Car Issues

I've been really frustrated with my car, or shall I say my wife's car, as of late. For the last few months, several of the tires have been losing pressure...slowly, but surely. It has become a habit to check the pressure every other week, only to find that they are severely low. Last week Wednesday I had activities on campus until about 10:30 p.m. When I got to the car, the front left tire was quite low; it looked awful. I decided to try and drive (slowly) to Casey's General Store and fill 'er up. As I slowly drove away, the car started pulling hard to the left and soon I felt the rim slicing into the snow. I went inside, as it was zero degrees outside, and luckily found a student with a portable air compressor! To my dismay, it was a a glorified bicycle pump that did nothing but freeze my fingers. In my desperation, I dialed a friend that might allow me to borrow his car to get home, only to find him "away from his phone". After the fourth try, I finally reached someone who would let me use her car.

The next day, I scheduled time between classes to put the spare tire on. I pulled the jack and the spare out to find it flat as well. I proceeded to carry the spare across campus to maintenance to be inflated. When I returned to the car, I put the jack under it loosened the lug nuts. To add to my frustration, the wheel would not dislodge. After kicking it, punching it, and pulling it for several minutes, I decided to seek professional help. The Co-op gas, oil, and tire center was quite eager to help me out of my predicament with a tank of air and instructions to pull my car into their shop. I had the man fix both tires on the left side, as they were both doing the leaky thing. "No problem," he said. "We'll be done in a jiffy," he said. As I paid the bill, he mentioned that the other two tires were probably going to need repair soon. That sounded fantastic to me and I was needlessly thrilled to walk into a class of one hundred thirty students embarrassingly late.

Five days later, I arrived on campus to find another tire low on pressure. Did I mention that the interior of my car had started to smell, or rather, wreak of gas? I pulled the hood release lever and found the safety latch under the hood to be frozen in place. I then tried to re-shut the hood and found that the stinking latch was too frozen to close. I called the Co-op and immediately had the tired repaired. Meanwhile, my car thawed enough in the shop for me to properly shut the hood.

Today (three days later), the smell of the gas inside drove me up the flipping wall and I called Ver Hoef automotive and they agreed to have a quick look at my stinking car. A service man looked under my hood and diagnosed a leaking fuel pressure regulator. To my good fortune, they were able to fix it right away!

$200 later, I have three sound tires, a new fuel pressure regulator, and two years taken off the end of my life.