Car issues from the black lagoon

So we mentioned how this month we were going to take both our cars into the shop and then buy new furniture for our bedroom?

well not anymore...

In fact, we have to now wait till May before we can take my car in because of what happened to South County Boys car.

If you remember back to last year, we bought "Sally," the Ford Escort Zx3 from his middle brother so we could basically give his older broke grad-school brother our older car for free because he really needed one and couldn't afford to buy Sally at the "reduced" for family price...

SCB's middle brother seldom drove Sally (just 6 miles to work and back for maybe a year and a half since it was their second car)... After owning her for some time, he found out he had gotten the car from an unsavory individual who really lied about the condition of the car. He fixed a few things and believed it to be road worthy since he had her checked out prior to our Utah arrival...

We bought her, fixed the AC in the car and drove her 700 miles home to California... where SCB has been driving her every day to work...  35-40 miles round trip... since SEPTEMBER... on this:

A bent wheel... 

... A bent wheel with a nail in the side of the tire... and since it wasn't just a puncture, the tire on the wheel wouldn't be able to be patched... it would need to be replaced...

and because we didn't know about the bent wheel since his brother had said the car was road worthy according to the place he took it, we had driven on it over 5,000 miles since September.... which meant that the bent wheel broke the back strut, causing all the fluid to leak out and become worthless... and the strut on the other side was over compensating for the failing strut and also went out and would need to be replaced...

No wonder SCB kept feeling like he was "fish-tailing" on certain roads on the way to work recently...

While we had a coupon for a free oil change and check up, (courtesy of my mom since she wasn't going to use hers with the newer car being under warranty), we saved $40.00 ...

but we had to pay $653.89 in parts alone... plus $213.59 in labor... and then another $50.60 in sales tax....

Totaling $918.08

 They had the car for 3 days because apparently, wheels are really rare for his car... they only fit 2 models and we had to have one sent down from Compton... so we ended up getting a rental car courtesy of the repair shop. (I was supposed to go down to San Diego with some friends and would need a car...)

While the shop paid for the rental, I got insurance since we were going on a little road trip and anything can happen when you aren't familiar with the car and I could hear Murphy laughing at me in the distance. I also paid an extra $5 to upgrade to a Prius because I would save that much on gas alone since its $4.17 a gallon right now.

So the car rental was another $34.78 ... but it only ended up costing me less then $30 in gas to drive to San Diego in back, and I now know I don't want to but a Prius. (Not enough leg room for SCB... they have a weird console and gear shiftier, and the trunk is too small for a car with 4 doors.)

So needless to say, we won't be buying bedroom furniture this month... we will be paying for our car bill. I have to say though, i'm not too upset. I'm really thankful that SCB was safe driving the car for so long on the broken parts!