Not Quite a Blog

(If you don't like non-topical posts, skip this.)

This is a little story of a broke graduate student, a broke car and the Berkeley Parents Network. Thank you, BPN.

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So I own a 1991 Jeep Cherokee. It was useful in Flagstaff, AZ where you can't get around without some clearance and four-wheel drive. Here in the Bay Area I just feel guilty with an SUV and try not to drive it so much (if you're around and want to buy it, let me know).

Since I don't even want my car anymore, you can imagine that I loath fixing it. I don't mind paying the occasional tune-up fee, but I really hate putting much money into it.

Lately, my car has been sick. Not a good sick, but a bad sick. Specifically, during slow-moving, hot situations like traffic jams, it will stall out and refuse to restart. You can imagine that this really sucks in a traffic jam. After about two or three minutes, it will start up again and run fine. This sounded a tad like vapor-lock which often requires replacing the fuel pump... which is not cheap.

And I'll be goddamned if I'm going to take my Jeep back to the freakin' dealer (O'Connell here in Oakland). Everytime I go in there I walk out paying $800 and with something like this, it would be $2K.

So I did a bit of research. I had heard a lot of good things about the Berkeley Parents Network. I poked around for Jeep-specific mechanics and Oakland-specific mechanics. Then I came across this entry for Oceanworks II, which specializes in high-profile vehicles, in Berkeley.

I took my car in and they were very open and very explicative. That is, they like answering questions and talking about alternatives. Turns out that I had a bad "crankshaft sensor" which can cause behavior similar to vapor-lock. The cost of labor and parts for replacing this is $120 on top of $85 for a diagnostic fee. Thanks my kind of service and price. We'll take M's car to Oceanworks I next (which specializes in japanese cars).