Much Too Much: Two

I had a little time after class on Friday to take the Dreadnought to a transmission shop and have them look at it. The prognosis is not good. The shop manager told me that the tranny shifted very roughly from second to third, which I already knew, and wouldn't go into fourth gear at all, which I also already knew. Then came the real news. They took the pan off and found metal fragments in it. This is indicative of physical damage to one or more bands, which I half expected but didn't know for sure. Now I do. In the words of Bob Seger, I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

The store manager told me that they would have to rebuild the transmission, which would run me about $1400. That's assuming that the torque converter was sound. If they had to replace that, that's another $400 or so. In other words, it would cost almost as much to fix the transmission as was spent to buy the car in the first place. But without the repair, all I've got is a large lawn ornament.

I was talking to a few of the folks at work about my predicament, and they asked how much it was going to cost to fix it. I told them that I'd been quoted between $1400 and $1800. They told me, in not so many words, that only a complete idiot would pay that much. One of the guys told me that he'd had a rebuild done on the transmission of his Chevy pickup - the exact same transmission, apparently - and paid only $700 for it. Granted, it was a friend of his family who had done it, but the point was made. There were better deals out there to be had. So I made it a point today to call a half-dozen or so transmission shops and got quotes ranging from $1054 to $1326.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly a mechanical genius. I can't tell a torque converter from an EPS manifold.^* But my math skills aren't too bad. Given a choice between $1045 and $1400 or $1045 and $1800, I can pick the right option every time.

Now I just have to get the Dreadnought out of the current drydock and back to my house, which I should be able to accomplish tomorrow morning with the help of the fine folks at AAA. I also have to arrange for financing through the First National Bank of Mom and Dad. I'm gonna owe them so much money when this is all done. But the interest rates are quite reasonable. And if I do ever manage to reproduce successfully, I know I'll end up doing the same for my kids one day. It's the circle of life.

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^*Except that I know that an EPS manifold is something you find on or around a warp drive, so my car is not likely to have one of those.