Saturday, May 26, 2018

Monsoons an Christmas Lights

It appears that neither of our cars much cared for the 7" of rain in 24 hours and 11" of rain over a three-day period during our ten-day trip to Vegas.

As expected with my sixteen and a half year old convertible, I found water in the spare-well under the cargo-deck of my trunk. Fact of convertible-owning life is that, as they age, they start to leak. Still the amount I found pooled under the spare tire was far less than I'd feared. There was less than half an inch of standing-water at the deepest part of the puddle as my car sat parked on our moderately up-sloped driveway. Only really concerning thing is that, when I put the key in the ignition, the ABS and DSC warning lights were both lit. Drove the car around the block to make sure that the brakes were actually working. So, it seems either the sensors are moisture-damaged or just still wet.

The bigger surprise was my wife's Mini. It will be six years old this coming December. When we started it up, yesterday, it was complaining that it was unable to charge the battery. At the time this error came up, the local service-facility we use was closed for the day (well, their electrical tech was gone for the day).We were going to drive it to the shop, today, if the indicator stayed on. Came out after returning from morning errands to find that the alert was no longer showing. So, we opted to drive it to the grocery store on a route that would take us closish to where we get it service figuring "if the alert returns, we'll just head to the service facility". As we left the neighborhood, the first sign of trouble popped up: A/C fan decided "I'm not actually going to stay running at 'high'; I'll run at 'low' and indicate that I'm running at 'high'." Not a fatal issue, and far less worrying than the "not able to charge" alert of the previous day. Drove onwards to see if the problem would clear itself. As we approached the end of a lengthy downhill stretch of road, first one error cropped up, then another. Lost the power-assist on the steering. Then the ABS indicator lit. Then the AWD indicator lit. Then the DSC indicator lit. Then the throttle stopped responding. Was able to get the car off the road using the engine's idle-throttle power. Got it up a very slight grade and into a little shopping plaza's parking lot. As we were rolling to a stop, the instrument cluster winked out.


Once parked, I got out my phone to call the service-facility. They gave us the number of a towing-company to call. Called the tow-company and they estimated a 60-90 minute response. The car was becoming quite warm and stuffy as it sat A/C-less on the open parking lot in the 90° heat and 78% humidity. I decided to see if the windows were at least working. Naturally, they were also stricken. So, we opened all the doors to get some airflow. Noticed there was a McD's in the plaza and opted to seek shelter from the heat in there while we waited for the tow to arrive.


A couple minutes after placing our order for drinks and sitting down, the driver of the tow-truck called to verify our location and let us know he was about five minutes out. Not bad: maybe fifteen minutes from call to arrival when we were originally told 60-90. As he was prepping the Mini to go up on the flat-bed, I called Uber. The driver arrived just as the driver was readying to put the flatbed into its "ready to drive" position. We got to the service-center about ten minutes before our Mini did. By the time the tow-truck driver had offloaded it and turned it over to the service-center, we had the paperwork for our loaner-car in hand. Presumably, we'll know around lunchtime Tuesday what's up with the car. Really hoping it's just a "needs to dry out" situation and not a "need to completely overhaul the primary electrical bus" kind of situation.

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