well hell in a handbasket

today i was driving my car and the light from a couple of days ago came back on.  it was still before the close of business, so i called the new chrysler dealer in the neighborhood and set up an appointment for tomorrow morning to look at it ...

and then wouldn't you know that the light then went back off this evening ...

hopefully the black box stores error codes and they'll know what happened.  i don't need my vehicle to act flaky as i drive it a thousand miles in the next fortnight.

goddammit.

108,975 light's on

it's been awhile since the engine light last came on, but it did this evening as the engine started missing.

i suspect the culprit is stabil.  i added some to the tank because i thought i was going to be parking my car for an extended trip this summer ... but the trip got canceled and instead of being parked for three months, the continual car was left to sit about four weeks.

the tank was about half full so i added some techron, filled the tank the rest of the way, and drove an exit on the freeway ...

voila, the light went off.

i need it to stay that way ... i've got a big drive coming up next week.

Three ways to keep your car from bankrupting you | Motoramic - Yahoo! Autos

http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/three-ways-keep-car-bankrupting-144844086.html

something's missing, but you don't know what it is...

...do you, mr. jones?

checked my oil tonight (as I do at every fill up) and noticed that the cowling here is missing...so it was either broken or removed and not replaced at my oil change a few days ago.

it's hard to reach prestige people by phone, so I'll have to drive it in.

107,986 mile service

oil change with a coupon off the chrysler web site (oddly, the prestige coupon didn't show a price, but the chapman one did, so i just used that).

the inspection that came back shows my tires at 3/32nds or less ... but that's clearly not right ... i'm not down to the warning bars on any tire yet.

the "engine air filter and cabin air filters" show up as "may require attention soon" which is almost certainly true due to the dirt roads, dust and forest fire soot that's been in the air lately.

love the after hours service ability.

$24.  ($10 saved with coupon.)

105,005 mile service

just this week prestige is starting to stay open to 21:00, so i set up my oil change for 19:00 and took in a chapman coupon from the chrysler website (and an older chapman coupon that said they'd match prices).  everything went smoothly (with the minorly annoy wrinkle of having to deal with an upselling service writer ... i've dealt with this guy before).  fortunately my service guy was from last time was standing right there  (and he remembered me ... which is kind of amazing) and helped smooth things over.

oil change and tires rotated.  i think my right front wheel bearing is starting to go, but i didn't say anything about it ... neither did they.

$25

quote of the moment

"The University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute found that from 1983 to 2008 the percentage of 19-year-olds with a driver's license fell from 87.3 percent to 75.5 percent. Two years later it hit 69.5 percent."

-- bloomberg businessweek