Remember our ’89 Dodge Spirit?
It’s a terrible car, really. As far as fun-to-drive is concerned, this thing sucks doggie dicks. It has the worst four-cylinder engine in the world, with piston slap to beat the band — I’ll bet most of you have never heard a piston slap — and a 50-year-old Ford tractor would beat it in a drag race. It has a THREE-SPEED automatic, geez, and handles like a refrigerator balanced on one corner. You don’t want to put your loved ones in it unless you have a spare family. I’d have taken a sledge hammer to it months ago except for five things:
1. It carried my honey back home to me after almost three years of living apart.
2. It has fold-down arm-rests.
3. It was free.
4. The cruise control works.
5. The damn thing gets over 30 mpg.
Well, for months there’s been this hideous, heavy “clunk!” coming from the right front corner of the car. I figured it was the suspension disintegrating and wondered when the wheel would fall off, but last week (after it suddenly got real loud), I discovered that the end of the exhaust pipe coming from the “cat” had rusted away and separated from the muffler. (The resonator, actually. Who knew such a piece of crap required a freaking resonator?) Anyway, the catalytic converter had been banging against something it wasn’t supposed to touch, which accounted for the clunks. This would not do, nor would breathing exhaust fumes all the time, so I had to get it fixed.
The local Dodge dealer charges $80 just to look at your car. Adjust the headlights? Five bucks plus 80, so you know I wouldn’t get away for less than $300 -$400. They’d want to replace the whole exhaust system, plus those 80 dollars. Bah. Instead, I took it to a little one-man business I know here.
You walk in the front door and there’s this poster on the wall: “HOT ROD SPOKEN HERE.” There’s a little table with a stack of current car mags that you don’t usually see on newsstands. Hell, I got to read an article about the 1960 Chrysler 300F that made me remember why I wanted one when I was 15. The guy works to the sound of good loud rock & roll from a decent oldies station. He’s a welder. He cuts, bends, and fashions metal so that everything works. He FIXES things.
Thirty minutes later, he’d cut off the end of the pipe, welded on a sleeve extension, and clamped the whole mess back together again. Total damage, $54.08, and he never once made fun of the Dodge.
May he live long and prosper. If he dies first, I may have to kill myself.
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