My Car is Being Held Together by The Force

I’m really bothered by the noises my van is making. It creaks, it rattles, it taps. It’s like I’m driving a fucking haunted house. Despite all this, the “mechanics,” can’t find anything “wrong,” with it. This, however, does not keep them from sending me the “bill.”

To the credit of the van, it’s over 12 years old. I think I was still in grade school when I came home to find this new, marvelous vehicle in our driveway. It had all the high tech luxuries of the time, such as air conditioning and a tape player. We’re talking top of the line.

I remember looking at the interior and part of me, a dark part deep below my puberty, wondered what it would be like to have sex in the back seat. Today I look at the back seat and wonder what it would be like to have sex in my own bed.

Just recently the speedometer reached 120,000 miles. For most cars this marks the “cinderblock,” anniversary. Not my van though. My dad kept it in great shape and it came to me in perfect running order. It took me a whole year to properly fuck it up.

Anyway, when the car reached 120,000, the dashboard lit up. I was just driving along and all the sudden I’m celebrating Christmas in my car. Most of the lights went off again, except for the hated “Maint Req’d” light, signaling that it was time for a mechanic to replace your belts with cling wrap and urinate in your gas tank.

I brought it in for a plain and simple tune-up. They decided I wanted to spring for all the extras. While I wanted to argue that I didn’t need a new $70 “serpentine belt,” I had no facts on which to base my claim. I know less than jack about auto mechanics. They could have told me that my van was about to have kittens and I couldn’t say otherwise.

For this same reason, I could not properly identify the rattling and tapping sounds I heard after the tune up. It could be the trans-axle. It could also be a circus midget stuck in my oil filter. What the fuck do I know?

I brought the van back to another mechanic, the ones who had serviced my muffler a few months back. My hope was that the rattling was the muffler, which was still under warranty. They found that the rattle was not the muffler, but the engine mounts which, surprise surprise, were not under warranty.
I paid them my arm, leg, and one testicle and they repaired this problem for me. Now the rattle is 50% quieter. They assured me that the van passed the safety inspection and was safe to drive, but I needed to fix the chip in my windshield.

So I bring the van to yet another mechanic, a pleasant lady with a deep tan, big hair, and an extra smoky voice, you know, like a Speak N’ Spell. She fixed the chip which I had thought, until the other mechanics pointed it out, was a fleck of bird shit.

And so here I am with a van that sounded much better before the tune up, has cost me almost the same amount as a down payment on a new car, and, since I left it to get the windshield fixed, smells faintly of Camel cigarettes.