Last week, I really didn't have the heart to give my faithful readers an update on the BMW's hydraulic fluid hemorrhage. I've had some time to recover, and I'm ready to talk about it now. You might want to get another cup of coffee or glass of tea; this might take awhile.
When we left off, it was the week the 'rents and neighbors were on vacation and I was in charge of the gardens. Tuesday night, we had AAA come back to The Compound and tow the BMW to a very reputible repair shop just a half mile from work. I had called and spoke with them just hours after the incident Friday afternoon, and they said if it was in deed a power steering hose or line, they would be able to fix it. I breathed a bit of relief. Wednesday morning, they called me at work and reported that, yes, you guessed it, it was not something simple like a hose or line; the leak had come from the left rear strut and it needed to be replaced. And in keeping with my good luck, it was something they really didn't feel they could tackle. So they recommended a place just about a mile from work, so I called and talked to them about it. After making half a dozen more calls for estimates, this place had the best price. So to make things still inconvenient, I had my boss follow me during lunch to pick up the car; the shop that had it said it would be fine to drive, since they filled it back up with hydraulic fluid. And I'm here to tell you, Dohn's Automotive are the most honest people I've ever dealt with. I went there to pick the car up and fully expected to pay for a few hours of labor since they did quite a bit of searching to find the problem - they only charged me $5 for the hydraulic fluid. So now my boss is following me over the other shop where I left the car to have the strut replace. Let me interject that all of this towing around was just so I wouldn't have to take the car back to the import shop downtown. Are you with me so far?
Flash forward a few days. The shop called and the $trut has been in$talled. They called me at around 6:00 that evening, after I'd already gotten home from work. So I told them I'd get it the next day. After work, I get a ride down there and pick it up. Let me say they also threw in a front-end alignment and a tire rotation free of charge. That was big of them. It drove like a new Cadillac as I made my way downtown to visit a friend. After a day or two, I got over the $hock of writing out the check.
Flash forward a few more days to Tuesday morning. Dad got up early when I did, to tell me that I needed to check out the car; he saw a big puddle of something on the garage floor. Lovely. Just get the .22 and point it toward my heart and pull the trigger. I stopped for gas on the way to work and checked the fluid levels and everything seemed ok. When I left the parking lot at work that afternoon, I noticed about a 4" diamater splotch where something had leaked. I kept watch, and the next day I noticed a smaller splotch, but still a splotch nonetheless. So I called the shop that installed the strut, and calmly told them the problem. They were very apologetic and told me to get the car there asap and they'd check it out. First of all, let me give a great big shout out to my dear friend/neighbor/co-worker Bev, who hauls me to and from work and repair shops. So I drop it off and Bev gives me a ride home. I start to get nerved up over this, and start to think how good those employee-price car deals are sounding right now.
This brings us to Friday afternoon. The shop calls me and said that fortunately, the splotch yesterday was about the size of a quarter. Unfortunately, the current leak is not coming from the strut; it's coming from the power steering gear box. This wasn't a real surprise; when I put the car in the shop for the major work when I first bought it, they said that I could either live with a small leak from $ector $eal, or I could pay $$$ and have the gear box replaced. A small leak I could live with; a puddle with standing fluid I could not. The mechanics were fairly confidant that when the new strut was installed and filled with the factory-required amount of hydraulic fluid, the pressure caused the sector seal to leak bigtime. On a small happy note, it didn't blow the seal out; it just caused it to hemorrhage bigtime. I then called the shop downtown and explained what had happened, and the owner reassured me that as long as I kept the fluid in the car, a small splotch wouldn't hurt anything except the garage floor. I've got a big piece of cardboard that I'll put under the car when I pull it into the garage, to keep Dad happy, and hopefully the splotch won't become a puddle.
Thank you very much for bearing with me while I wrote this epic saga; I'm sure it was boring, but it's been very therapeutic.
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