When the timing (belt) is off

I’m still sick—battling a nasty upper respiratory infection—but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about my car. My beloved (ha) Geo Tracker. I went to the mechanic today, and it turns out she’s a little sick, too, and needs some fixin’.

Let me give you a little background on the ol’ Geo:

- the roof leaks
- the air vents leak
- the brakes squeak
- it’s rear wheel drive (or front wheel? My car has whichever one is crappier)
- there are at least two (2) pieces of plastic in the trunk that broke off of unidentified locations somewhere in the car
- the floor rug is peeling away
- Chelsea has vomited on the back seat twice
- my Geo is evidently the Number One target for people trying to get into accidents with parked cars
- it’s ugly
- once, someone stole the back window by unzipping it
- it says “TRACKER” on the side… because that’s cool
- when I am driving faster than 40 mph with the windows shut and talking to my mother on my cell phone (with a hands-free headset, of course), she invariably says, “Where are you? It sounds like you’re in a wind tunnel.” I always respond: “I am. I’m in the Tracker.”

Anyway, all of that I already knew. In fact, I? finally decided to put it up for sale on Craigslist. No one responded, due either to an unreasonably high asking price (hey, you can always go down) or to a sarcasm that I’m not sure everyone appreciates. I was going to try to sell the car before leaving for Portland, but finding my dream car (a used VW Golf TDI…diesel!!) at a reasonable price around here is like finding a needle in a haystack.

I actually found something pretty close to the dream car—a 2002 Jetta TDI with 77,000 miles—at a dealership down the road, but when I asked the dealer how much they were asking for it,? he went off to make a long phone call and came back shaking his head.

“You don’t want this car,” he said. “It’s out of your price range. By a lot.”

“But…!” I protested. I tried talking him down a bit, noting that the tires needed replacement, the windshield was cracked, and the body had dents and scratches all over it. “They must be kidding to think they’ll get something anywhere close to that for this car!” I argued.

But the man did not want to sell me that car. He showed me a crappy old Buick instead.

Determined, I went onto a TDI-obsessed website where you can get free Carfax reports for used TDIs, and discovered that when the dealer said you don’t want this car, he didn’t simply mean that it was out of my price range.

He meant: “Actually, this car may say it only has 77,000 miles on it, but what you don’t know is that this car has a Not Actual Mileage title. In fact, only last May, the car clocked in at 125,000 miles. We bought it at an auction in June and it miraculously only had 77,000 on it. Trust me, you do not want this car.”

So I’m stuck with the Geo until further notice. The Portland area appears to be abounding with diesel Volkswagens, and so I will wait until I get there to sell my leaky squeaky car (it’ll be a total hit in a town where it rains all of the time!) and buy a new one. And this brings me to the point of this particular post:

I just got back from the mechanic. He said I need new brake pads ($150). They’re worn down to the nubbins and they’re dangerous, he said. And then he asked me if I would like to have something done to the rotators ($25) and he said it’s about time to change the timing belt ($300), whatever that is.

He said I can make it to Portland without changing the timing belt, but I should probably do it before the winter. However, he noted, while most manufacturers recommend that you replace it after 60,000 miles, he’s never seen one snap until 80,000, but a snapped timing belt means $1,800, a whopping price just a couple hundred under the Kelley Blue Book value of my car. Still, $300 seems like a lot of dollars for a car with a leaky roof.

I’m heading back to the dealer in about half an hour, and I’ll have to tell him if I want that new timing belt or not. Evaluating whether or not it’s worth it reminds me of a conversation I had a few weeks ago, when I was at the Chevy dealership on a quest to buy a tiny $70 piece of plastic to fix my back window. I was telling the parts salesman about my car’s problems, and the buying/selling/moving dilemma.

“Maybe I should just sell that freaking car,” I said.

“You know what I would do if I were you? I would get far, far away from that piece of crap. I bet one of these guys back here would be willing to buy it off you for $300 just for the parts.”

$300?? I hope they’re not looking for a new timing belt.

19 thoughts on “When the timing (belt) is off”

  2. oh man. i hate paying hard earned cash for Geos. it just seems like such a waste. My timing belt went on my last car… i gave it to my mechanic for parts.

  3. I heart your craigslist post. If I were in the market or a leaky-roofed Geo Tracker, I would probably contact you, just from the fact that you have a sense of humor. Unfortunately for you, I’m happy at the moment with my ’99 Chevy Cavalier with the un-unlockable passenger side door and un-unlockable trunk. Did I mention my car is a two-door?

  4. After reading an ad like that, I’d want to see the car and meet the person just for kicks. But I’m weird that way. I guess this means an increasingly good chance the CD will catch up to you.

  6. First off, nubbins is one of my favorite words. Very underused. Secondly, I would just deal with the safety aspects of maintenance. Brakes, yeah, of course. But why put much more into it when you’re going to unload it in Portland? As long as you and Chelsea get there ok that’s all that matters. VW’s rule.

  7. I feel your pain..  When my POS ford wagon died on me in the fast lane of a six lane highway in the middle of Atlanta rush hour this summer, I ended up selling it to the mechanic for the price of a tow from the 1st shop to the second shop (85 dollars for 3 blocks, btw).. I think I was still just happy to be alive.  Seemed like the thing to do when the price tag on fixing it was 1300 bucks…on an 11 yr old car.  Hahaha, ow.  Still hurts to laugh.

  8. So you still haven’t gotten better? Sorry to hear that. Whenever I get sick, it usually turns into an ear infection (which is common if you take certain kinds of medications that are meant to help but only make you sicker) which spreads to the sinus, then the throat, and eventually to the lungs. The bronchitis sets me back about a week, and if I don’t get it taken care of (go to the doctor because only they can prescribe antibiotics, unless you live near Mexico, where you can buy a bottle of amoxicillin for about 75% less than in the states) then I develop pneumonia which is terrible! My maternal grandpa died from pneumonia, and some people in my family are very susceptible to it for some reason. Must be a genetic thing.
    That’s why at the first sign of a cold or cough, I take Sudafed. It works like a charm! Forget Nyquil and all that other stuff. Okay, just saying hello and hope you have a good day.
    PS: I tried to go to the McDeath again, and I only saw a girl that looked like the one who I am trying to mack. Must be her sister or something, lol. Gotta try once more, or a few times more. Take care!

  11. oh you are so smart – it did arrive today!  The big, bright green package of goodness!  The card was my favorite part :)   (though I can assure you I will enjoy everything else in there – I’m snacking and listening to the cd as I type.)  Thank you so much.  Just what I needed to help push away those mean reds. *muah*

  12. Ugh. I hate having car trouble. It always seems that everything goes at once too. Last year I had to pay $250 to replace some plug…I was like a plug is worth that much!!?!? Apparently it is *rolls eyes* Anyways, good luck with the car…

  15. Haha. Lovely. My brother had a geo tracker I ALMOST ended up with, now I know what a nightmare they are. His was red with pink stripes and one of the volunteers who worked with my mom always told her ‘gay people drive cars like that.’ ALso, glad you liked the dream thing. Some of the sentences are majorly wonky. Apparently I fell asleep in my bed wiht my laptop, woke up with a killer headache, and tried to type it down before I was tempted to embelish too many details that didn’t exist.

  16. i’ve tried that (freaking out over packing). it doesn’t help. i’m afraid the only way to get packing done is to *gulp* actually start packing.
    Heaven help us.

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