The jury is out.

Well,  there has been some “fun” over the last few days with car issues.  I really and truly think there wouldn’t have been any problems at all if we had stayed completely clear of the GM dealership here in town and simply ignored the dire warnings having to do with the THREE recalls on my daughter’s Saturn.  

Oh,  and there used to be a joke that Saturn stood for “Supposedly American, though unfortunately really Nissan.”   Too bad that wasn’t really the case.  But let’s not get all the die hard GM fans worked up into a lather. 

One of the recalls had to do with some sort of potentially dangerous situation with the steering/ignition assembly,  and apparently people have died when their cars have suddenly quit working and flown off the road. Something to that effect.

So fine,  don’t really want my kid ending up dead at the side of the road,  so we took it to the Stealership.

And,  this is how it looked the next day.

 

Such a great way to spend my Friday morning. 

Not.

Something up with that steering alright.   Too bad it was working just fine until the dealer…er,  Stealership got a hold of it.

Naturally,  (in keeping with their Corporate Culture)  the Service Manager didn’t think the coffee grinder kind of noise it was making every time the steering wheel was turned had ANY thing to do with their fine outstanding work,  so I naturally had it taken to a mechanic I could trust.

I mean,  why would I take it back to them??

 

Little plug here:

Took it to these guys.  SWC Automotive.   Highly recommended.

They’ve done service work on the Merc.  Didn’t take all day,  like the Mercedes Stealership,  and the bill was about a third of what it would have been had I gone there.

But I digress.

 

So sure enough,  here’s the part they replaced under the recall.

And it is indeed “to do with the power steering”.  It’s not supposed to do this:

 

Oops.

I think that shaft needs to be a little beefier.  D’ya think?

That’s what was making that coffee grinder noise.  It was the motor trying to spin the shaft.

So I paid a little visit to the Stealership this morning with their part in a box,  and the invoice that I had to take care of on Saturday.  Good thing the boys at SWC were willing to sort it out on Saturday.  Otherwise I’d be doing some chauffeuring,  or there would be a whole lot of scrambling for rides.

 

Anyway,  we’ll see what comes of it.  I’m certainly not going to try and tell them how to run their little empire. 

Oh and look,  let’s all “Buy American”.    Seems that “American” is spelled,  “JAPAN”.  

Wasn’t when I went to school.  Some sort of new spelling.

 

Stay tuned.