...Be thankful you don't have a Saturn...Or at least be thankful you don't have to get service at my local Saturn dealer. Here's the deal...

My girlfriend has a 95 Saturn SL1 that has been idling real bad and occasionally stalling lately, so she took it into the local dealer for service. She got the $38 diagnostic and had her oil changed and was told that it would take $350 to get it running properly...$250 of which is labor charges. Because of recent expenses and the fact that the labor charges were off the wall (1.1 hours to change plugs and wires?!) we decided to take it home and have a mechanic friend do the things that I can't do myself.

So last night we got the keys back and got ready to drive off, and the car was running horibly...MUCH worse than how it was when we brought it in, so we decided to leave it for the night and deal with it today after having the delaer mechanic confirm that everything was put back properly after the diagnostic.

Mechanic says that the only thing that was messed with was the spark plug wires, and he made sure they were securely back in place, so we gave it another shot. It was still running horribly so I pulled off to the side of the road and stopped...When I hit the brakes (gently) the rear brakes made a horrible noise...Keep in mind there was absolutely no problem with the brakes before we brought the car in. I popped open the hood with the car running and the first thing I notice is sparks coming from the coil pack or whatever it's called where the spark plug wires plug in. I shut off the engine and get out the flashlight and there's 2 spark plug wires not even plugged in! No wonder it felt even slower than a Metro.

So I plug in the 2 unplugged wires, and it seems to run a litle better, but still not good enough to drive, so I run to the local Pep Boys and buy some new plug wires and a Haynes manual and replace them.

After a little goofup with not having one of the wires plugged in fully (oops) the car starts up and seems to run much better...At least it was good enough to drive, but the rear brakes still sound like metal on metal, so I don't know what's up with that..I guess we'll find out once our mechanic has a look at it, but it sure is a nice coincidence that it just started happening when it was in for service.

Hasn't been a very good month for me with cars...Almost lost a wheel last week when the place I took my wheels to forgot to tighten the front left wheel after putting it on. I still can't believe I drove with it like that for a week before I found out. Maybe December will be better.

 

Oh yeah, I guess I should say I'm actually happy with my local Audi service.