Well $*@% Me!

My first foray into fixing my car did not go over well. In a classic case of "this is what happens when things get old" I had two of the studs that hold the lugnuts onto the car snap off as I was taking the lugnuts off. Since a third one had previously snapped during a tire replacement 1.5 years ago, I was basically down to one lugnut to hold the tire on my car.

Yeah, not good.

There was no way in hell I was paying a tow truck $120+ to drive my car 3 miles, so I took a very nice and slow trip to the repair shop.

So the car is currently at the shop right now getting the studs replaced. Of course, there's more work that has to be done. It needs a brake job and the rotors have to be replaced as well, along with one of the other belts (A/c serpentine belt is ready to snap as well). Of course I'll have them replace the power steering belt that snapped and got me into this whole mess. To put it into perspective, I probably got Considering I got about 64,000 miles out of those rotors (they probably should have been done at my last tuneup but they were fine then), I really can't bitch too much. One could probably say I should have been paying attention to the belts and such, but in my defense, my car goes in for its tuneups every 30,000 miles anyway, but I don't drive as much as I used to, so the miles go up much slower. As of 1.5 years ago when I did the tuneup at 150,000 miles, all of these parts were fine.

It does mean a hit to the wallet, but it's one I can take. What I do take comfort in knowing is that all of this stuff is just what goes with owning a car, and not because I don't maintain it properly. I know that eventually I'm going to have to dump my current car for a new one, but this one hasn't breathed its last yet ;-)