Back from the Shop

After running another large charge through the ol’ credit card, I got the car back on Monday.

As I suspected, the alternator needed to be replaced, but the surprise issue was that the noise I was hearing was from the supercharger pulley and not the alternator itself.

While they had the car I also had them look at the air conditioning, which wasn’t blowing very cold. Turns out that it only held 0.56 pounds of refrigerant versus the recommended 2+ pounds. There is obviously a slow leak somewhere so they injected some dye as well so we’ll have to wait and see if that shows where it is located.

More Woes (Alternator)

Just when I got the car back from the last repair, another issue popped up.

(sigh)

It’s getting a little frustrating. Yeah, I know that the Banana is 20 years old but I maintain the hell out of it and it still keeps letting me down. Much like those bad relationships from high school: let’s hope that once we get past this problem things will get better. (grin)

Door Seal Repair

My mild OCD means that whenever there is something a little wrong with my car it bothers me. Recently I noticed that the rocker panel door seal under the driver’s side door was missing.

I figured it would be an easy repair, but that was before I found out that the seal itself (part 230-690-01-98) was discontinued. (sigh)

The one for the passenger side is still available. I assume that is because the driver’s door is used more frequently and thus there is a higher chance for the seal to go missing.

Replacing the Hazard Switch

I have some mild OCD, and when it comes to cars this expresses itself in that I need to keep my vehicles in a particular state of repair. If they aren’t clean, etc., this causes anxiety.

This means I tend to do things no sane automobile owner would do, like replacing a perfectly functioning switch with a new one.

Cars as old as the Banana have a tendency to develop “sticky” switches. Apparently this has something to do with the non-slip coating used on them degrading with time. When I got my first SL55, the Shark, I went to work trying to clean that stickiness off of the controls.

Driver's Door Repair

It took an extra week, but I did get the Banana back on Friday.

As mentioned in my previous post, I went to pick up the car last week and couldn’t get in it due to the driver’s side door not opening. I had been having problems with the door, but the shop couldn’t recreate it until I showed up.

I left the car another week and they replaced the door latch mechanism. So far it has been working fine.

Driver's Door Issue

I was very excited to get the car back on Friday. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

They were able to determine that my transmission woes were due to a bad shifter, which meant the transmission had no idea which gear was selected. Replacing the part (which runs ~$1600) cleared the codes and supposedly fixed the issue.

Why “supposedly”? Because I couldn’t get into the car to drive it. (sigh)

Transmission Woes

It’s been a long time since I updated this blog, but I hope to correct that going forward.

I’m still enjoying the Banana but I haven’t been driving it much lately. My father moved in with us and since he is getting older we decided he didn’t need to drive anymore, so I became the proud owner of his 2007 Camry. I figure it is much less stressful to park that car at the airport than the Mercedes, and since I spent the first part of the year in airports I didn’t drive the SL55 much.