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Basil's $200 car wash

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Basil

Basil

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The day started off well enough. Got up early, had breakfast and coffee. Later I was browsing Craig's List and came across a Canon Flash unit that I decided was too good a deal to pass up, so I called the seller and arranged to drive to his house about an hour away. Since I would be driving through town, I decided to swing by the car wash (same car wash where a lot of scenes in Breaking Bad were filmed by the way) and then have the glass repair guy there fix a small star in my windshield. After the car wash, I drove over to the part of the parking lot where the glass repair guy was located and had him start repairing the windshield.

When he was done and we had squared things with my insurance, I hopped in the Santa Fe to head over to get the Flash unit for my camera. This is where my Santa Fe decided it would "break bad" as it refused to start. I checked all the obvious stuff, but no joy. After 30 minutes of fiddling I called USAA's roadside assistance and had a Tow come and take my car to the nearby dealer for repairs.

After 3 hours at the dealers, they finally found the problem - a faulty ground. Three hours and nearly $200 later I was on my way again and managed to meet up with the guy selling the flash and I did buy it.

Nothing like spending your Saturday afternoon at a car wash and then sitting at a dealership waiting for a big bill.

tow.jpg
 
Does the wiring, by any chance, say Lucas on it?
 
Unless they gave you the "tour" and you were shown the ground point in question, it may be you got a $200 ~bath~. If it happens again, you'd be wiser at least trying to re-establish that ground point first.
 
A friend of mine owns a Santa Fe. Curious where they found the bad ground.
 
that's what you get for having such a clean car:p
 
DrEntropy said:
Unless they gave you the "tour" and you were shown the ground point in question, it may be you got a $200 ~bath~. If it happens again, you'd be wiser at least trying to re-establish that ground point first.
Click to expand...

Actually they did take me out to the bay to show me the problem. It was a simple problem and they actually gave me a break on the cost considering the number of hours it took them to track it down. The bad ground didn't "look" like it would have been a bad ground, but it was. Oh, and $70 of that $200 was for the tow to the dealer. Could have been much worse.
 
TRMark said:
A friend of mine owns a Santa Fe. Curious where they found the bad ground.
Click to expand...

From what I could see it looked like it was associated with the Starter/solenoid (which might explain why the started/solenoid acted as if they were getting NO power. No clicking even. They cleaned up the connection and put a star washer on to "bite" into the metal and viola, the car started!
 
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