Tucson trip, part three

So, in the midst of our merrymaking in Tucson, we decide it would be a good idea to have our car looked at again before we head back. Preferably by a mechanic who didn't work out of his dusty backyard. So we look up the best-reviewed mechanics in Tucson, Jack Furrier's, and drive the car over to have them look at it. Before too long we get a call back, they have found the problem! Our thermostat was shot. So, while there was plenty of coolant and a workign water pump, the car didn't realize the engine was overheating, and so it wasn't telling the pump to pump coolant through. Huzzah! It wasn't that difficult of a fix. The guy on the phone said that usually, when you replace a water pump, you also replace the thermostat as a matter of course. I decided not to tell him about our freelance mechanic in Maxwell. So, we get the car back (at the same time, incidentally, that Cassy and Taylor's car started to act up intolerably, so we went to the garage and switched their car for ours) and for the next day, it seems to run like a dream! Cool engine, frosty AC, perfect.

With the car seemingly fixed, we decide to drive up to Phoenix for a day to visit my old mission. So we do, and once we are on the highway, we notice a new problem. The car seems to have trouble knowing when to shift gears; it bubbles along, shifting at random, until you get to a constant speed. When it idles, it seems like it is on the verge of dying. Also, we seem to be burning through gas at twice the rate we usually do. Fan-bloody-tastic. We find ourselves in Phoenix, though, and enjoy the views from the top of South Mountain and feast on the most amazing chimichangas in the world, those served at Poncho's on South Central. We also stopped by Mike and Kelly's, and it was awesome to see them again! They took us out for ice cream. There's nothing like a bowl of ColdStone enjoyed on the air-conditioned side of a plate glass window, looking out at 110 degrees. Well, on the drive back to Tucson, the car really started to bubble and hiccup, and both Cara and I wanted to go on a rampage. We needed to leave early the next morning, in order to get back to Colorado and up to Loveland in time to be at my brother Braden's homecoming talk, so we had a deadline and a dead car.

So, on the morning we were supposed to leave (originally planned for 5 in the morning), we had to wait around until 7:30 for Jack Furrier's to open, then I hung out at the counter to spur them on while Cara spent the morning with Cassy and Layla. Apparently, they now found that our spark plugs were so old they were almost corroded through, and the uneven sparks they were generating were causing the engine to hiccup. Okay, fine, fix it. Whatever. Anything else? Oh, yes, your timing belt is really old and might snap at any minute. Perfect. How much to fix everything? Well, the spark plugs will be easy, we can be done in a few minutes, but the timing belt will take a few hours and set you back four hundred bucks. Aaaaggghhh! Okay, do the spark plugs, forget the timing belt, we'll do that back in Colorado. As soon as they finished with the plugs, I sped home, packed the car, and we got the heck outta Dodge. At about 9:30 or so, four hours behind schedule. And the drive is about 14 hours, 2 hours longer than MapQuest said it would be.

The drive home, the car worked perfectly. This concludes our summer vacation.