I hurt my poor little purple car!

[athelind]

I hurt my poor car today.

quelonzia was meeting with our landlord today, turning in the keys and all that. We'd gotten the place professionally cleaned, in hopes of getting a larger percentage of our security deposit back -- but, since we've taken to scanning all important documents, the receipt was still sitting in my scanner. She called and asked me to bring it to her.

Our new place has a bit of a parking shortage. Someone parked right behind me, blocking my way out -- but a series of scooch-forward-turn-scooch-back-turn-scooch-forward maneuvers let me get out around his stupid ass. Unfortunately, I managed to drive into the hedge to my left more than once. With some degree of force, in at least once instance.

There was an odd rattle as I ran my urgent errands. When I was done, I stopped off at a store for Yet More Errands, looked down, and discovered a sizable puddle of Mysterious Watery Liquid on the floor of the front passenger seat, swamping the floormat and soaking the carpet underneath.

Nothing could have spilled. So something must be leaking. The liquid was either clear or very pale yellow-brown. There was Stuff On The Floor, so it was hard to tell. Any scent was subtle. Your Obedient Serpent wasn't damnfool enough to taste it.

Luckily, our new place is literally across the street from a Ford dealer. (Yes, hinoki, it's that Ford dealer. I took that into account, and decided Walking Distance trumped all concerns.) Iinitially, I made an appointment for tomorrow morning, but at the suggestion of the receptionist, I asked one of the mechanics to take a look at the liquid to see if I should panic yet. He was equally baffled; the one thing he could think of was damage to the heater core, and the carpet on the firewall wasn't wet. However, he wrote up my service ticket and just had me leave the car there.

Just the DIAGNOSTIC is going to be $125. Ow. Right after a move, of course, when we can least afford it. But you know, if it's $125 to hear, "it was just water, we got it up with a shop vac", I'll be delighted.

I hadn't heard back from them as of 7:30 PM, so I'm going to assume they didn't get a chance to look at it. In any case, it's gonna get in Earlier Than Early tomorrow.

Updates forthcoming. I love my little purple car. I hope she's not too badly damaged.

Oh, and I still haven't gotten around to writing up a post about the Move Itself. Give me some time to let the trauma fade.

Comments

[hedgegoth.livejournal.com]

*blink* what the heck? I'm trying to think of any liquid that would be able to get into the passenger compartment, but I'm not a gearhead...

g'luck

[araquan.livejournal.com]

I've had two instances of puddle-age on the floor mats. One was a heater core issue... The other was excessive condensation from the AC in extreme humidity- I was driving in the Deep South in June at the time. I forget if both of these instances took place in the same car or not- I definitely recall that the condensation issue was with the '91 Lumina.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

I should add- the heater core issue was really easy to diagnose- the inch-deep puddle was the same radioactive green you'd expect from a coolant mix. The condensate issue (no less deep) was clear to tea-colored.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

That's EXACTLY what I had -- clear-to-tea-color.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

Something to look into then. In my case it literally was tea. Dad had managed to spill some seasoning packets from Godfather's Pizza on the floor and, well... They hadn't gotten cleaned up completely before this happened.

The car smelled of oregano for months.

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

Good luck!

[breimh.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear about your car, I hope it's nothing serious. Purr's car sometimes ends up with water on the floor, when it rains here. It's done that since one of the undercarrage plates was scraped enough to puncture it, thanks to an overly large speed bump that we needed to get past.

Also, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, can you drop me an e-mail with your new snailmail addy, so I can send you and Quelonzia drawings I did of the two of you? You can reach me with this nic @gmail.com