I've been putting off taking the car in, and when I took it to Auto Zone to have their technicians read the error message, they said, "It looks like it's something with your O2 sensor or the fuel injectors ... maybe it's not a big deal. It will just affect your gas mileage and you'll probably fail emissions so you'll have to get it fixed then."
I realized I had a coupon for a free check engine light scan and some free labor at a local car dealership, so I brought it in this morning. It's Spring Break so I don't need to take Sadie to school. When they looked at the error message, the car mechanic said something along the lines of, "It's a brand-specific error message and we can't do anything with it. You need to take it to a Nissan dealership to have it looked at."
They gave me the number for the Nissan dealership in Orem and they were able to take me in right away! Part of me wanted to grumble inwardly, but ... seriously? There are people out there who can fix my car and it's spring break! There's nothing else I need to be doing and we could turn it into an adventure! Carmen could play around the mall, which is approximately six bajillion times better than
The Nissan guys were pretty nice and it sounded like whatever was going on with our car was probably covered under our warranty. (A word to the wise: you probably don't need to buy an extended warranty on your vehicle. This is how most car dealerships make tons of extra money. We were foolish car buyers impulse-buying a car at 9:30 pm. DON'T DO IT.) Aaaaaanywhooooo.
A few hours later, I got a phone call from the Nissan guy. All I really understood was, "Error messages all point to ... probably transmission ... whole thing might need to be replaced ... covered under Nissan's extended warranty for their CVT transmissions ... things we need to do ... keep your car ... drive it for 150 miles ... requirements for warranty service ... with your permission ..." and I was like, "Uh-huh, uh-huh .... keep it until tomorrow? Okay, I'll just need a ride home ... Of course you can drive it ... it's covered? That's great ... Uh-huh ... thanks." and I hung up, kind of in a daze.
Well. Transmission. Yuck.
So let me tell you a little something I learned about our transmission a few years ago! You may have noticed I called it a "CVT" transmission. It's not standard. The less-technical explanation is that a standard transmission is where you switch gears and stuff (first gear to fifth gear). Even in automatics, you can feel the car switch gears as you speed up. If you watch the RPM thing in your car, you'll see it go up to someodd thousand RPMs, then the car will switch gears and the RPMs will go down. With a CVT, you never see that happen because instead of switching gears, it's like a cone. It's really cool, because our car actually gets better gas mileage the faster it goes.
Like, we get better gas mileage going 80 mph than we do going 65 mph. Weeeeeeird.
Apparently it's obnoxious to work with and repair and replace (because it's a newish technology?) so all Nissans with a CVT transmission have an extended warranty on the transmission. So I think the repair would've been covered without the dumb extended warranty we fools got when we bought our car. ;)
So I guess we're carless until tomorrow. Oh, well, I don't need to do any grocery shopping and it looks like the weather's going to be nice this week so I won't miss the car too much no matter how long we need to go without a vehicle.
I'm so glad we bought this house. We're a mile from Mark's work, a little less than a mile from the library (which is on the way to Mark's work), across the street from the gym, and near several parks.
Seriously. Ideal. Love it.
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