August 13, 2004

Mah car got hurt

So my Subaru Justy has a corrosion problem. Gaseous battery acid apparently seeps out of it's battery very very slowly, and recondenses in crystaline form upon certain surfaces near the battery.. like the terminals, exposed cable wire, etc. It can get in the way of connectivity and render spliced battery cable useless over time.

After a certain period of meager connectivity, when it was challenging to start the justy for a couple months, it stopped starting at all. I suspected the connectivity to have given too much, so I went and got a new battery cable and .. "plugged it in". but the car continued making the same noise while the lights etc. shined that much brighter.. so I realized the starter went kaput over the low-juice abuse.

Now I have the challenge before me of getting the car to a mechanic to fix it. Yes I know it's simple to buy a starter and plug it in yourself, but my justy's built like a laptop and I would rather pay a wad of money and not have to get my hands dirty just at the moment.

One thing I wanted to try is clutch-starting/clutch the vehicle. I am parked on a gentle hill but I was parked backwards, so I tried rolling back into a U turn to get oriented the right way. Whilst paying attention to not catching my tire on the curb, I caught my driver's side door on a large rock. It later took two of us to muster the elbow grease required to push the car uphill and free the door from being wedged against the rock, and now it's not lined up right.

Needleless to say I had no luck clutch-starting the car and now I'll probably have to toe it. Soobaru Guru refused to work on my car, refering to it as a "disposable" model, and now I'm hoofing it out in the heat.

Posted by jesse at August 13, 2004 02:35 AM
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