OK...This is not good, but it could have been much, much worse I think. I'm running for office and with the election coming up soon and some bad rain here, my Jag has not been getting driven as often as she needs (oh, and the car crash I was in with my Rav4 when a woman ran a red light didn't help). So when I went to start her on Sunday, she didn't.


I've put a kill switch on the battery to use when the car will be sitting (I don't have access to an outlet to use a trickle charger) but hadn't turned it off. OK, we'll jump it. Nope. OK, call AAA. They couldn't get it started either - I had dimmish interior lights but not a sound when I turned the key. Uh oh. On the flatbed and off to the mechanic, aka her best friend.


Just got off the phone with my mechanic, and I think we got a bit lucky - if an unexpected repair can be lucky. There's rather a big problem with the engine he found after he charged the battery up again and started the car. He noticed it wasn't running as well as she usually does. Then after a few minutes, he noticed the right catalytic converter was glowing red. *gulp* Yeah - the right coil died, and he also noticed some antifreeze leaking from the right side. Turns out the cap, rotor and coil died (we're replacing both sets to be safe), along with the heater control valve. And it seems like it all happened literally when Mark got the battery back in and started it up (well, I may have killed the control valve when I used the heat the last time I drove her) - which is a very good thing because otherwise, as I understand it could have caused significant, super expensive, very bad damage.


So it's not the starter, but is a whole lot of other things. But, in a lovely note of irony, the battery may be fine (he's going to do a load test and a volt test to be sure). Go figure.

 

wow
good catch!

 

nice! Good cars hate when you don't drive them. It is what they were built to do