New Car...

My 9 year old, 80k mile chevy sonic decided to start billowing white smoke from the exhaust this week.  I need to get to work so we started looking for a new car.  We have been happy with our Toyota so we started there.  I looked at Prius or rav4 PHEV, but landed on a corolla hybrid because it was in stock, and reasonably priced (all in 30k, more then the 15k for zippy, but hopefully this one will last...).  I financed at 5.99%, which is OK...  I might try to pay it off early we will see what the world does.

I went to pick up Maddie with zippy/smoky from school and we had to wait till everyone had left before we could start it up again.

Nick is going to try to change the head gasket on zippy and see if that fixes helps.  The dealership told me I needed a whole new engine for 12k, which didn't make any sense.

 

Oil cap goes pop?

On my way back from a volunteer event for Dakota County I pulled into the garage and smelled a terrible smell.  Like burning oil, and guess what it was.

The oil cap in my car was gone, I looked around and it had popped off and was fortunately sitting over on the right of the engine block.  However, it no longer would attach to the engine.  I ordered a replacement, and I could see that some little tabs had broken off, this riser piece that was added to this oil cap the year before my model.

Apparently, it was added so the oil wouldn't splash up and hit the cap I guess, but it introduced another point of failure I guess.

 

Another Flat Tire!

We had a busy Monday planned, Jen was getting her braces on, everyone (but me) had dentist appointments.  It was 6:50 in the morning and as we pulled up the driveway we noticed the tire was flat.

Not sure when it happened or how even, we jumped in my car and went on our way.  When we got back in the afternoon and got the tire off Maddie found the leak.  Nothing obvious.

Luckily Toyota was able to patch it the next day and it has been OK for a week now.

 

New Minivan!

We put in an order for a new Toyota Sienna Woodland edition in October.  It came in January 15th.  When we went to pick it up the finance woman made a mistake and double countered our $1000 deposit.  So about a week after we picked it up, she calls and says she can just use our credit card on file to charge us the $1000.

I am a fair person, but I went back to our original purchase agreement and saw that we had originally had a $500 dollar credit, that was missing from the final purchase agreement.  I raised this issue and authorized her to charge $500 to use.  She eventually agreed after discussing it with the salesperson.  Not sure who had to eat the $500, but I thought it was fair.

Flash forward a month and a half.  On a trip to Colorado a rock flew up and cracked the windshield sufficient to require replacement (Jen had also gotten a little crack from a rock the day after we picked it up!).  Fortunately, it was covered by insurance and was pretty easy to get in and get fixed.

Then we ran over a nail somewhere which we discovered when the tire was reading low.  We took it it to Tires Plus, but they said it was not patchable and didn't have the exact match in tires.  We took it to Toyota the next day and they had 1 tire in stock and were able to put it on for us.  To the tune of $350.  Ouch.

Oh well, hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come, but at least so far they have all been fixable w/o too much hassle.

What a day up North!

 Today was an interesting day...

We came up North to close up the cabin, pull in the pontoon and dock, and pick up leaves.  First off I pulled the pontoon out of the water, which is a bit hairy since we use the neighbors "ramp" which is in pretty rough shape, but it came out without a problem.  Then I went into town and picked up the oil ($7 qt) and filter ($14 on sale) for the pontoon motor.

While I was working on the boats and motors Jen, Jo, and the kids started working on the leaves.  We use the 4 wheeler to pull a trailer wherever we need it and then empty it up in the woods.  This was all going well, until I pull the wheeler up and the shift rod lever broke.  Ugh, at least it was stuck in 1st gear so I was still able to pull it around.  But then I had to start planning to take it into town.

That brings us to today, we woke up and I went to move the van out of the way and discovered the tire was flat!  I started to put on the spare and thought I would turn on the radio while I worked and managed to lock the key in the car with the radio playing!

We finally got to use our AAA membership, which worked really well and they were there and had the car open in about 45 minutes.  Super happy about that!

I called Fleet Farm and they said they were booked, but they would try to fit me in.  Which they did.  On my way to Fleet I took the 4 wheeler and dropped it off at Maximum Motorsports, they seemed really helpful so hopefully that goes well, we will see next week.

So all in all a couple bumps in the road, but so far it has all worked out.  We had to spend one more night then planned, but small price to pay.  Hopefully shutting down goes well tomorrow.

Brake Pad says what!

 The brake pads on the van were making a lovely grinding sound, so I ordered up some new ones.  I decided not to replace the rotors since we are planning to purchase a new van sometime in the not too distant future.

I always have to re-remember how to do it and watch a video but it went pretty well.  Nick helped out on the second one.  Van seems to still stop and the grinding is gone, so success!

It is pretty amazing how much of the pads we used, probably should have gotten to it earlier, but the grinding has only been going on for a week or so.  Not sure why 1 pad still had more wear left on it.

Extended Auto Warranty rebate

We purchased a new mini-van in the beginning of August, and traded my 2005 TDI Golf in.  I had purchased an extended warranty on it when I bought it that was good for 10 years or 100,000 miles.  The car had just over 80,000 miles when I traded it in.

The dealer told me I could get a rebate for the unused portion of the extended warranty, and I just received a check yesterday for $341.  :)  During the course of owning the car I had to replaced the transmission at a cost of ~5000.  I paid 1800 for the extended warranty, so I am pretty happy with the value I have gotten out of it.

We did not get an extended warranty for the mini-van, which I hope we don't live to regret.  It was the end of the day when we went in to purchase the van, and the extended warranty that was offered, was pretty bad compared to what I had gotten on the golf.  We financed at 0%, so I would be loath to purchase one now after the fact.

We will see how well it holds up, the good news is that any service will probably be more reasonable than service on the golf was.

The final fill up

When we bought the minivan we traded in my 2005 VW Golf TDI.  So here are the final gas charts:

20 Fill-up rolling average

Days between fill-ups

Gas price 03/2005 to 08/2011

MPG at each fill-up

Overall average MPG was: 38.55 MPG.

Total gas put in was: 1978.63 gallons.

Total gas cost was: $6140.50.

Total miles traveled: 80051.

Our other new baby

So we had been planning on purchasing a van for awhile, and with Madelyn's due date getting so close, we thought we would check out minivan's.  I ended up stopping by Roseville Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep on Friday (before Madelyn was born) and had Joe quote me a price for a basic Grand Caravan Crew, and appraising my Golf TDI '05.

The quote for the Crew was good, a couple hundred over Edmund's invoice, the quote for my Golf was a bit less than I thought it should be ($7500).  Long story short, we ended up going back on Saturday and buying the van for the price he offered, and $9000 for my trade it.  We received $8000 in cash for the trade and financed the van at 0%.  I like having the money to invest, and not feeling like I should pay off the car sooner rather than later :)

A happy note as well is that, I had signed up to do a test drive when I went to look at the van, and I received an email for a $50 gift card if I went through with it.  We received the gift card today :)  So don't just delete those emails.