Warming Up?

A little over a week ago it got cold enough to warrant kicking on the heater. Unfortunately, when I tried to do so nothing seemed to happen. I heard the familiar click that occurs when the heater first turns on, but after that there was nothing. I then tried to manually turn the fan on, and that didn't come on either. We had this same problem back in March and had someone come from Service 1 Heating & Air Conditioning come to service it. He said something had overheated which flipped a switch, sort of like a breaker, and that it had to be manually reset. He then swapped it out for an automatic one that wouldn't need to be manually reset if it happened again. He checked that it was working before he left, but then a couple days later when we tried to use it again it wouldn't turn on. I was going to call him back in the morning but by the time morning rolled around the heater was working.

I thought maybe the same thing would happen this time so we waited a couple days to see if the heater would kick in. On the morning of the third day I went up into the attic and did the pilot light reset procedure to see if that would help. The reset procedure didn't seem to help, but while I was up there I noticed the heater was warm which got me to thinking that perhaps it was only the fan, not the heater, that wasn't working right. Even with the heater off I couldn't manually switch on the fan; every time I tried, nothing happened. So I thought maybe the overheating of the heater was due to the fan not blowing air through it. I turned off the heater, and later in the afternoon just before calling Service 1 Heating & Air Conditioning I tried turning on the fan one more time, and this time it worked! I still called because I don't think the guy fixed the actual problem back in March. I got their answering service so I left my name, address, and phone number. As of today I still have not received a call back.

Breakdown: Attack of the Alternator!

Last Friday night Treese drove down to visit me and my parents in Vallejo, but halfway down her battery light came on and a few minutes later her car lost all power and completely shut down. She was able to coast over onto the shoulder and while she was on the phone to our insurance company trying to get a tow truck sent out a CHP officer saw her and pulled over. This was a turn of good luck since he was able to help relay precisely where they were, since they were in the middle of nowhere not near any major city in the dark in the rain. He waited with her until the tow truck showed up, and towed her to a motel in Williams.

A few weeks prior to this her battery light had come on so she took it to O'Reilly and they said there was something wrong with her alternator. We had purchased the alternator from AutoZone only a couple years ago and it had a lifetime warranty so she took it in and they tested both it and the battery and said there was nothing wrong and to bring it back in the next time the battery light came on. Well, the next time was when she was 100 miles from home coming to visit me.

The next morning I drove up to meet her along with my dad. We got the tow truck to come out and the driver wanted to try jumping it first to see what would happen. The car started up and idled for a bit, and there was no strange sights or sounds from the alternator so he thought it might be a bad battery. We drove it to a nearby. She drove it to a nearby Napa Auto Parts while we followed behind. Once there, they tested the alternator and battery, and both read as fine. After a minute idling they re-tested the battery and it was significantly lower than the first reading, which lead him to believe the battery was dead. We also got that battery from AutoZone not too long ago so it was also under warranty. We then drove to an AutoZone that was about 15 minutes away.

Once we got to the AutoZone we explained the situation and the guy came out to test the car. The battery read as pretty low, but other than that they both read fine. After a minute he tested the alternator again and this time it wasn't giving the numbers it should have been. He determined that the alternator was definitely bad, but only intermittently which is apparently very rare. So since we couldn't simply exchange the alternator, we had to buy a new one and then we'd get refunded once we turned in the old one. He called around trying to find someone who could replace it for us but nobody was available. The earliest we could get is a Tuesday appointment in Vallejo, not even in the town we were in or any of the nearby towns. So we tried to make it to Vallejo.

About 20 minutes in all the lights on her dash lit up again so we pulled off on the next off-ramp and called for a tow truck. We had to wait a couple hours since they had to get someone who could tow it 70-80 miles. It wasn't too bad, though, as the weather was nice. When the tow truck showed up and hauled away the car we followed behind until it had to get off and onto the truck scales. We had it towed to my grandparents house since there wasn't a lot of room at my parents house. Then on Tuesday morning we were able to drive it over to Pep Boys and drop it off. When we picked it up later that afternoon they said they also found a nail in one of the tires so patched that as well. Later in the day we both headed back to Redding, with me following behind Treese just in case she had to pull over again, but we made it home with no problems. Let's hope this new alternator lasts longer than the last one.