Remember the post on Marlene's names for Spencer? Well, using that as our inspiration we named our car Chester Churchill. It's been a while since our car was named as a male so we've enjoyed the change. Chester was a very inexpensive car and we knew we were driving a narrow line in purchasing him. Chester is a 1990 Nissan Pintara and has a few quirks that we quickly discovered.
Firstly, Chester is losing energy...quickly. When we bought him we knew from the mechanic who did the inspection that his battery wasn't great. Knowing this we bought a new battery and just kept it in his boot until we needed it. This ended up being fairly soon as Spencer was switching in the new battery after a week or so. Sometimes after we would run his pathetic battery dead we wouldn't be able to get him started again. On one occasion we called our home teacher over to come give us a boost, and after a few minutes our car started. We left him running for 20 minutes and figured that would probably do us. Spencer drove into our garage and turned it off, but out of curiosity decided to try starting him again right away and nothing. Not even a sputter.
Following Dad's advice we got our car down to a shop that's just at the end of the block to test our alternator "ya, it's fine" but we never found out what fine meant and we're thinking that maybe fine meant, it's 20 years old...what do you expect? We have finally found our method for Chester's madness. We bought a battery charger and always have a spare battery in the boot (he's Australian) we frequently have to swap out our battery with the charged one before we can go on our way making sure to charge up the old one before our next trip.
Chester screams sometimes. Even though he's 100% Aussie, he hates roundabouts and tells us in a few ways. If we're steering a little sharp around a roundabout he screams in agony. Tires screeching with all roundabout turns and certain other curves in the road. He definitely gets us noticed. The other way he lets us know he hates roundabouts is by throwing a tantrum. Because of his lack of power, he can't handle any form of AC unless he's at full throttle. Therefore, if the AC is running and we slow down for a round about he decides to hold his breath. The other day we were on our way to a convert baptism and he decided to hold his breath right in the middle of the roundabout and then nothing. Car stalled, won't start, middle of the road. I hop out in my skirt and start pushing our car over to the side of the road but people aren't stopping so we can get over to the shoulder--THANKS!! Finally a nice guy in a big van blocks all the traffic so we can get across and by that time a nice man and his son had pulled over and helped us get the car over to the side pronto. We got Chester to the side, offered a few words of apology and he started right up. The guy gave us an extremely confused look before going on his way. My apologies to everyone who saw up my skirt.
As Chester's getting up there in years, not all of his connections are great. There's this mysterious wire leading from the battery that sometimes decides it doesn't want to be connected anymore. You turn the key and nothing...now some would think the battery is dead, but no no that is not the case with Chester. He's just teasing you. The best way we've found to flush out the problem is to flick on the lights and then start wiggling the wires and as soon as the lights come on, the car has power and you can now start trying to start the car. I had a 'proud mechanics daughter' moment when we were at the Williams house and I couldn't get Chester going. after fiddling wires and getting nothing I swapped out the battery and tried again, with nothing. Natalie came and sat in the drivers seat to try while I fiddled and I never got it to work. I decided to call for someone to give Ros and I a ride home so I slammed the hood and voila, that's all he needed. Thanks Nat for the inspiration to try again. Small victory for me though --I successfully swapped batteries!
Chester's last quirky secret is that he has a tattoo...a tramp stamp actually. A surprising number of people here buy chair covers for their cars, and Chester's last owner didn't recognize his gender and bought him chair covers with a big tramp stamp on them. Don't mock Chester, this is something he had no control over. But with all our fun times, it's come to the end and we need to sell Chester. If anyone's interested, he's only $650, and you get a car full of personality. Love to all.
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