Our car is a beast.
We’re doing our 7 year, 50 state road trip in a 2004 Toyota Corolla that now has 220,000 miles on it. Despite being 20 years old and having driven the equivalent of the earth’s circumference almost nine times, it’s still going strong.
We haven’t had to put much money into it since buying it in 2014; apart from oil changes, two or three sets of tires and some minor routine maintenance, it’s been a very reliable vehicle.
That is, until we were (somewhat) in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming.
Issue 1
A few weeks ago we were on our way from Indiana (state 42) to Idaho (state 43). We’d stopped in St Louis, MO, Lincoln, NE and Cheyenne, WY along the way and were on the final stretch to Idaho Falls – our first stop in Idaho.
We’d seen signs for an attraction called Little America and figured we’d stop there to get gas and the 75c ice cream cones we’d seen advertised on billboards. We stopped to fill up with gas first, but after doing that we noticed a problem – our car wouldn’t start. It was doing something, but the engine wouldn’t turn over at all.
A guy helped me push our car into a parking space to the side (our car was loaded full as it was a moving day, so it was too weighed down for me to get it moving by myself) and we called AAA while having some ice cream.
We were fortunate that the car has broken down where it was. We didn’t have any cell phone service, but Little America had internet we could connect to in order to call AAA over Wi-Fi. Even if our car remained broken down that night, Little America had a pet-friendly motel, so we’d have been able to get a room there if necessary.
That didn’t end up being necessary, but not due to AAA. After about 30 minutes, I called AAA again as I was yet to hear from them that someone had been dispatched. It turned out that they were still trying to find someone who could come out. That wasn’t too surprising seeing as it was a bit of a drive from other signs of life, but it was a little frustrating as we had no idea how long it’d be before we could get back on the road and we still had a four hour drive ahead of us.
While I was on the phone to AAA, Shae was messaging with her dad and he suggested that it might be battery related. He suggested that we make sure it was connected properly and jiggle the battery around a little. Shae tried that out and after jiggling the battery, sure enough – the car started! She left it running while she came to get me, then we continued on to Idaho Falls without any further incident.
Thinking it was an issue with the battery mount (it was far more loose than it should’ve been, hence the ability to jiggle it), Shae took the car to the Sam’s Club auto center the next day while I was working. Although it wasn’t a service they provide, the guy working there was incredibly helpful nonetheless and worked his magic to fix the battery in place better. He didn’t charge us for the service and so we figured everything was resolved.
It wasn’t.
Issue 2
The car was actually fine for more than a week and it got us to Boise with no issues. However, when Shae was out and about one afternoon, the car refused to start again.
She called AAA and, because we were in a larger city, assistance arrived fairly quickly. He checked the battery and said it was running at 70% capacity, so suggested getting it replaced. After giving Shae a jump start, she went straight to an auto care shop and got it replaced. The car started up OK, so we figured everything was resolved again.
It wasn’t.
Issue 3
Shae continued doing her shopping that afternoon, then when it was time to pick up Truffles from the groomer she found the car wouldn’t start. Again.
She wasn’t far from PetSmart, so she walked over there to pick her up, then walked back to the car to wait for AAA to come out. Despite it being allocated to someone, she didn’t hear anything further from AAA and it didn’t look like they were going to come out that evening. This wasn’t too far from our hotel, so she locked the car and took an Uber back to the hotel after cancelling the callout.
We were due to check out of our hotel in Boise the next day, but we weren’t going far. That’s because we’d spent our first few days there in a hotel by the airport while we worked, then were moving to a hotel in downtown Boise so we’d be within walking distance of everything there.
While I finished getting everything packed up, Shae took an Uber back to our car to wait for AAA to come out again. It turned out that was unnecessary as this time our now-temperamental car decided it was willing to start up again. That was great news, but we weren’t willing to risk it dying on us again, so after getting bac to the hotel Shae waited outside with the car running while I loaded up a luggage cart and brought all our stuff down.
After the five minute drive to our next hotel, we unloaded the car, leaving the car running the entire time. Once unloaded, I took the luggage carts up to our room to unpack while Shae took our car back to the auto shop.
During the previous visit they’d replaced the battery as that’s what we’d asked them to do and that’s what seemed to be the problem, but this time they ran diagnostics. Based on comments from friends and people in our Facebook group, it sounded like it was likely an issue with either the alternator or starter. Sure enough, it was the starter, so the auto shop replaced that.
One brand new battery, one brand new starter and ~$750 later, our car was fixed.
Or so we thought.
Just kidding, it is fixed as far as we know! It’s been a couple of weeks since we last had a problem with our car not starting, so hopefully it was indeed a problem with the starter and that we won’t have any issues in that respect going forward.
Shae and I did count ourselves lucky that this happened when it did. We’re driving up to Alaska next month, so it would’ve sucked for this to have happened when we were in even more remote areas out there. Fingers crossed that our car’s overall resilience continues at least until the end of this year.
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