Car Door Handles...So Much Joy

Several years ago, I went to lunch with some friends from the FanX Planning Committee. I volunteered to drive. As we climbed inside the car, a friend opened the back door and, "pop"

Door handle broke.

It just snapped. 

I thought that strange. 

I don't know if I've ever had a door handle break. So, to "one-up" itself, a few months later, another door handle snapped off. Unbelievable...yet, believable. My daughter ended up inheriting the car and she drove it for a couple of years. Since it was her college commuter car, she didn't necessarily need all four door handles--as long as the drivers side handle worked.

Now, it's time for another driver to take the wheel. For kicks, I decided to do an internet search to see how much door handle replacements would be. Turns out, not as much as you'd think. I placed the order. It came last week.

I successfully installed one handle.

It made me so happy.

I can't testify to the quality of the new handles. I'm sure they're not up to the original standards and will most likely fail like those that went before. Then again, the original ones weren't too successful either. And, there's always the fact that since the car's almost twenty years old--it may expire before the new handles do.

I'm not thinking about that now. I'm thinking about how cool it is to be able to open the car door.

The Vape-Mobile...

We see it almost every week as we pick up groceries. We've come to know it as the Vape-Mobile. It's a car, two-tone (but most likely not by choice...). And for whatever reason, when we show up for our weekly trip, we happen to see the car's owner taking a break in the Vape-Mobile.

You can probably guess why we've dubbed the car what we did, so I guess I don't need to go into that. 

It's interesting to me how a car, maybe more than anything, can help define a person, at least, that's how we think about it in our own minds. How else would you convince a normally rational person to pay tens of thousands of dollars for much more of a vehicle than they need? Billions of dollars in advertising has made us believe that we are an extension of our cars, or better yet, they're an extension of us.

We really couldn't be more wrong. Sure, a car can say something about a person. A truck usually means the owner has a need for the abilities of the truck--construction worker, someone who needs to tow things, or maybe they just like to see above all the traffic. I've never really understood why a person would need to buy a car that can hit 200 m.p.h., other than the thrill of knowing it can be done.

I drive a car that has no hubcaps and the driver's-side door is a different color than the rest of the car. For a while it bugged me that it wasn't nicer (or not two-toned...). But, when I really think about it, it's been a fantastic car. It's been reliable and economical. And I really like it.

I've wondered if the owner of the Vape-Mobile likes his car. I'm sure he like the fact that it allows him to get to and from work, play, or wherever else he wants to go. Yes, a car can say a lot about a person, or it can say almost nothing.

Yeah, Ah...We Tried Finding The Problem, But It Worked Fine For Us

I'm taking in the Pontiac tomorrow morning. There's a recall and the dealership will fix that for free. They'll be working on the passenger-side airbag. It needs replacing.

"Hey," I asked the customer service rep when I called in to make the appointment. "Do you think when they're working on that airbag, they mechanics could check out a problem I'm having with my dashboard fan?"

"I'll check," was her reply.

Several years ago I began hearing a clicking sound coming from the right side of my dashboard. It was not something I could ignore--the clicking was loud. I did a Google search and it's not a good sign when you type in "dashboard clicking" and the make and model of your car and there are several links that pop up. Apparently, my car isn't the only one with this problem.

There's a quick solution--click the Recirculation Button right under the A/C button. The fan that allows outside air into the car is broken. As long as you don't need fresh air, you never have to get that fixed. And, from what I read, the broken fan is near or behind the passenger-side airbag. I thought, as long as they're going to be tearing apart the dash, might as well check out the noise.

So, after years of the annoying clicking, I'm finally going to get it looked at and possibly fixed.

Of course, what if it suddenly started to work? Highly unlikely, or is it?

As I left work today, I switched from Heat mode to Cool mode. Doing this un-clicks the Recirculation Button and the clicking begins. Only this time, as I drove out of the parking lot, no clicking.

Uh oh.

What if I took it in and the problem wasn't there? That ever happen to you? Have you ever told the mechanic exactly what is wrong and when you pick up your car they say they couldn't get it do to what you said? I'll bet mechanics hear that a lot. And I'm sure they want to find/fix the problem--it means more $$ for them.

Don't worry--after a few seconds the clicking continued, so all is well because all is not well. It will be interesting to see if they can find it, how much it will cost to fix it. If it's too much, I might just be driving the car home on Recirculate anyway.

The Grey Car With The Red Door...

I bought my little grey Pontiac Vibe back in October of 2010. In December of that year, I hit and killed a deer in my car. That was a bad night. I had never hit and killed a deer before. It's something I never want to have happen again.

I began my daily blog in January, 2011 and one of the first posts talked about the incident. You can read that post: HERE. It was the fifth blog post I wrote.

In February of 2011 I went ice caving with the scouts. The car had been fixed in January and things were looking good. The front end had had been painted before I bought it from a time it was damaged by its previous owner. And the guys who fixed the car after I hit the deer did a better job than whoever fixed it before.

I was happy about the new front end.

Then I went with the scouts and shattered the window. You see, I lowered the window with the car door open and when I closed the door the window shattered inside the door frame. I didn't realize it until years later, but I believe when I hit the deer, it screwed up that window. Since it happened in the winter, I never rolled it down until months later. I never put two and two together and I have no definitive proof, but I'm pretty sure the accident was the cause of my window troubles.

I wrote about the window-shattering incident: HERE. After it happened I took the car into a glass place and they replace the window. The problem was, every time I lowered the window, it came disconnected to the mechanism inside the door, so basically the window didn't work. I took it back again and again to the glass place and each time the same thing happened. I thought "no big deal--I don't need to have a working window."

I was wrong.

It seems in order to be legal, the only window in the car that must work is the driver's side window. And mine didn't. Since 2011 I've been able to get the darn thing to work just enough to pass inspection. But this year, all my tricks had been used up. I knew I had to do something.

And that something was a very permanent solution. I bought a new door. A few weeks ago I picked up the door and spent a couple of hours putting it on my car. I'd never done anything like that before.

How did it all work out? Wonderfully! It passed inspection on the second to last day of the month before my old inspection sticker was invalid. Still, I have a hard time lowering the window. I think it's not going to work. Maybe the next time I'll try it is next October, just about inspection time.