Car Repair

If you can believe this one, I changed the oil on Christmas day, which R kind of ribbed me about, but you have to seize the opportunity when you can, right? Christmas day was one of the few dry days when I actually had time, and granted, I could have just taken it into Jiffy Lube, but at some point you just get tired of paying for all that car repair. I may have only saved about $20, but there’s satisfaction in doing things yourself, at least for me.

Anyway, it highlighted a question I have about our new car. It came with synthetic oil, which is more expensive, but apparently offers better protection. Like I know the difference? It made me wonder if you can just put regular oil in the engine. They have sales all the time on motor oil, but not on the synthetic stuff. They say you can change the oil less frequently, but how do they know that? How do they know that it can go up to 7000 miles vs 3000? It strikes me as pure conjecture, but whatever the case, I figure I’ll do what they recommend, at least for now.

Our older car had some potential issues, as well. It makes this really soft squealing sound now and then, not very loud. In fact, you can’t even hear it when the radio is on. We thought it was a fan belt issue, that’s what it sounded like, only much fainter, and had the belts replaced, but the sound stayed. How’s that for a bummer. Our mechanic said to bring it on it and they’d look for the problem, but when I took the guy out for a drive, his hearing is so shot that he couldn’t hear a thing. Every time I told him the car was making the noise, he said he couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t believe it, the guy has lost his hearing.

In the end, he didn’t charge me for his time, and he said to just keep an eye on it. It will either get better or worse. How’s that for an answer?

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Hector Landaeta for the pic.