SoapZone Community Message Board

and restore faith in humanity...

Bff's niece attends Otterbein College, which is in Westerville, which is a northern suburb of Columbus. Niece is off tomorrow for Good Friday, and of course Sunday is Easter, so her parents were going to pick her up after her last class today (it's roughly a two and a half hour drive from here). Bff volunteered to do it and asked me if I wanted to go along. Her main reason was because the long drive is booooooooring when you're driving solo but she also knew I had a gift card for IKEA that I'd gotten for Christmas of '22, and I wanted to spend it, in part so I could get fun things and in part because I *hate* keeping gift cards much longer than, oh, maybe a month after receiving them. Bff told me we could stop at IKEA first, look around, have lunch, then go to Westerville to a tea shop she wanted to (re)visit and then pick up Niece and come home. She suggested we stop at Grandpa's Cheese Barn on the way back; it's right off the freeway, there's a gas station where bff could fill up, we'd avoid most of the afternoon rush hour...and bff and Niece have never been. I've been to GCB once...it's fine but it wasn't the uh-MAY-zing experience a lot of people make it out to be. Yes, there's a huge selection of cheese, and the employees are a whole nuther level of nice...but Grandpa's ain't cheap.

Anyways...we were about 20 minutes into the trip down when bff's check engine light came on. Not alarming in itself...then it started flashing, and the car started shuddering and losing power. Uh-oh. I went through something similar over a year ago with my 2014 Kia Soul. Bff managed to get off the freeway and pull into a business' parking lot. Her concern was she'd added extra oil that morning and did she add too much? I'm no expert, AT ALL, when it comes to cars, but I didn't think excess oil would cause the car to shudder and lose power. A month into owning my 2014 Kia Soul, my check engine light came on for that exact reason (thanks, dealership!) but the car ran fine. Bff pulled out her owner's manual, thinking it would tell her *exactly* what was wrong with the car...I again didn't open my mouth but I knew that the check engine light was just that--check the engine--and you'd need a mechanic, or at least a code reader, to determine the problem.

After a few minutes, bff started up the car again and it ran fine. No check engine light. I was hesitant to continue such a long journey but she seemed confident the car just needed to "cool off", and maybe we'd have to pull over a bunch of times on the trip but that would be OK.

SPOILER ALERT: the car didn't just need to cool off.

We got back on the freeway and made it maybe another 20 miles when the light flashed back on (and off and on and off...) and the car began to shudder and lose power again. And again we were fortunate to be approaching an exit; there are looooong stretches of I-71 where it's nothing but cornfields. We pulled off the freeway and onto a busy road, and I spied Ganley* Express Service just off to the right.

* "Ganley" is a very recognizable name in the NE Ohio area, mostly thanks to various Ken Ganley auto dealerships all around.

I told bff to pull in and maybe they could at least read the code that would tell us why the car was running poorly and triggering the check engine light (blinking). So we did...we were fortunate that they opened at 8:00 AM, as it was not quite 9:00 AM . Inside, two exceptionally lovely young gentleman listened to bff's tale of woe and gently informed her they couldn't be of much help. They feared the problem was the catalytic converter <gulp>. I told bff that if it WAS the catalytic converter, she might as well get rid of the car; a new cc would cost almost as much as the trade-in value of her 2010 Honda CR-V.

BUT...Fortune wasn't done smiling on us. One of the helpful gentlemen pointed out a Honda dealership that was literally two driveways down and told us they might be able to better diagnose the problem. Neither of us have ever been in this particular part of town, so we had no idea we were so close to a Honda dealership. Bff and I got back in the car--at this point, the check engine light was on for good--and limped over to the Honda dealership. Despite having a waiting room full of people having their cars serviced, an amazing man (let's call him "AM" to protect his identity) listened to bff's description of the problem and told us to go wait in the waiting room while he ran a quick diagnostic.

We weren't in the waiting room 10 minutes when AM popped his head through the door and motioned for us to come back into the garage. Bff and I were both certain he had catastrophic news for us. But it was just the opposite...sort of. AM asked bff who she'd last taken her car to, and she named the mechanic she uses and said she got an oil change there last month. Her regular mechanic's assistant did the job...and did it poorly. Apparently--and I apologize, because we're about to get a tiny bit technical and I again cannot stress enough my inexperience with cars and total unfamiliarity with how they work beyond "press the start button and make sure there's gas in the car"--the assistant failed to properly secure the cap on the air filter, and as a result, air got into the...engine? Fuel injection? Something. AM did...something, put the cap back on and drove the car for a few blocks to "get the air out"...the car ran perfectly after that. To put a cherry atop this Fortune sundae, he told us he wasn't going to charge us a cent. Not for the work, not even for the diagnosis which at my (old) dealership would've cost over $150. He told us the only thing he wanted from us was a positive Google review. Done!

What was also kind of funny...AM asked us if we believed in God before he informed us that the car was an easy fix. We'd just been talking on the drive down about Good Friday and how we were going to observe the day (we both try to keep the day a solemn occasion), and then we talked about God and church-related things for about 10 more minutes. I told bff as we left the dealership that the quick, and FREE, fix was proof of God's existence <g>.