SoapBoxBlog

For the past three weekends, we've had to take The Princess' car in to the dealer [Chrysler] for warranty issues. It started with the whole car shaking when she reached 50 mph. The horn would also stick -- which I guess means she's using it a lot -- and we wanted them to change the oil.

We take our vehicles to Goodyear for tire rotations and balancing; we have lifetime balancing with them and our tires are Goodyear tires. We've gone to this place for years and they usually do our oil changes as well.

Back to the dealer. Turns out, they replaced the horn switch - check. They changed the oil - check. They rotated the tires; didn't ask for that, but no charge - check. And they ordered two axles - GAH.

It took a couple days for the axles to come in, so The Princess drove shakingly the whole week. We brought the car back in the next weekend to get the axles replaced. Once that was done, we found the car now bounced when she reached 50 mph. I figured the tires needed balancing, so we went to Goodyear for that. They balanced the tires, found that one stud and nut were stripped on the passenger side front tire and so they removed the stud and threw away the nut. They then realized they didn't have a stud or nut that fit to replace it. They ordered them. We went on our merry way, missing one stud and nut, but still able to drive safely.

The car still bounced at 50 mph. So we took it back to Chrysler the next weekend, figuring something was wrong with the suspension from when they replaced the axles. They had assured me that they did a complete front and back end alignment when they completed installing the axles. Chrysler determined that the passenger side front tire [the one missing the stud] was newer than the rest [which it was; after the original had been demolished by a screw] and that it needed to be road force tested.

Which meant another trip to Goodyear, because that's where we bought the tire. Plus, they were going to replace the stud and nut for us.

I got to Goodyear, they put the car up and found that the stud and nut had already been replaced! [thanks, Chrysler] However, the passenger side BACK tire was now missing a stud and nut. WTF?

I called Chrysler and the service dude said that his tech had found that the stud back there was stripped as well, so he removed it. OK... and then what? That was it. Apparently, unless you S.P.E.L.L. things out to their techs, they're not able to think too far along on their own. I yelled "Jesus Christ, what the fuck?" at the service dude over the phone. I think it freaked him out a bit.

Goodyear did the road force test and got the "bumps" out of the tire. We went back to Chrysler and even though service dude knew I was coming, he was "at lunch". When The Princess' car came out of the garage with its new stud and nut, service dude was miraculously back from lunch, but had the idiot tech give me the keys. I felt so sorry for the guy that I just thanked him. I went out and walked 50 times around the car, checked for studs, nuts, bolts, tires, chrome, windows and an engine. Once I was satisfied that everything was there, I left.

To sum things up, 3 weeks, 4 trips to Chrysler and 2 trips to Goodyear later... I'm happy to announce that The Princess' PT Cruiser is working perfectly.

Of course now the cigarette outlet on my PT Cruiser doesn't work [yes I checked the fuse]. [And I just got a Tomtom One GPS on sale and can't use it.] That's a warranty item, which means: back to Chrysler. Gah.