funnystrange.com

This morning I took Undersea Mah Jongg to the South Austin Mazda dealership to have the left rear window fixed. Normally I'd prefer an independant mechanic. But Peggy had called around yesterday, and had determined that the dealership is the best place to have a repair like this done quickly. So to the dealership I went. They open at 7 but I wasn't moving that fast this morning, and the drive took longer than expected (Austin is big!) so I got there just before 8.

Everybody there was into UMJ. The mechanics all came out to look, several asked me questions, and some of them took photos. I was a little concerned that at a dealership I'd get the "what's wrong with you, how could you do that to your car" reaction, but they weren't like that at all. The woman who mainly helped me was aware of the Austin art car event last weekend, so I told her a bit about the one in Houston.

In the waiting room I had a nice conversation with a woman who talked a lot about wishing she could decorate her car like that for her disabled son, who loves Finding Nemo. It was kind of sad though, because she said she lives in low income housing, where there are a lot of vandals. And she knows that any art she added to her car would be destroyed in short order. We talked about it and eventually she came to the idea of decorating her son's room like UMJ, but with the toys on the walls and hanging from the ceiling. I think that's a great idea.

Later on a guy came over and talked to me about UMJ with great enthusiasm, both for the art and the car. He said that the 626 from the early 90s is a great car, especially the manual transmission. I could only agree that mine has done really well for me. (Despite the problems of the past week, I still love my car!) He even started talking about doing an art car of his own! He said he has 15 cars (!) and he was thinking a Prelude from 91-94 would be good for an art car. I have to say, of all the responses I might have expected at the dealership, that was definitely not one of them.

They had a little dog in a nice pen right next to the service entrance, with grass, a doghouse and even a fountain. The dog's name is Chatto and if you go anywhere near his pen, he brings out a tennis ball for you to play fetch with him.

But anyway, about the window. They tested it and found the problem (window rolls down but not up) just like we did. So they got inside the door to find out what part needed to be replaced. Once the door was apart, the window started to function normally again! They had the car for a couple of hours and weren't able to duplicate the problem again. I tried it before I left and sure enough, the window works fine now.

They said there were a couple of possible reasons: 1 (preferable but less likely): There was a bit of schmutz or something blocking the motor, which was jarred loose when they took the door apart and is no longer a problem. 2 (which they seemed to think was more likely) there's a bad spot on the motor, so it works OK most of the time but will get stuck if it rotates around and hits that bad spot. The guy who talked to me for such a long time said that if it happens again, we should try pulling both buttons at once or alternating them, to see if we can jar the motor loose from the bad spot.

It's all Greek to me, but as long as the window works I'm happy! Just in case, I'm not going to open it again until parade day. If it gets stuck again, we can pry it up like we did before, and just leave it closed until we get back to Durham.

She charged me $50, which she said was half off the diagnostic charge because they weren't able to identify the problem. I can't complain about it since they did have to take the door apart. If it were my regular mechanic I would have, if not expected, at least hoped not to be charged in this situation. But since they had never seen me before & knew they never will again, I think it was fair.