Whats rustling your jimmies?

Hoss

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Just don't take cats to the vet. I spend tons of money on my dogs, but the cats rarely cost anything. Most of them have the decency to run away and die in the woods when they get sick.
 
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Koushirou

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When our cat would not eat it was just over $1K for blood work , knockout juice (he's almost rabid at the vet- hates it) and the meds to get him straight.

Wife's car was $1,400 for new breaks/rotors/oil change and transmission service. Unfortunately you have to maintain vehicles or they will let you down. Did you look and see if that pothole drove part of the sheet metal of the car onto your tire, that would make it do all of that?
I tried looking under there, but I'll be honest, I'm extremely lacking in the automotive knowledge area. There were some other shitty symptoms that were already happening (naturally a month or so after all that maintenance) that I thought maybe I was just imagining, but also got worse after the pothole. Hitting the breaks intermittently causes the car to kind of shudder and then the "whirr" I hear in the cabin when driving between like 35-55mph is much, much louder than it used to be. Taking it in tomorrow to a small place in town I've used before that hasn't raked me over the coals.
 
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Unidin

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I tried looking under there, but I'll be honest, I'm extremely lacking in the automotive knowledge area. There were some other shitty symptoms that were already happening (naturally a month or so after all that maintenance) that I thought maybe I was just imagining, but also got worse after the pothole. Hitting the breaks intermittently causes the car to kind of shudder and then the "whirr" I hear in the cabin when driving between like 35-55mph is much, much louder than it used to be. Taking it in tomorrow to a small place in town I've used before that hasn't raked me over the coals.
Depending on where you live, some cities have pothole damage claims you can file. I'm in Seattle and popped a tire and the city covered about half of it because they were older tires.
 

Janx

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Depending on where you live, some cities have pothole damage claims you can file. I'm in Seattle and popped a tire and the city covered about half of it because they were older tires.
Seattle you say? Should have claimed it also destroyed your heroin. Then when you get the heroin say you cant really have heroin without narcan so you get that too. Then you take the heroin and give it to some shabby homeless guy and, once he hits the perfect state of high, narcan them back to the reality of them being homeless.
 
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Kajiimagi

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Further rustle... Kajiimagi Kajiimagi

Who doesn't do their own car maintenance?
Everything you listed would have cost $250 in your driveway with a couple hours of your time. Fuck, I'd do it for free for you.
Well if you want to come to Nevada , come here I'll take you up on it. At one point in my life I thought I wanted to be a mechanic. Then I realized I cannot stand to be greasy. Now I gladly pay someone else to be greasy for me.

And yeah my bad on break/brake, I know better !
 

Fucker

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I knew there were going to be initial costs with the new adopted kittens, but had to take all three cats to the vet Monday for bloody diarrhea in one and laryngitis in my older cat. Had to bring along the second kitten just in case the other still has worms to get them both dewormer, since they won't prescribe it without seeing the animal first. All in all, a cool $800 I didn't want to spend, but it is what it is.

Come home today from errands and hit a tiny pothole on the road...now my car is rattling, shuddering when I break, and making a loud ass thumping noise constantly in the back. I've already taken this thing for $1k in maintenance this year, and god knows what the fuck just happened to it now. I feel like the Ben Affleck meme every day. Every time I try to relax just a bit, just get piled on with more anxiety-inducing shit. Was expecting to have to tighten the purse quite a bit to finish paying off Sansa's final bills and then the starter costs for the new kittens, but figured I was out of the woods on the damn car already this year.

I know, I know...shouldn't have gotten more animals.
I had warranty work done on a vehicle. They put on new rotors and pads all the way around. Put maybe 1.5k miles on it. Parked it in garage for 2 months. Brakes making awful grinding noise out of nowhere. Looked at rotors and they pitted under the pads. Not even a year old, 1500 miles, and ruined sitting in a dry garage. Dealership put on no-name Chineseium crap.

Had to have new brakes replaced. No longer under warranty, went to my usual shop. $1200.

I was poor in college. Hit a spare tire holder on the highway. Knocked off entire exhaust system from the cat back. Couldn't avoid because traffic. Luckily found a shop that only charged labor. Guy said car wasn't worth spending money on and jerry-rigged it. The car was trash. Had to PAY a junk yard to take it. Found a little old Honda for cheap and that thing never broke.
 

Fucker

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Well if you want to come to Nevada , come here I'll take you up on it. At one point in my life I thought I wanted to be a mechanic. Then I realized I cannot stand to be greasy. Now I gladly pay someone else to be greasy for me.

And yeah my bad on break/brake, I know better !
Working on cars in driveway is great unless you have to be underneath it. Or things rusted together. Or you break a bolt.

I do some things in my garage, but if nope out if I have to get on the ground. I put sway bar on truck, but found two large rusted bolts that nothing I had could remove. Local shop took 30 minutes to remove them, and they used every trick in the book on them.
 

RobXIII

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Don’t have time to do it, don’t want to do it.

I think of it like I make X an hour, and is it worth doing something I kinda hate or paying someone to do it?

I did do my own oil to make sure the good stuff got in and I could wait 10k miles to repeat lol (before I got rid of the last gas car)

Reading this thread though, assuming people are close to my age, do you not have a huge amount saved up in a rainy day fund? It wouldn't surprise me, when I was in the military a TON of people who were in for 15+ years were *still* living paycheck to paycheck or in debt.
 

Aldarion

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Everyone always wants to make this about money. "I can afford to pay someone else!"

Some auto repairs are difficult or require lots of equipment. But changing your brake pads is quick, barely requires tools, and they're like the easiest part of the car to access.

Theres a lot of things like this in life, where the service professional pretend something is more complicated or difficult than it is, so they can rip you off charging you 4 hours of labor on a job that took them 20 minutes. They charge you the suckers price.

I hate paying the suckers price more than I hate spending an hour outside in the driveway.

You can put on a pair of gloves to avoid getting greasy. Nothing washes away the shame of paying the suckers price.
 
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Fucker

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I think of it like I make X an hour, and is it worth doing something I kinda hate or paying someone to do it?

I did do my own oil to make sure the good stuff got in and I could wait 10k miles to repeat lol (before I got rid of the last gas car)

Reading this thread though, assuming people are close to my age, do you not have a huge amount saved up in a rainy day fund? It wouldn't surprise me, when I was in the military a TON of people who were in for 15+ years were *still* living paycheck to paycheck or in debt.
Things I can do myself, I do myself. There's usually a 2-week wait for my local shop. That said, I haven't done much. Sway bar, side steps, and replaced a leaky fluid reservoir. A few other quick simple things.
 

Burren

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Everyone always wants to make this about money. "I can afford to pay someone else!"

Some auto repairs are difficult or require lots of equipment. But changing your brake pads is quick, barely requires tools, and they're like the easiest part of the car to access.

Theres a lot of things like this in life, where the service professional pretend something is more complicated or difficult than it is, so they can rip you off charging you 4 hours of labor on a job that took them 20 minutes. They charge you the suckers price.

I hate paying the suckers price more than I hate spending an hour outside in the driveway.

You can put on a pair of gloves to avoid getting greasy. Nothing washes away the shame of paying the suckers price.
Yes, that's true. Brakes are fairly easy. But, that doesn't mean everyone wants to do it, or feels comfortable doing it. I'm sure Koush could watch YouTube videos and follow along, but I'd wager that's not what she wants to do.
 

RobXIII

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A separate rustle: Got a new phone, and forgot to check my camera settings. All my summer vacation videos are in 4k30FPS and not 60FPS :(
 

Fucker

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Everyone always wants to make this about money. "I can afford to pay someone else!"

Some auto repairs are difficult or require lots of equipment. But changing your brake pads is quick, barely requires tools, and they're like the easiest part of the car to access.

Theres a lot of things like this in life, where the service professional pretend something is more complicated or difficult than it is, so they can rip you off charging you 4 hours of labor on a job that took them 20 minutes. They charge you the suckers price.

I hate paying the suckers price more than I hate spending an hour outside in the driveway.

You can put on a pair of gloves to avoid getting greasy. Nothing washes away the shame of paying the suckers price.
Brakes on some new cars requires dealership trip to reset something. Forgot what. Only dealership has the electronics to do it.

I did a driveway brake job ONCE when I was poor. Never again. It was an easy job, but still a PITA. No way I'd do a brake job on truck. None of the parts are small.

Local shop is excellent and well-priced. They charge a bit more than other shops, but they are excellent and fair. Only charged me 1 hour when they spent 2 hours tracking down a rattle. You get what you pay for. Their shop is clean and well organized. Could be on the cover of a Snap On tools catalogue. The other local shop looks like it hasn't been cleaned since the 50's, and that's no joke. These are the types of idiots who don't know what they are doing and throw parts at things. I looked it up. Looks like they went under a few years ago. Meanwhile other shop has 2 week wait.

Oil and other fluid changes I don't do. Here, the only place that accepts used oil is on the other side of the city. 1.5 hr drive there/back. Nah.
 

Koushirou

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Reading this thread though, assuming people are close to my age, do you not have a huge amount saved up in a rainy day fund? It wouldn't surprise me, when I was in the military a TON of people who were in for 15+ years were *still* living paycheck to paycheck or in debt.
I had about $15k saved up, but since I lost my job last year, it’s all gone. Was down to about $300 total in my bank accounts when I got my new job. That plus the divorce, gone from having a combined $150k/yr to only $92k/yr, since my new job was a chunky pay cut from my old one. I’ve gotten back up to about $1500 put in savings, but previous car maintenance this year plus cat illness/death hasn’t let me out away as much as I’d like to.

As for doing shit at home, I don’t know Jack shit about cars and sure while I could probably YouTube that shit, and have tried doing that more for things around my house vs. calling someone, I sure as hell don’t trust myself not to fuck up something and then careen off the road into a tree because my brakes don’t work. I’ll eat the shame on that one for sure. I am going to balls up and replace one of my taillights by myself. Progress.