finally

Dave's VW Golf died on him a month ago. We had to rent a tow trailer and we took it to the dealership to find out what was wrong. They got around to it a week later, replaced a coil gave it some gas and said that it needed an extensive tune-up. The car is old and used and we're not sure when it last had a tune-up. They wanted $1200+ extra to do the tune-up. They said that was mostly parts. We said that was too much. Dave is good at working on cars and he knew he could change spark plugs and the distrubuter. He had never done a timing belt before, but was willing to try. We went to Pep Boys and spent $200 on parts and a manual. Dave spent the next week tuning-up his car. When he was finished, he tried to start it and nothing happened. He tinkered another day and gave up. During the next week he ignored his car, but thought about what could have gone wrong. He had lined up everything just right. He decided that last time the timing belt was changed, they marked things wrong. He adjusted it and got the car running again. All in all, he replaced the spark plugs and wires, the cap and rotor, the timing belt and the water pump. It took a while, but he saved us over $1000. Not that I drive a whole lot, but it's nice to be able to leave when I want to. It was nice to have to only buy gas for one car for a while, but his car gets better gas mileage.