bring back the music

09:30 CDT
Three times in the last six months or so the jeep has refused to start, to even turn over, and when towed to the Meinicke started right away so the problem couldn't be diagnosed. The first two times it happened while the car was in the same corner of the same parking lot. The second time it happened, Mark the Meinicke manager suggested that Meinicke would send someone out to look at it in situ if it happened again.

I, arriving at the tenative conclusion that the issue had to do with the electrical system and something about that parking lot corner, stopped parking there, and the third time it happened the car was parked across the street from a plant for the electric company. Unfortunately Monday is Mark the Meinicke manager's* day off, and the employee I reached didn't seem able to conceive the idea of Meinicke sending someone out to the car. I had the car towed home, on the assumption that it'd start again when it got there, which assumption was borne out.

Yesterday I went out to my car and the battery seemed to be dead. I called the same tow guy - whose name is also Mark - and told him I needed a jump or a tow. He tried to jump it and it would turn over then start to backfire; and he told me, "The alarm system is keeping it from starting. My Explorer's the same way."

I said, "What do you do about that?"

He said, "I don't know. My Explorer's still sitting in my yard."

So he attached the winch cable of the flatbed to the jeep to pull it aboard. This is in the lot where I work, remember. And when the jeep was about halfway on the bed, the winch lost its grip on the cable and the jeep rolled into the Malibu that was parked behind it.

Fortunately that was an issue for Mark the tow guy's insurance, not mine.

While the Malibu's owner was being located Mark the tow guy tried again, this time with me in the jeep so I could brake if the winch let go again, which it did. That was the most excited I got all day.

Once insurance information was exchanged and the jeep had made it to Meinicke, I was told the car needed a new alternator, a new battery and a new belt. Fortunately yesterday was qtrhorserider's payday, and I did drive the jeep home yesterday evening.

This morning I got about halfway, maybe a little more, through my ten-mile trip to work and my dashboard beeped at me with the LED display message CHECK BATTERY. I looked at the charge dial and the needle was down in the red bottom one-eighth, and dropping. I made it to within about a mile of work, parked the jeep at a strip mall, and walked in to work, winding up on attendance probation for the year. On my break I called Mark the Meinicke manager and told him about this morning. He said he'd pay for the tow today.

More later.

18:00 CDT
When I called Mark the Meinicke manager at two in the afternoon as I got off work, he said the problem appears to have been the alternator installed yesterday.

"At least it was nothing new," I said.

The car seemed to be fine on the drive home, although I could say the same for yesterday. I don't anticpate any more trouble - maybe the failing alternator was even the cause of the starting trouble I'd been having - except for one thing: Since we bought the jeep I've been unable to find the power button on the radio/CD player put in by the people we bought it from. I'd been unable to turn it off (when I've wanted it silent, I mute it or I just eject the CD and leave the "source" set to the CD player), but since the battery died I've been unable to turn it on. Is anyone on my flist by chance familiar with a Panasonic model car radio/CD player model CQ-C1101U?

* Master of unintentional alliteration!