Friday, April 18, 2008

Car Maintenance

We're big proponents of taking care of your car. After all, it is much cheaper to prevent problems than to fix them, right? We'd tell that to anyone! So last night we took Bob's Honda minivan in to get the timing belt changed. It just seemed like a good idea . . . since they recommend doing it at 65,000 miles, and the van now has 137,000 miles on it. Seriously, we are thanking the Lord for his mercy in keeping the belt together for so long! I guess it just never was a good time to take it in . . . Actually, we had gotten a quote from the Honda dealership down in Tyson's a few years (ahem) ago, and it was about $1300. Well, that's a lot of money (I know, I know--not as much as replacing the engine), so we just kept putting it off. The Leesburg dealership charged us right around $700. We're not sure if they're just a ton cheaper, or they lowered prices because of the bad economy or what, but we were grateful that it was half of what we expected it to be!

Is this normal all over? We dropped the car off last night around 5:00. They told us it would probably be done by 10:00, but it would at least be done by 2:00 (AM) because "that's when the second shift gets off". Second shift? It's a car dealership, not a hospital! Sure enough, there was a message on Bob's cell phone when we woke up. They called at 2:08 to tell us the van was ready. I've never heard of that before.

1 comment:

Tonya said...

Bizarre! I've never heard of that. My guess is that it is common practice in major cities. What a culture we live in - can't be without our vehicles for even a day, so we add a second shift to work on cars.