Today at 3:10 pm local time I get a cell call from my oldest kid who never calls me and lives 15 miles away. Her car is at work in the parking lot and won't start. Seems to have electricity but not turning over when ignition is turned. She had a friend bring his jump box over and try to jump it, no dice. Thinks it's the starter. I'm not so sure. I tell her I'll take a look at it and I leave work early. I grab my battery tester, jump box, socket set, another box of tools just in case and put them in my wifes subaru. I got in to ask my wife to come with me because the car is at the kids work and my kid got a ride home. My wife says I can't go, her brothers kids are coming over, and if you take the subaru can they take your car?
Before taking the tools out of the subaru I go to get my corolla off the street to load stuff into the trunk directly from the sube. Corolla starts up but the clutch feels really light and soft. Uh-oh. Trans wont come out of gear. crap. I shut the car off, then I can get it out of first into neutral. I start the car, now it wont go in gear. crap. I pop the hood to look underneath it the hood latch won't return. crap. I check the clutch reservoir and it is full but gross. I go to shut the hood. It wont latch. crap. Still won't go into gear. I give up and load everything in the pickup. 12 mpg it is. If I only took the jump box I could take the bike and get 55 mpg. same air conditioning as the pickup, none. Oh well, I might need the tools. I arrived at the site at 4:20 pm. I get the keys from her co workers. Yep won't start. wire up the battery tester, bad battery. Ok, get ready to take the battery out then think better of it because the zone will replace the battery for me if I can get the rav4 there. Fires right up from my jump box. I make a note to tell my daughter her friend needs a better box. Drive it up to the zone, $200+ later and it runs like a top. I take it back to the workplace, drop it off, hand the keys back to the co workers and call my daughter with the good news. (I gifted her the battery, just glad I'm able to right now.) I get home and go at the corolla with a can of wd40 to the hood latch mechanism and the latch pull in the car. It finally pings back in to place inside and the hood finally does latch, so I played with fire and tested it 5 more times. sprayed some more wd, it's good.
Then I sat down and started working the clutch. It seemed to get stiffer the more I pushed it and released. Eventually it built enough pressure to let the trans go into gear. So I started it up and it goes just fine. I do need to flush the clutch fluid again. It all works though. What a day!
