When they got around to looking at the car in the shop on Monday it would not start for them either. The first thing they did was take my trusty backup Cam Angle Sensor out of the trunk and put it in. What do you know, the car started right up. With the car not showing a Check Engine Light nor having a stored code in car’s Engine Control Unit the tech suspected it was the main engine relay or the ECU itself. Because the ECU would be expensive and a nightmare to replace they opted to change the hundred dollar relay first.
After replacing the part they parked it outside and left it running for about 30 minutes and it never shut off. Then in the afternoon the tech drove it around for 25-30 miles. It never quit. He repeated the process again the following morning with the same positive results. I picked up the car on Thursday afternoon and Donna followed me right home.
Since then it has been backed out of the garage and parked out under the awning twice. Once yesterday and once today because we had some looky loos visit the house and we wanted to make our paltry one-car garage look large. Full testing will be on Monday morning. After I do my morning walk, and with Donna at the gym, I’m going to take the car on an adventure tour of about 40 miles. she is suggesting that I just circle our one mile block 40 times, but I’m going to throw caution to the wind and venture out into Aiken County.
Even if it passes that test, both of us, one more than the other, will still not trust the car to get us to Hilton Head and back at the end of the month. There are just too many places while travelling through South Carolina’s Lowcountry where the road is two lanes with no paved shoulders, just maybe a half a car width of soft grass, bordered by water (and possibly gator) filled ditches of indeterminate depth.
We have started doing some of the pre-prep work on our alternatives, tune in tomorrow for details.