brake. In my mind these were real problems that happened about a year ago. They were caused by a damaged body control module located somewhere under the front passenger seat. But now I'm telling the service writer that these problems have gone away and he's asking me why I am telling him about them now if they aren't problems anymore. I don't have an answer for that, and now I am wondering where I got the idea that these problems were real. I'm awake now and I still have the feeling that those were real problems, but I know they aren't problems now, and I have no recollection of how they got fixed, which means they were imaginary problems, but man, the memory sure felt real. Never mind that there is no computer module where my memory was telling me it was.

Tire Wear Bars
Yes, that's about what my tires looked like.

Back to real life. It's spring and that means it's time to change the oil in the cars. I took the car to Clays a couple of weeks ago and because it's time to renew the license plates, I had them run the DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality) emissions test as well. They changed oil and ran the test no problem, but they noticed a few things that could stand to be replaced, like the tires, rear brakes and battery. Hmm. They told me the same thing six months ago. At that time the brakes were down to 4mm (millimeters) but now they are down to 2mm so maybe it is time to replace them. The wear bars in the tires are definitely showing and the battery is over four years old, so maybe it's time to take it to Les Schwab. 

Low Tire Pressure Indicator

The low-tire-pressure indicator has been on almost constantly for years, and the TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitoring System) indicator (which is just the four letter acronym) has been lighting up the last year or two or five, I don't recall. Clays wants $150 to diagnose the TPMS system. $150 to plug in your diagnostic computer and tell me that the system is broken? I don't think so. I do a little checking and it turns out that the tire pressure sensors on this Mitsubishi have batteries that are supposed to last ten years. The car is 15 years old. Think maybe the batteries have died? So I go looking for batteries. 

Tire Pressure Sensor

Turns out the batteries are not replaceable, you simply replace the entire sensor which is an assembly that includes the valve stem. Since it is time for tires, probably ought to get those sensors replaced as well. Funny no one has recommended replacing those sensors before, or maybe I just don't remember. Tires last for years now. Sensors can be had for around $20 a piece, but Les only installs parts they supply and they want $70 each. Still, if this turns off the warning lights and without having to pay a diagnostic fee it will be worth it. (This a pretty sad state of affairs, paying $300 to turn off a couple indicator lights. Gawd I hate his safety shit.)

I take the car to Les, they keep it for a day and a half, and they care of all the problems except the battery, which is fine because I think the battery has at least another six months of life left. I base this on the fact that batteries seem to last about five years now. Used to be, back in good old days, batteries would fail slowly. They'd lose their charge, you could get a boost and now and again and maybe get a few more days,(weeks, months?) out of them. Now they die and that's it. One minute they are fine and the next minute, boom, they're dead. If you can predict their failure and replace the battery before it dies, you can avoid having a pissed off spouse, so I'm living dangerously.

The prices at Les Schwab were kind of interesting. The tires and brake pads were surprisingly low. The price for the rear shocks and installation struck me as excessively high. I suppose if they are giving away brake pads they need to make up for it somewhere else. Anyway, it was a one stop shop and I didn't have to lift a finger other to pull out my credit card, which was declined because the credit card company had sent me a new one even though this one wasn't expired. It still works everywhere else, but apparently only for penny-ante transactions.

P.S. I mailed in the license renewal form two weeks ago. I just called to check on it and the robo-cop tells me 'don't even think about calling back for four months'.