Headaches

Buying a used car is always an...... adventure.

So, we bought a 2002 Honda Civic last week to replace our Tercel. It has some imperfections cosmetically, which Chris would like to fix. But for an 8 year old car, I think it looks pretty good. Both he and I test drove it before buying (hopefully obviously), and agreed that it drove really well. All in all, happy with our decision.

When we were driving home, me in the van and he in the car, we discovered that the speedometer was off. It was reading about 8 MPH faster than we were going. Really???? Is this a bad sign??? Neither of us noticed when we were test driving the thing. But then, I'm not sure that we would have noticed if Chris hadn't called me when we were driving home to ask me how fast I was going.

Later, Chris drove it over to a friend's house for poker night. Imagine his surprise, when he fired it up to come home, and all he saw was a dark dashboard. The engine was running fine, and everything was working, but none of the dash lights were lit. Again, not something we would have noticed at the dealer unless we were test driving in the dark. Grrrrrrrr......

So, being the amazing husband that he is, Chris researched our debacles online. The dealer we bought the car from is off Sundays (of course), but Chris also left a message for him. Chris found out that many, if not all of, our woes could be potentially solved by replacing the dash cluster. Sounds like Chinese to me, but luckily not to Chris.

So, we bought the part, and Chris replaced the dash cluster. He's awesome like that. The good news: the speedo and all the lights work again. Woohoo!!! The bad news: now that all the dash lights work again, the check engine light is on as well as the ABS light. *SIGH*

Chris called the dealer again. He swears that when he "checked for codes" (again, Chinese to me) there were none. Chris thinks he didn't check for codes, since the check engine light wasn't on at the dealer. But it wouldn't have been on, would it, since all the dash lights were burned out???? Anyhow, the dealer isn't being an asshole at least. When we get the check from the Allstate people, and go to pay the balance on the car, he told Chris that he'd try to work a deal to compensate for some of this stuff that "no one" knew about.

And to top it off, when Chris checked the codes that tripped the check engine light, they showed that something might be wrong with the intake system. For the love of God. We might as well have sucked it up and paid the extra 1000- 1500 dollars for one of the other cars we were looking at that was a tad newer. Looks like we might be paying that out anyway in parts.

So, Chris is taking the car to be looked at this afternoon, to see if it really does need some more work. Silver lining: If parts do need to be replaced, at least we will know the parts are good. Then the car will be damn-near perfect, and will probably run for us for years. We both just wish that we either knew about it ahead of time, or that we actually got what the car was advertised as.

Like I said, you never know what you're going to get when you buy a used car. We took a chance, and this is our "baby" now.

More of a problem child than an angel if you ask me. Still, when it's all said and done, it will be a good car.