The demise of my sister's Buick and the new chronicles of t3h wag00n

On December 5th I get into the house and see a message on the answering machine, like any other message. But this time it was a distres call from my sister Randy. She was stranded on the side of Hemsptead Turnpike in her Buick less than mile from my house. I wasted no time confirming that she was still there as it was during the coldest snap of the season.

Upon confirmation of her location and reviewing the symptoms that the car was showing I got myself together. I grabbed my charging system gauge, a large adjustable wrench, jumper cables, and my tow cables for good measure, threw them in the back of t3h wag00n and set off.

I found her moments later exactly in the spot she described. What had happened was that she was heading east on Hempstead Tpke when her car stalled out while she was driving. She rolled it to the side and it wouldn't start after that. I was hoping that the alternator had gone bad and that a jump would get us going. I checked the battery. It was fine. The car had plenty of juice. When I asked her to try to turn the engine over, it wouldn't. I immediately got that sinking feeling in the pit of my gut. In a hopeful gesture I took a couple cracks at the starter with the wrench and tried a couple jumps to no avail. When her boyfriend arrived we got the Buick ready for tow. I hooked the front chassis of the Buick to the transport hook on the rear of the Subaru. When traffic was clear we headed down back streets until we were back at my house. I needed to have a look at it, but it was way too cold and dark to run any further tests.

I parked the wagon in front of the house and they took off.

Days later Manny came by to borrow my power steering pump pulley remover and I told him about my sister's car. I saw the same unhappy look come over his face as I described the situation as I had when I saw this nights before. We went over to have a another look at what happened to the car. I try to crank it, and the engine wouldn't turn. We put a ratchet on the crank bolt and nothing would get the engine to turn even one inch. The engine was seized, but still had oil. We deduced that the timing chain must've snapped. She did say that the car had trouble with starting and stalling for days prior to the incident. Those are signs of a possible timing problem. Plus some engines will not turnover if there's a timing problem.

So the logical solution? Replace the timing chain? NO WAY! I had a Buick six years ago and replaced it when it needed a timing chain because it was so much work to replace. This car is front wheel drive and would be even harder to work on. We figured pass on this one. It was a $600 car that she's had for 2-3 years already. It was not worth it to bring it into a garage either.

So I committed the unimaginable... I gave her t3h battl3 wagoon!!!

So is that the end of the story? Certianly not! We can't get rid of the Buick yet as no one knows where the title is. It's sitting there rotting now.

Two days after I gave the Subaru to Randy she had the thing boiliong over on her way to work. The worst part, she kept driving it while it was overheating! Luckily she didn't blow any gaskets or seize the engine. It blew the water out of the cooling system and that caused the overheat. She refilled it with antifreeze and hasn't had a problem since. In fact, the needle only made it up to halfway one time since that day. So it seems all is well, at least for the moment, relatively speaking.

I hope it holds up.