Send My Conscience Home in a Taxi

One last shot of the back end of Fuji the Car:

I parked him outside my block of flats, on his last drive, which lasted all of five minutes. I left him outside so a dude with a tow truck could get him easily. When I got back later he was gone, towed to his final resting place.

Is it normal to be this sentimental about a car? I mean, he served me well for eight years, but it is just a car. Ah well.

Note the lack of number plates. Took them back to Vicroads a couple of weeks back, and got a refund on my rego, which was nice.

Ah well. It was about this time of year in 1999 that I was shopping for, and buying, Fuji the car. And he would be 20 years old in February of next year. Not bad given that cars are designed to last for about fifteen years. So if all goes to plan, I'll have Lenny the car for nine years!

Actually, that title is going to be a complete lie in a little while when I upload all the pictures I took of my dead car today.

I left out one amusing detail out of my extensive "I get a new car" story.

When I went to pick up Lenny the new Car from Melbourne Subaru (whom I highly recommend by the way, they were really, really good to me), they took me up stairs for the hand over.

They ushered me into a room, in which my new car was turning around and around on a car turntable thing! It was all I could do to not burst out laughing. They were trying very hard to make an event out of it. I mean, I'm damn happy about the car, but, damn, it's just a car, just a machine for getting from point A to B.

I also noted they had a giant blue ribbon with a bow lying around. Apparently some people not only have a car turning around on the thingy, they also have a big ribbon like it's a big gift!??!? Which, I suppose, it technically could be if someone nice is getting it for you.

I've just taken the plates off Fuji the Car, and said good bye :-(

My famed sticker covered 1989 Subaru DL station wagon has finally kicked the bucket. Damn :-(
He (are cars he's?) was nearly 20 years old, in fact, he'd have been twenty in February.

Here's a picture of me with said car back in 2006:

It has, if anything, more stickers since then. Notably a Obama-Biden sticker in the middle there somewhere. Plus I'm fatter now :-)

Anyway, I've had to have Fuji towed twice this year. Back in about June the engine simply stopped going while I was driving home from the gym. Turns out it was a broken cam chain or some such. So my good friends the mechanics cracked open the engine and replaced 'em.

Oh, that's right, back in April I had the entire radiator and related tubing replaced by a nice mob in North Melbourne. Apparently most of the damn thing was blocked.

Then about a month ago, I was out in Doncaster visiting my grand mother, and Fuji almost cooked himself on the way there. I had to sit under a tree for nearly two hours while the I waited for a tow truck. I took him back to my favourite mechanic - if you have a good one, stick to him! - who said the radiator was blocked again. Damn. Apparently it was either the heater scale coming loose and blocking the radiator, or the engine itself was dumping stuff into the cooling system.

In actual fact, Fuji has probably been running hot for a long time. He's chewed through two clutches in the eight years I've owned him. And various other bits have been cooked. In fact, you could argue that I've bought Fuji twice over, what with all the money I've spent on him over the years. In early 2004 I had to get the top end rebuilt, which took some weeks.

Anyway, I've got eight years out of said car. I'm a bit damn sentimentally attached to him, I have to say. Back in 2004 I ended up half owning a Magna (which was a bit crap in its own way, drank oil like you wouldn't believe) with my then fiance, and Fuji was almost retired. I'm kinda glad I kept him, given that relationship went belly up less than six months after that.

So, on the famed trip to Wilson's Prom and Walhalla, we drove Fuji, which was a bit of a risk - but it was either that or Deb's 1986 Laser which is made from parts of three other cars. And he went good all the way there, even climbing into the Alps. But on the way home, through Moe and the outer suburbs o' Melbourne, I watched the needle on the temperature gauge slowly creeping up... By the time I was breath tested near the Yarra, just off the eastern freeway, I was sure we'd have to pull over to let him cool down. But he struggled home. I've taken a couple of short drives since, but each time he gets way too hot way to fast. Which suggests the radiator is already blocked again - mind you, we did drive 675 kilometres in six days...

So, this really was the last straw.

I rang up the Mother Bank for a loan, and low and behold she had a term deposit maturing on Monday. To cut a long story short: by the middle of next week I should be the proud owner of Forester. Which is a mighty nice car to drive. I might even splash out on a decent stereo :-)

And I might restrict myself to one RRR sticker ;-)

This morning I went for a ride to the street in Northcote where I dumped my dead car on Thursday night. Thankfully it was still there - mind you, who could knick it when it won't start?

I picked up a petrol tin on the way, and wandered over to the nearby seven eleven to get a whole five litres of petrol - figuring that if it was just an out of fuel thing, I could save myself a lot of bother.

It wasn't.

After getting most of the petrol into my car, and getting the rest on my hands, my gloves, my top, my shoes and the road, Fuji the Car still refused to start. Time for Mr RACV Man. Gave them a call, and miraculously had my membership number handy. The dude turned up pretty quickly, actually, I only had time to cruise the 'net on my phone for a bit. He was there for all of two minutes... It wasn't something simple like a fuse, no...

Subaru's have an unusual engine construction. It's called a Flat Four, and owes something to the Volkswagen Beetle engines of yesteryear. Anyway, one crucial component is the timing or cam chains which control the valves. These need to be check at some interval (I forget exactly how long, it's in the tens of thousands of kilometres - 60,000 or so I think). Of course, I haven't had mine looked at in a while, because one of them snapped. Hence the Car Deadness.

So the nice man from the RACV summoned another chap, this time with one of those cool tilt-tray trucks. Which he yanked my car on to with so little fuss, like it was a simple piece of luggage. I'm always impressed with machines like that... And given that this is the third time in eight and a half years of ownership that I've had to have Fuji towed, I've had plenty of experience with 'em!

We left it parked near my favourite mechanic. Cracking open the engine isn't going to be cheap, but I'm figuring it will still be cheaper than getting another car!!!!

(In a side note, why did I download the "Cabaret" sound track? And why is Marvin trying to chew a sticker off my desk?)

I took Fuji (my 19 year old Subaru Station Wagon, for recent listeners) to the radiator place today. As you'll recall, I was concerned that Fuji was on his last legs, after almost cooking himself on a drive back from Geelong a few months back. I was so worried I applied for a car loan in order to replace him - reluctantly, said sticker covered car has been in my life for eight years now.

Anyway, I called the Radiator Guy and asked if they could flush the cooling system. He said if it's running hot, there's a good chance something else was wrong - which I agreed was highly likely!

He was right, the radiator was really blocked, only about two thirds of it was working. Also needed new hoses, and was about to crack a water pump. Not to mention needing a new fan belt. All of which they fixed, along with some new coolant. So Fuji is alive again! Hooray. The longer he lives the longer I can go without buying a new car. Even if it's only until about this time next year, that'll be great... Not that I'm sentimentally attached or anything :-)

Might be time for a trip to the drive in :-)