If the extent to which I baby, worry-over, and adore Stella is any indication of how I will be with real children someday, I predict I will be of the over-protective, freak-out-at-their-every-strange-noise variety. I also somehow manage to be constantly watchful of her slightest hiccup or sneeze, but yet somehow miss important symptoms of illness when they appear. I guess I'm making all the normal mistakes of a "parent," if an inanimate object such as a car could ever be considered a child.
We've had Stella out of the garage for over two months now, and I've been bragging about how awesome she's been and how we haven't had the slightest problem with her whatsoever. Which makes me an idiot, by the way. Tempting fate is an unfortunate (and unwanted) trait of mine.
So we were driving along (on the highway because all terrible Stella-related drama occurs with cars going 70 mph 2 feet away from us) and everything is going just fine. Then I hear a strange noise, kind of like the noise wind makes when your car window is cracked (which ours were) but it was different than it had been previously. I ask Mike about it, and he faithfully checks the gauges on the dash to make sure everything is okey-dokey. And of COURSE it's not! The temperature gauge, which normally sits at about 200 degrees, was way past that in the 300+ range, past the part of the gauge that's red and BAD. I tell Mike to pull over while he optimistically tries to figure out what's wrong. "Just PULL OVER now before we melt another engine," I say.
So there we are, sitting by the side of the road (again) with the hood up. I hear a crazy noise coming from the coolant overflow container, and we realize that the sound is the coolant boiling. Because it's that hot. I'm thinking we get it towed so we don't damage anything, but Mike is confident we can get it home safely. So we start her up, pull into traffic, and like a miracle... the engine cools off. We drive around for a good half an hour, trying to stress it out enough to overheat again (I know I'm an idiot, covered that already!) but it never did. It's as if it NEVER HAPPENED. The next day Mike checks the radiator and the damn thing has almost no coolant left.
I then proceeded to spend the next 3 days blaming myself for almost blowing up my brand new engine by being careless. I'm a terrible mother. :(
By the time I was finally feeling better about myself, the next problem happened.
Shortly after getting ALL her maintenance fluids checked and topped off, we started hearing a squeaking sound coming from the rear passenger tire. Having had squeaky wheels before, we thought it was a problem with the steel wheels/chrome hubcap system we've got going on. Last time it happened we had the tires rotated and it took care of it right away, but when the squeaking turned into a clanging noise, I started to get a little concerned.
Because Stella doesn't have a computer like most modern cars, there are only a few rustic ways to tell if something is wrong: 1) One of the gauges is off its normal value, 2) Something smells funny, 3) Something sounds funny, 4) Smoke, or 5) Something feels different (my favorite). The 'clanging' noise was accompanied with a sort of shifting beneath my seat, which was just barely noticeable. Something was moving back there that shouldn't have been, and it was something that came into the frame of the car from the wheel.
We get the tires rotated (ever optimistic, my husband and I) and drive around to see if it changed anything. The noise is gone and everything seems to have miraculously fixed itself. Again. Gotta love antique cars for being mysterious like that. So after about 20 minutes or so I smell something funny. Something burning. The last time I smelled that smell the engine collapsed on us on the side of the highway.
I had another 'PULL OVER NOW' moment.
I lay on the dirty ground in the middle of the road, peering up into Stella's undercarriage because I'm either A) Crazy or B) I love this car so damn much that I no longer have any sense of shame/reason/logic. Faint, barely noticeable puffs of smoke are coming from the wheel bearing mechanisms behind the rear passenger tire.
*sigh*
We call a tow man to come get us and spend 45 minutes sitting in Stella in the setting sunshine. Which was wonderful (no sarcasm!) even though I knew something serious was wrong. A total ASSHOLE tow guy helped us get her to the same shop that replaced her engine last year, and we waited by the phone for 2 long days for the bad news.
Because let me tell you, when Stella breaks, it's never a little thing. She holds on and doesn't complain until something truly horrific happens.
The shop calls us on the 3rd day and gives us a quote (which promptly makes me hit the roof) and tells us the damage. The passenger side rear wheel lost its rotor, spindle and wheel bearing simultaneously. The driver's side rear wheel also needed work done on the bearing. Essentially, Stella lost her hind legs. The legs that do all the work in a rear-wheel drive vehicle. The legs that push the weight of the car and quite literally do all the heavy lifting.
I humbly realize, once again, that I'm the only one that's loved her for a very long time.
So she sits in the shop alone right now, her battery probably drained days ago, awaiting new parts to arrive. They need to keep her until Tuesday and I'm without my needy, slightly handicapped, chrome-wheeled child for the first time since winter.
There is a great sadness inside of me.
