car trouble and three times lucky

Came out the other morning to run into town for an appointment only to find a flat tire on the Prius.  Still have the compressor from house framing days set up with air hose, inflated the flat to forty and went on our way in the HHR.


The tire read twenty-three when we got home several hours later so I knew it would hold air on the drive across town to a tire shop glad not to deal with the spare.  Couple hour wait, Spotify drowned out Fox News that plays in that store, relaxed in a chair reading my book. Wi-fi went out in my room earlier this summer and I read a couple real books for the first time in several years.

Not long after getting home from the tire store MJ comes in says the car is dead, went out to roll up the windows and nothing - damned lucky the thing was not locked.  The big battery showed a good charge on the way home, gosh only knows why the readout doesn't include auxiliary battery voltage. Truth is I was only vaguely aware of the existence of the auxiliary battery.  Hidden someplace under the rear deck.  I opened that area up once or twice, didn't recall noticing a battery.

Before calling a tow truck and our AAA just expired, I sat down with uncle YouTube for some troubleshooting tips.  Consensus centered around dead auxiliary battery four to nine hundred dollar repair bill at the Toyota dealership.  Almost got paranoid. How do I know they didn't do something to drain the auxiliary battery while the tire was getting repaired,  tell me the old one went gunnysack, sell me a replacement at a premium price?

Got lucky that the last time the old battery had enough juice to start the car it got me off the tire store lot so I could at least try to do the job myself at home.

Another YouTube search to find out how to connect a battery charger to the system.  Not that good an idea.  At least forty years old, acting sketchy the last time I used it five years ago, my charger gave out a series of harsh buzzing sounds as soon as I plugged it in, when smoke started coming out the rusted louvered top  I figured it was time to disconnect the leads and look for a plan B. And careful with those leads, don't need a YouTube video to tell me that a little spark of juice the wrong way through that circuit board would cost more to fix than the car is worth.  Hope nothing like that happened.

Plan B was to jump-start the Prius with the HHR, find out of the auxiliary battery might still hold a charge.  Back to YouTube.  Not just where and how to hook the jumper cables to the Prius, but the HHR also has the battery buried deep under the rear deck and I had no idea how to hook the cables up on that car without the YouTube tutorial either.

Tell my nineteen-seventy-four self, fixing the pickup under a shade tree out behind the house with nothing more than a hand full of tools and a six-pack of animal beer a story about the two cars I got now and he's calling bull shit.  Nothing like that could ever happen, could it?

The jump worked.  Soon as the two cars were connected the instrument panel in the Prius lit up normally, motor started but it is hard to get that car to just sit in the driveway running - it wants to turn the gas engine off and use electric to get moving - need to check out YouTube to solve that problem but for now all I needed to do was run it for a while to see if the battery could hold a charge.  It didn't.  My also forty-year-old volt meter eluded my gaze on the workbench but the even older, still in a wood case battery tester showed almost no voltage in the auxiliary battery after five minutes running the engine.  Go online shop for a replacement, find out how complicated it is to do the job myself.

Restless sleep Thursday night, what if the new auxiliary battery doesn't get the car going again and how will we fit that into the budget?  Finally drifted off reminding myself we could make do with one car for a while, maybe should consider one car like sisters Annah and Delia as a way to economize anyway.

Of course, Mary Jane had to go out Friday morning, couple sales on the island.  She gets back around midday, gives me plenty of time to find a step by step set of instructions for the project.  This one included socket sizes, even extension length best to use, accompanied by still photos that really helped a lot and its all really clean around that part of the car so no need for the gloves and smeared screen on the phone.

Ten-millimeter socket dropped under the battery on the first bolt but the rest of the job went without a hitch, didn't even cut my hand, that's a first.

When MJ got home I buzzed down to NAPA for the new battery.  Their web page showed a house brand battery at one eighty-five, but the guy at the counter came back from a long time searching with the brand that had been recommended as better than original in one of my resources, so I didn't choke paying fifty dollars more.  Felt damned lucky to get off that cheap.

The fear of catastrophic failure in the electronics of that car didn't leave my throat I until the whole thing lit up and ran fine,  Mary Jane says the car runs better after installing the new battery.  I'm just glad it runs normally without blowing the budget out of the water.  Plus it feels good to do a job like that myself.

But that wasn't the only car repair of the weekend nor the only time I got lucky.

A month or so ago I noticed that the center break lights on the HHR had all burned out.  With both cars stuffed full, front to back top to bottom with our kit for Shipwreck day show, I followed Mary Jane out across the flats on the way to Anacortes hours before daylight.  She drove the HHR because the driver's seat has to go so far forward to get the stuff in the back that I don't fit.  Prius has three or four more inches cargo area but the back tapers down so it doesn't pack quite as much. In the dark I saw that all four of the center brake lamps had burned out, the next day I found a YouTube video on how to get at them for replacement.

Hesitated doing the job because at least one of those snap-together fasteners always breaks or gets lost and I didn't want to be driving around with plastic panel across the top of the back hatch held in place with strips of frayed duck tape.  Love the duck tape as much as anyone but let's face it even the most careful duck tape repair looks a bit red neck and I'm going for urban sophisticate image these days.  Feeling cocky coming off the Prius battery victory I decided to pop that plastic panel off and get the brake lights fixed before the dark of winter when a little extra light back there might be important.

Had to use needle nose plyers to dig the old bulbs out a bit at a time.  Same as some holiday light strings I've had, they are all glass with little wire loops coming out the bottom, no metal base, solidified anti-corrosion goop held tach lamp like super glue.  Hope the petroleum jelly-like product the guy at the auto parts store sold me doesn't do the same.

Tested that they all worked, carefully snapped the panel back in place, one of the fasteners got stressed in the removal, will almost certainly break next time but I'm spared from the Duck tape for as long as these replacement bulbs last.  Two successful car repairs in one week and this boy is walking on clouds.  Sometimes getting older a guy feels like he can't do shit anymore, makes even minor little accomplishments take on a lot more significance.

But that's not all, not even the best part of the story, got lucky again.

Three or four months ago the cruise control on the HHR stopped working.  I love cruse, not just out on the Interstate, it is also helpful across town when it can be hard to keep the speed at thirty or thirty-five after coming down off the freeway. Miss the cruse every time I drive that car.

No easy fixes from uncle YouTube, one reference suggested a direct connection between the cruse and the brake light circuit.  How could that apply to my car?  Break lights work fine, only the center lights are out and wouldn't they be on the same circuit as the tail lights?

Guess not.  First time out with the new center lamps installed I touched the cruise control button and instantly felt it kick in, CRUISE  ENGAGED flashed across the screen.

Pretty much resigned myself to no mo cruise control as long as I have the car, at two-fifty k some stuff is going to start wearing out I guess.  Feel lucky again to have stumbled across the fix.  Maybe I should make my own YouTube video.