That just figures

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
That just figures
3
Wed, 02-11-2009 - 5:30pm
Today DH and I were out with the little kids while DD was at school shopping for DD's birthday present. We found something and when we got in the van and started it and it made a horrible noise. DH looked under the hood and determined it was the alternator. We drove home on the battery. Luckily, it's something DH can fix himself (he can't fix much, but he comes in handy sometimes). It cost about $200 for the new alternator. We *just* got our state tax refund yesterday, so thank God it happened when we had some money or we would have been in deep trouble.


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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-28-2007
Wed, 02-11-2009 - 10:16pm

hunny i am the QUEEN of car troubles. i dont think in the 4 years me and DF have been together that we werent working on atleast one of our cars (sometimes more at once)


did you try seeing if you could get a used one at a junk yard?? weve gotten a lot of really great long lasting parts from there for stupidly cheap. they usually carry like a 30 day warranty. our wonderful auto salvage has a 45 day warranty

 


laurenaugust.gif picture by wowen<

Avatar for fire_bug
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Thu, 02-12-2009 - 10:00am

I never even thought about a junkyard. We were trying to do it quickly since the van is the only one of our vehicles the whole family can fit in right now. It never even crossed my mind and obviously, it didn't cross DH's, either. He did buy a rebuilt one, which I assume saved him some money.

I was thinking about it last night and realized just how lucky we were. If this had happened a week ago we wouldn't have had the cash to pay for it and it would have been freezing outside when DH fixed it. Since it happened yesterday, we had the money for it, it was a beautiful day and it happened to be a day DH was off work.


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Registered: 09-26-2006
Thu, 02-12-2009 - 11:58am

Hi fire_bug,

I'm so sorry the car "took care" of the refund! Argh!

I've had my own bad week with two plumbing emergencies and a broken windshield. I can relate to what you are going through. First, the kitchen faucet started leaking and even with new washers had a steady leak. So DH ran to the store and bought two caps (there are no wall valves on my kitchen faucet--very very old wall mount!). In the meantime, a pebble had hit the windshield, yikes--it's still unrepaired! So I replaced the faucet for $45 (with the MOST basic one available, not the nice one I had before) and everything was fine, until we turned the water back on. The water turn-off to the house started leaking at that point! So I called a plumber to replace the valve. It took over two hours and was $295.

This all seems like money down the drain (no pun intended!). I hope the water bill isn't too elevated for the valve that leaked a stream all night long. But repairing all of this is cutting into my budget majorly.

Hope next month is better for us both!