A Car Story that MUST be told...

I must preface this by saying that I asked my husband once to sell his Chrysler that he only drove to my house once while we were dating before he switched to his truck (it what I assume was a move to try and impress me). Then I BEGGED once after it had been sitting on our driveway for 6 months unmoved, never started and doing nothing but collecting bugs and foliage. Alas, he was convinced he was going to use it as a comuter car at some point....HA!

So, I have finally convinced him that it was worth it to sell the piece of crap...I mean, lovely car. I am sure that part of he decision was due to the fact that since he is deployed, he doesn't have to deal with the hassel of selling the thing. So, I asked him, in order to sell...what is wrong with it that I must fix? Two things: replace the fuse in the back so that the speakers will work and get a new battery because since the car won't start without being jumped it must be dead. Easy enough. So, I called up some friends of ours and asked if they would mind going with me to Sears, get the new battery and put it in. The fuse I replaced on my own...but still, no sound...GREAT.

So, our friends come over and he and I stare and stare at the engine...where the hell is the battery? Now, though I am a woman, this is certainly not the first engine I have seen or worked on and my friend works on his truck all the time...batteries are usually easy things to find. After confessing to each other that we felt like idiots, we checked the owners manual....the battery is under the front fender. Fabulous. So, we had to jump the car in order to move it away from the tree that would surely hinder this activity. Oh, this is the part when we noticed the back tire was flat....oh, did I mention it was 45 degrees and raining this whole time? Once the car was moved and we set to work putting the donut on the back...my friend noticed that the lights on the dash were, for lack of a better word, tweaking out and the seat began moving on its own. "Uh, I don't think it is the battery...you have a short or an eletrical problem somewhere." Can this day get any better? Why yes, it can...

So, we decide to take the car to the local shop where he gets stuff done and see if they can't run diagnostics and tell me how much $$$ this is going to cost me. Oh, I forgot to mention that the registration ran out at the end of last month.....so he drove the stupid car and his wife and I tailgated him to the shop so that any passing cops couldn't see it was in violation. So, we dropped it off and then puttered around town. The whole time I was stressing out and praying that it would be under $200 to fix....hoping, hoping. Finally the shop called and told us we could come back in. The car was running, turned on without having to jump it and was no longer tweaking out. The guy was talking to my friend naming off whatever it was that they did to it...I was sitting there just thinking that the bigger the words the more it was going to cost. So, drumroll....the cost was...NOTHING!! Apparently that is how good of a customer my friend is and since whatever they did didn't require parts they didn't charge me anything. SO HAPPY!!

Oh, and I changed out the 2nd fuse in the back and the speakers started working also. Right after we left the shop I went online, added it to our insurance and went and got it inspected. Tomorrow I will get it registered and then sell the dumb thing! Now I know why my darling husband didn't want to deal with it....the butthead is going to get it!