Neil Fein's Blog

If we had to have a car break down, this is the time to do it; Martha only really needs a car one or two days a week, and I can take the train those days. Nevertheless, she's planning on calling AAA today to have the car towed to the shop. We were going to try jumping the car last night, but the Noahesque precipitation made that seem like A Very Bad Idea. (Zzzzzap!)

After speaking to both Craig and Grazina, *I've come to the conclusion that there are three possibilities. These are based on my limited understanding of how cars work, so it is not authoritative. For all I know all this stuff is BS and the car works by hamsters running in exercise wheels. In the order of least to most expensive:

As I understand it, the alternator/distributor caps deal with the timing of the spark plugs. This is essentially a wire and a cap and maybe a little else. They're tied up without he rotor somehow, but I don't yet know how. On the other hand:

The battery could be bad, but I think this is unlikely since I replaced it about a year back. Of course, it might now be bad if the problem is:

The alternator. If this part is bad the car will have been running off of straight battery power. If it's been bad for a while, it will also have drained the battery, which might need to be recharged/replaced. Of course, all this could be wrong and the problem could be that:

The electrical system could be bad, or a module of it. This would be A Very Bad Thing and I might junk the car if it is, as this repair might cost more than the car's worth. But I really, really wanted to get the car to 200,000 miles...

I'll keep this post updated if we think of any other possibilities.

Update, 7 November 2003:

We just heard from STS and it's the battery after all. However, I had a new battery put in at the same shop in 2002, so this is partially covered under warranty. What that means is, they charge $2 a month for every month the battery's been in; I'm getting a new battery for $34. Nice! They're also doing an engine flush and an oil change while it's in there.

*= Does anyone know how to do a z with an upside-down circumflex over it? It's a Lithuanian accent that denotes the "zsch" sound, and there are ways to indicate it in, say, Tex.