2005-06-04 - 1:20 p.m.
Driving to work yesterday, I had a lot of crap I wanted to think about, so for once I wasn't doing my taped French lessons or listening to a book on tape. Because there wasn't any other sound in the car, I was able to hear a subtle noise from under the hood that I hadn't heard before. It sounded kind of like some kind of motor was cycling on or off. It wasn't very loud; in fact, it was so soft, I really wasn't sure that it actually was coming from my car, it could have been somebody doing some kind of work outside at one of the houses here on Mulholland Drive, but very far away. What it really sounded like to me was one of those tree branch shredders (I don't know what they are called), you know, when trees are getting pruned or cut down and the branches are being thrown into this grinding maw and there is the sound of wood being shredded, and then a period of silence until the next branch is thrown in. What on Earth under the hood of my car could make an extremely soft cycling sound that sounded like a tree shredder, and just HOW worried about this should I be?
I decided that when I got parked at the school, I'd open up the hood and see if I could determine where the noise was coming from. However, as I drove down the school's entrance road, the noise had gotten louder and there was a definite smell, somewhat electric-smelling, and somewhat chemical-smelling. Then I noticed what looked like smoke (or steam, or vapor) rising up from the right side of the hood. Something very definitely was wrong, very wrong.
When I lifted up the hood, the noise was much louder, sounding like metal on metal, and the bad smell was overpowering (in fact, I continued to smell it on my shirt for the rest of the morning). Also, the smoke or steam or vapor was rising up in a wide-enough swath that I couldn't see where it was specifically coming from. I noticed a lot of liquid droplets all over all the components to the left of the engine, where there are all those things like alternators, water pumps, etc., and the long serpentine belt. Because of the droplets and the "smoke", I guessed that this was some kind oil leak, which now meant that I had some kind of major problem. I dropped the heavy hood back down, shut off the engine, and went upstairs to my office, depressed.
I called Harry, my mechanic, to see if he was open on Saturday. I had been planning on dropping my car off there Saturday anyway, because it was due for an oil change and so on, but now it looks like I was forced to go there whether I wanted to or not.
The reason I had to call Harry to find out whether he was open on Saturday was that he now has his own shop and I hadn't been there yet. Formerly, he was a mechanic who worked at Smog Pros at the ARCO station diagonally across the street from my apartment building. The convenient location is what made me go there in the first place for a basic routine servicing, but his work is what kept me coming back regardless of what kind of work needed to be done, even more serious repairs, which I had previously reserved for the Cadillac dealership. But Harry was not only much cheaper than the Cadillac dealer (which is an understatement), he was also infinitely better. He actually FIXED things (which the dealership never fully successfully did), and for prices in the hundreds instead of the thousands. Even Harry's routine servicing made the car feel brand new. When I praised him about that, I said that due to the difference in how the car feels after he's changed the oil and fluids compared with other places I have been, I seriously wondered if other places actually never did the work, but had simply driven the car around to the back, left it there for a couple of hours, and then announced that it was now done. Harry did not deny that that was a strong possibility. Because honestly, the difference between the feel of the car driving IN versus once Harry was through, was remarkably noticeable.
Well, being a mechanic who was that good, Harry eventually got the idea that he could have his own shop rather than simply being an employee at Smog Pros. Of course, going out on his own was risky. He told me the bad news that he was moving away, but he stressed that he wasn't leaving the L.A. area. I told him I would take my car to him no matter where his new shop was if only he'd let me know its new address. When he opened his new place, he called me at work to tell me the address (not too far away from Smog Pros, actually...one subway stop away, or else half an hour's walk), and then later sent me a postcard with the information, which I keep in the glove compartment of my car. But so far I hadn't needed him until yesterday, so he was quite pleased to hear from me and said that "Of course" he worked on Saturdays.
I explained what had happened to the car and he asked me if I thought I could bring it that day, because getting any replacement parts would be difficult on Saturday. I said I figured the car had to be towed in, and since Harry couldn't really tell what was wrong with it without looking at it, he didn't counter-act my idea of having it towed. He just said, "I'll be here, waiting for it."
I called AAA, knowing that Harry's new shop was beyond their towing limit, which is seven miles. While I talked with the AAA operator, I did a Mapquest search and determined that Harry's shop was 15.5 miles away from the school. The AAA operator said, "It's a distance of 16 miles, and we cover seven, so the towing company will charge you $9.00 a mile past seven, or a total of $81.00."
"Can I pay him in advance?" I asked.
"Sure," she said, "they take Visa or Mastercard, but no checks. And they take cash, of course."
Despite my having to pay $81.00 for towing, and towing to the Cadillac dealer would cost nothing (it was only just down the hill from the school), taking the car to Harry would be worth it.
The tow truck arrived right at the time AAA said. It was driven by a nice, Middle-Eastern-looking man. The name on his shirt was "Hassad". I was thinking "Arab," but I know that people from the Middle East are sensitive as to race and nationality and they do not appreciate being considered one thing when they are really another, so I'm NOT saying that he was "Arab," because I really have no idea what he is. This same thing happens with Hispanics in L.A., who really despise being thought of as "Mexicans" when they are really from Guatemala or Colombia or wherever it is that they are from.
I showed Hassad my AAA card and photo ID, and he began to fill out his forms and we talked a little bit while he was doing that. He was an unusually friendly-acting man, so I really liked him. I also handed him my Visa card, but he said, "Oh dear, I didn't bring my credit card machine, can you write me a check?" I had to go back upstairs to my office to bring down my checkbook, the one form of payment AAA said he would NOT take. But Hassad said, "Don't hurry, I'll just be sitting here, filling out my papers."
I then came back down and wrote him the check. After all the paperwork was done, he asked "What has happened to your car?" When I explained it, he gently touched my arm and said, "Now, you have to be strong baby, but I think it is the head gasket." Well, whatever, it had to be something serious--and I was glad that I hadn't maxed out all my credit cards. However, after he started the car up (which, frankly, surprised me) and then backed it up into towing position from the parking spot (leaving a curved trail of liquid droplets in the asphalt), he leaned out of my car's window and said, "You are a very lucky man, God loves you, it is the air conditioning compressor."
"Oh," I said, relaxing noticeably, "that's better?"
"Much better," Hassad said, and repeated, "Today is your lucky day and God loves you, it is not the head gasket but only the air conditioner."
The thought did cross my mind that if it is only the air conditioner, then perhaps I didn't need to have the car towed, that I could simply turn the air conditioner off and the car would be driveable. However, I didn't want Hassad to lose the business simply for telling me good news, and besides, he might be wrong. So yes, I still wanted him to tow it. He said, "Don't worry, I will take very good care of your baby."
Now all of a sudden I got worried. I hate to say that I have become this suspicious of my fellow man, but the extreme level of his niceness now made me distrusting. I realized that here he was all ready to simply have me walk away while he hooked up my car, and I would casually let him tow it to who knows where, he could have been some kind of car thief imposter and I didn't even have any kind of receipt or anything from him. So I asked him if I could have his business card, which he cheerfully gave me, and then I hung around and watched him while he slid the hydraulic arm under the front of the car and then attached the brackets that surrounded the wheels. As he worked, I cheerfully yammered on, saying one good thing about this car was that it ran so smoothly and quietly that one could be sensitive to any changes that occurred under the hood.
"Oh yes, it is a good car, a BEAUTIFUL car," agreed Hassad, "and I hope you have an honest mechanic"
"Oh yes, I have a very good and honest mechanic, which is why I am having the car towed the long distance to him," and then I explained some of the ways in which Harry had actually worked hard to save me money.
"Oh, that's for sure a good mechanic, a valuable reference, I might even want to go to him, myself," enthused Hassad.
"That would be a good idea," I said, "I've referred several friends to him, and all have been very satisified."
"I will tell him how much you like him," said Hassad.
"He already knows," I said, "but yes, please do tell him."
Than I thought to myself that Hassad would be bound to really like Harry, because Harry is Middle Eastern, himself...but again, of which exact nationality, I have no idea.
The car all hooked up, Harry left, car in tow, and I went back upstairs to get some work done.
About an hour later, Harry called to tell me that the car was now there. I was, of course, relieved, Hassad wasn't an imposter after all. Now that the car was there in front of him, Harry asked me to tell him again what had happened.
"Well, the tow truck operator thinks it's the air conditioning compressor," I started to say, but Harry interrupted.
"That guy, that guy, I wouldn't believe anything he says, he was terrible, you should call and complain, he didn't even want to tow your car into my shop, he wanted to simply leave it there out on Sunset Boulevard. 'It's drivable,' he said,'I don't need to tow it in there, you can drive it in when you are ready,' but I told him when he tows a car, he is required to tow it right up to the shop, you ought to complain about him."
Here I had felt that they would immediately like each other because they were both Middle Eastern, shows you how naive I am, instead it was just my luck that one of them was a Kurd and the other an Iraqi, or some such. Instead of instant friends, they were like Siamese fighting fish!
But I don't blame Hassad for not wanting to tow the car into Harry's shop, which I know is in a very tight, cramped strip-mall position with several different independent auto repair shops in a line next to each other and with a very tight and crowded parking lot. If the car truly was driveable, then simply parking on the side of the nice roomy street made sense, and then when Harry was ready to work on it, he could drive it into the garage. However, apparently he was ready to work on it right then (thank you, Harry!).
At the end of the day, I had to get a ride home from work, of course, driven by Anita, my co-worker and driving-life-saver (who drove me to work every day during the bus strike which happened in the days when I had attempted to do without a car in L.A.--ha ha ha), and she was nice enough to offer to drive me on Monday, too, if I still needed--the whole week, actually.
Sometime after I got home, Harry called me and gave me his diagnosis: it was the air conditioner compressor, but he didn't think he needed to replace the whole thing. "I'm going to try to replace just the bearings and the clutch, but if that doesn't work, then we'll move into having to replace the whole thing." See, this is what Harry does that I like. So many other mechanics would have simply replaced the whole thing and I wouldn't have known of any cheaper solution, then they would have replaced the bearings and clutch and turned around and sold my compressor as reconditioned to somebody else, earning themselves a tidy little profit.
"The car may not be ready until Monday or Tuesday, though," explained Harry, which I figured would be the case if his replacing the bearings and clutch didn't work...he wouldn't be able to get a new (or reconditioned) compressor until after the weekend. I told him to just do whatever he could do. So for now I am carless, but I don't really need to drive anywhere, anyway, and Anita will drive me to work on Monday if need be.
It's interesting to understand that the "tree branch shredding" sound was the metal-on-metal of the compressor due to the worn bearings, and the cycling on or off must have been part of the normal operation of the compressor (I wonder how strange it must seem to those back east right now to hear that I had my air conditioner on as I drove to work, but this is Los Angeles and it is been summer ever since the beginning of May, so of course the air conditioner was on at 8:00 in the morning!) The "electrical" smell must have been from the metal-on-metal, also, whereas I can only guess that the chemical smell and "smoke or vapor" was the leaking Freon, perhaps heated on the hot engine. That must also have been what all the liquid droplets were that I had assumed was oil (and which, thankfully wasn't, and yes, God does love me!).
I woke up this morning feeling some guilt over having added some more polluting, global-warming-inducing Freon gas to the air, if, indeed, some of that did leak...but, of course, it had been something I had had no power over.
I also thought about how it would be smarter for me to actually know a lot more about automobile mechanics than I do--not that I was going to do anything about that (what take an auto mechanic's course?). I only know about stuff that has already happened, but when something new or different occurs, I'm pretty much ignorant.
I do think it is good to have an on-going history with a car (which I do), that way, you get some warning when things don't seem right. Getting a new car every two years or so, you're possibly unaware of an impending problem when some little noise or smell occurs that you might otherwise pass of as something of minor concern.
Jeff wrote about his uncle's classic Trans Am, a beloved vehicle that has a long and treasured history with the extended family. When that car gets fully restored, it will not only be a beautiful piece of machinery, per se, but due to long-term and intimate family involvement with that particular car, I'll presume that they know that car like they know the...well, I won't succumb to the old cliche of "back of their hand"; for them (or some of them), I'll interject the dorsal side of some other well-known and rather blood-vessel-encrusted body part that they know so well, and one that gives an amount of pleasure more appropriate for the pleasure of that particular Trans Am. But anyway, I'm confident that that's a car that not only will be made good, but will stay good.
And when I get my car back from Harry, as good as new as it will be after he's worked on it, though not a classic car and without anywhere near the history of Jeff's uncle's Trans Am, I'll nevertheless feel pretty darn good about being back inside my baby again. Meanwhile, I'm thankful she's in good hands and know that good things are happening to her, as she so amply deserves.
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