Topic: Vehicle Woes

[PyroMenace]

Well my refusal to buy a new vehicle and live under a car payment is finally coming back to bite me in the ass. See my uncle is a mechanic and my dad knows a good thing or too about automotive, I know squat. So whenever I come to find a new vehicle its usually through the circle of one of our friends or my parents friends. For a little while now I was driving a 92 ford taurus. About over a year back the transmission went out as I was trying to my parents to Nashville. Instead of just getting rid of it, my uncle decides to try and fix the damn thing. Meanwhile my dad had gotten a spare a little while before in case of an emergency, so I drove that which was the same damn make and year as the taurus. Now THAT taurus is starting to fuck up. Im now driving a truck my brother used to drive, and the damn heater doesnt work in it and defrosting the thing is nearly impossible in this weather.

Trouble right now is im trying to figure out whats wrong with the taurus. I thought maybe it was a radiator leak, the engine was making noises and I spotted a liquid coming from the bottom which smelled of antifreeze. I let it sit at my work place parking lot for a week. Just this evening megan and I went over there to move it to my apartment. I had bought some antifreeze to use to help it make the trip. We get there, I poor the stuff in, turn it on and it still seems to be making the same noise. I say fuck it, maybe it needs to run a little bit so I start driving it to my place which isnt far away. A little bit before I get there, the noise stops. Thats good news, then as Im pulling into the parking lot, it stalls and smoke starts to emerge from the hood. I restart it and quickly park it as its still smoking. I open the hood to see if I can possibly make out something with my totally auto illiterate perspective. The only thing that I maybe spotted was one of the engine belts was starting to slip off a wheel, as well as a good amount of smoke seemingly was coming out of it.

Megan has a friend she was going to get to try and look at it. In the meantime I was curious if any of you could possible gauge what it could be with what you could get out of that story.

[Quemaqua]

Wish I knew jack about cars.  You probably know a good deal more than I do.

[idolminds]

How did the smoke smell? Possible oil leak?

As for the noise, fan belts make a squealing sound when loose.

[Ghandi]

Yeah if it's a squeaking sort of a sound it's a fan belt. But that's about as far as my knowledge on cars goes.

[gpw11]

I'm going with idol on this:  Is it blueish smoke, steam, or acrid dark smoke? Other questions that matter are: does the coolant level in the reservoir change from hot to cold? Can you actually see coolant under your car after you pour it in? Is the temp gauge working and saying you're overheating? Do you have power steering and is that working (the noise could be the power steering pump and you could be looking at two unrelated problems).

Either way, there's a lot of things it probably could be and you kind of need someone to look at it.  If I were to guess I'd say you have a radiator leak somewhere and you're overheating, and you also might have air in the system (from said leak).  Possibly a bad vacuum hose as well.   The good news is you seem to know a lot of people who can look at it for free or hella cheap. 

I will go on and say that you probably shouldn't pay to have anything fixed (assuming you're paying any decent amount of money at all) mechanics may disagree with me, but they are mechanics after all.  A 1992 Taurus is way past it's prime and you're going to get either nickle and dimed to death or you're going to get this fixed just to have the engine block explode in a few months (exaggeration?).  Dealing with a car like this is a bit like negotiating a contract: you have to have a firm walk away point.  For instance, tell yourself you're throwing $500 more into this car to keep it running tops (obviously not including gas and insurance), and start saving.  As soon as you get close to that number, you either ditch it or make very well sure that you will ditch it the next time you need repairs.

I don't think you're going to have much luck selling a 92 Taurus for any worthwhile price, so you're not getting any of this money back.  It's pretty much time to start planning for your transportation future.  That doesn't mean car payments, actually, getting a new car is probably the last thing you should do.  99.5% of the time it's a bad idea unless you have a lot of extra money kicking around. That said, I don't know how much money you have kicking around, but if you have to make payments, don't buy the car (new).

What you want to be doing is looking at buying a better used car.  Something newer, and preferably Toyota or Honda.  My 1993 Tercel was the best auto purchase I ever made as far as keeping costs down and getting my money's worth.

[Pugnate]

This is why I think the medieval times had it right. Do you think a knight went to the round table complaining about blueish smoke coming out of his horse's ass?

[gpw11]

Ha, that's like a quote from someone recently. Rough paraphrase:

"The only thing an American car maker could do to impress me at this point would be to go to an auto show, pull the drape off the stage and have a horse sitting there.  Not a mustang, not a pinto, an actual flesh and blood horse. It'll retain it's value more than anything they've put out in the last 20 years and will be more reliable.  It's a step up in every measure possible".

[Cobra951]

If some sort of oily fluid is pouring onto a belt, it's bound to slip and squeal.

We had an '89 Sable--a Taurus dressed up as a Mercury.  A mechanic we got to know and trust told us that those are 60,000-mile cars.  After that, they can be more trouble than they're worth, literally.  We ended up *junking* it.

[K-man]

if you smelled antifreeze then there's probably a leak somewhere.  I'd say fault probably lies with a busted hose.  from the hospital to your place is just enough time for the car to heat up and expose something like that.  did any antifreeze pool up under your car?  Was your car running warm when it stalled?