The air conditioner in my car has a slow link in the coolant tank. It usually takes about a year or more for all the coolant to leak out. I took it to the dealership several years ago to get it recharged and to see if they could find where the leak was.
They recharges the coolant and put a dye in the tank which was to show where the leak was. It didn’t show anything. I was told it might be in the dash board. If it was it would be really expensive to fix. He added if the recharge last like a year or so to just recharge it each year. If it stops working in a month then the dash board option might come into play. Turns out it takes like a year to leak out. In fact I got two years out of it this time because last summer was so cool.
I decided to try some place other than the dealership. First to see if maybe some other place could find the leak but mostly I wanted to see if it would be cheaper some place else.
I decided to take it to Meineke. I looked on line and found a couple of places near my house. I’m glad I did a little research on what was around the locations closest to my house. The one that was closest was out in the middle of no where. There was another one in Silver Spring. It was right near the shops and restaurants and the movie theater and only a short walk to the Metro. I decided to make an appointment there. And I’m glad I did.
I set up an appointment for 7:30 on Saturday. It was the first appointment of the day. It didn’t take very long to get there in part because it was so early in the morning. I actually drove past it and went to the are where the shops were to see how far it was from the shop. Not far at all. More than five but less than a ten minute walk.
Took a little to get into the parking lot. It was in back and you had to go down an alley which served as an entrance for a parking lot. Part of the problem was there was a sign but the Meineke name had long since fallen off of it.
I checked in. Gave all the pertinent information. I was told it would be right around $160. I should come back in an hour and a half. I walked to the Dunkin Donuts that is near the Silver Spring Metro stop. I got there looked in and there were no donuts to be seen. It looked like they had muffins but no donuts. Really no donuts. That’s nuts.
I walked back up to where all the other eateries were. I ended up eating at Eggspectation. I had french toast and bacon. It was really good. I wondered around a little after that. I still had some time. I decided I would see a movie after the car got fixed. So I looked for parking garages. The garages around there are operated by the county and are free on the weekends.
I headed back around 9:30. This is when the complications started. In a nut shell the recharging went just fine. But they still couldn’t get cold air to come out. They did a little investigating and determined that the fan was not functioning properly. There’s one fan use it to heat the car. But when you cool the car the fan amps up a notch and it wasn’t doing that. So I needed a new fan. And they needed a couple of hours to get the fan and install it. And around another $400 to do that.
I headed off to see a movie. I saw Minions which I’ll talk about later but I will say I thought was funny. After the movie, I had lunch. Then I wondered around a little stopping off at City Sports to look at shoes. I then got a call from the shop. My car was all ready to go.
I went back and picked up the car. First thing I did was turn on the air conditioning and in very short order cold air came out.
Success!
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