Car Troubles

I took my 2005 Saab 9-2X into the dealership last Friday. They were going to replace a vent valve. They said that was the cause of the engine warning light that had gone on in my vehicle.

I booked my appointment for 1:00 p.m. When I arrived there the mechanic mentioned he was pretty busy and might not be able to look at it for an hour. So I was advised that I should come back at around 3:30 p.m. because the scheduled work was supposed to take about an hour and a half.

That was no problem for me. Sherway Gardens (mall) was nearby so I walked over there to kill some time. I figure I could window shop if I was bored. I also brought some Sudoku puzzles with me as well.

I returned to the dealership on time. Not because I thought my car would be ready, but because the Euro2012 soccer quarter finals between Germany and Greece were on TV and I thought I'd watch it there.

As it turned out my car took a lot longer than they thought it would. By closing time (5:00 p.m.) the service consultant, Michele, told me that the mechanics weren't able to figure out the problem. It seems there was another issue with wiring or electronics or something.

She asked if I could make another appointment to come in and have some more tests done (for another $200-something of course). I told her I'd check my schedule out and try to make it the following Friday if I was available.

With that she gave me my keys and I went to my car...

... And that's when the adventure began...

I started my car and drove out of the parking lot. I had to turn left to go to the lights at the Queensway. From there I was going to head west to the Gardiner east onramp.

Well, when I stopped to wait for the lights to turn green my car started to sputter then the engine died. Even though I put my hazard lights on, the car behind me honked because, by now, the light had turned green.

I restarted the engine and made the turn. In my mind I was thinking, I should turn back and go back to the dealership, but instead I pressed on. There may have been a couple of reasons I did this. One, the dealership was closed; and, two, there was no easy way to turn around because there was a concrete median in the middle of the road.

So I headed on to the Gardiner in rush hour traffic. Bad move as I soon discovered. When my car was moving it was fine. But as soon as I slowed down or had to stop the engine would sputter and shudder. Sometimes it would keep running, but most of the time it would die.

I nervously drove in the right lane ready to pull off the highway in case anything happened. I learned to adapt. Whenever I saw the rush hour traffic slowing ahead I would slow down much earlier just to avoid coming to a complete stop. If my car was moving above a crawl it was still okay. But, sometimes it was unavoidable.

Luckily I only stalled once on the Gardiner. Instead of going up Jarvis (through the city and hitting all the red lights) I decided to continue to the Don Valley Parkway and get off on the Bloor/Bayview ramp. I figured it would be the lesser of two evils. I believed I would need to come to a complete stop less on the highway. I think I made the right choice because I only stalled once on the DVP.

Going though midtown was another story. There were a lot more lights and stop signs. I lost count of the number of times my car died after exiting the highway until the time I arrived back at my condo. It was more than 10 in total. Another trick I had to employ was rolling stops at stop signs. Of course if other cars were at the intersection I'd have to come to a complete stop and that spelled trouble.

Now I don't know why the mechanics let me take my car in that condition. Especially without saying anything about it. Of course I was upset and called to show my displeasure.

I got a call the next day from, Paul, the service consultant working that shift. He said he spoke to mechanic and they told him they had reset the computer or something like that and that it would take a day or two for it to learn the ideal idle speed of the car. He suggested I drive it for a day or two and if there were still problems to call back.

Well, that wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear. But, I took it out for a 20 minute spin later in the day. Just around sides streets with little traffic in my area. I drove at slow speeds and stopped to see what it would do.

A few times it managed to keep going, but at other times the engine died. At that point I thought, I'm just going to take it back to the dealership for them to look at now, even though I knew the service centre would be closed. I figured I wasn't going to drive it in that condition anyway. Better it be there so they could look at it first thing on Monday and (hopefully) see what the problem was.

Going through the side streets to the DVP was challenging again. But, I was more used to the idiosyncrasies of the car by now so it wasn't as nerve wracking (just a little). I knew as long as I got it to the highway it would be fine. And the dealership was right off the Gardiner Expressway so that good.

I got there at about 2:00 and told the service consultant, Paul, everything that happened. He took note of everything and said he'd have Michele (the service consultant who normally deals with me) call me on Monday to update me about what was going on.

After that, Jason, the shuttle driver took me to Kipling station and I hopped on the subway and went home.

P.S. - My car was ready on Tuesday. I gave them another $500 for their troubles. Everything seems to be back to normal now. I hope nothing else goes wrong for quite awhile.