Breakdown Season – UPDATED! AGAIN!

Friends,

I’m anticipating a pretty decent snow season this year, so I headed down to the Festival of Dirt to obtained new, non-bald tires. Yesterday, Costco’s tire center gave me the business suggesting a two hour wait after work. I called shenanigans on that idea on the puppy dog’s behalf. She expects her cheap cuts of critter in sauce over kibble at a specific time—well before that job would be done.

Naturally, I took two hours off of work to be first in line at the tire center today. You would assume this because they made me mad yesterday and I’m nothing if not petty.

Costco sent out a coupon book that offers $70 off a set of four, but good gravy are they expensive. I bought the tires, bought some pizzas for the coworkers, and got out. Add a tank of gas to that. Where are we? Six hundred or so?

Then, on the drive home, the engine in the Jeep dies at speed. Dead. Power steering, gone. Power brakes, gone. I coasted into the Mountain Center Post Office parking lot and managed to stop (not assured, btw) before hitting the life-sized fiberglass cow. So I whistled the alert to the passing tow truck, he stopped to ask about the problem, then soon returned with a flatbed.

So there she sits. The once mighty Jeep Grand Livingroom, now just pile of useless sheetmetal, with a new set of tires and a broken wheel stud (thanks Costco!), parked in the middle of my driveway.

I have a thought. Maybe the check engine light is burnt out…

Your pal,

bob

UPDATE: Back about fifteen years ago, you could pull codes from engine management computers by flicking the ignition switch back and forth a couple times. OBD-I, everybody. It’s kinda neat to see what the computer thinks is wrong (“too much speed!”) and armed with that information (“engine too fast! yikes!”), I concluded that the problem lie in the crankshaft position sensor.

Now that Fiat doesn’t necessarily care too much about the old cars Chrysler used to make (“too old!”), the aftermarket has caught up and has deigned to reconstruct the vital life-giving sensors to keep old Jeeps alive. Witness this very fragile crankshaft position sensor. One has failed before on the thing, so there’s some history. This tiny tube with the three-wire pigtail is almost a hundred dollars. What’s our tally now?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oy. That thing is really hard to replace. It’s in one of the toughest places to deal with. The sensor is under the firewall cutout for the bellhousing. My forearms are torn up but the sensor has not been replaced yet. Cripes. Maybe I should take Monday off to get the thing done.