At 7:30pm Ck informed us her car was acting up, again. This late on a Sunday night, at the end of a vacation, was not the time for this revelation.
She said the battery light came on in the car as she was driving home. Great. Heading out I hook up a charger to the battery and start running all the possibilities through my mind as to the cause. She came out to watch what I'm doing, and is blowing off steam about the car the whole time. During all this she proceeds to tell us that for the past couple weeks she has been watching the voltmeter drop from 14 V. to 11.7 V.
OK. The car is destined for the shop to determine the exact cause of the disfunction. Only a year ago we put in a new battery. Less than a year before that, we replaced the alternator. I'll let the shop do the diagnostic and find the problem.
So we pack up the receipts and write out the needs so we can drop the car off tonight. That way they can trip over it and get started first thing in the morning. As we're writting down the symptoms and what we need done, CK tells us that last week when a friend was replacing her tires, he mentioned she needed brakes, soon.
Back to the receipts. Yup. There it is, brakes done a year ago. How in the world can she wear stuff out so fast. Looking at the mileage on the paperwork, then on the car, she has put on over 25K miles in the past year. OK. The brakes may be in need. Have those checked while it is in the shop.
If the brakes do need to be replaced, we are going to let her friend do the job. We trust him with it and he will only charge the cost of the parts and a meal. We can afford that easily.
To CK's defense, in the past year she has been taking classes in another city and puts on quite a few miles to and from school.
The shop owner knows her car better than we do, he spends so much time in it. I'm guessing the chateau he has in the Alps is funded entirely by her car.
Give you the damages Monday.
Night.
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