I spoke with Waterloo Transmission on Friday about this freakin’ van. The have figured out most of the problem.

What I thought was the water pump was actually the A/C compressor or condenser. It was dark out and I’m not really a car guy. The bearings are shot and that’s casuing the belt to hang up which in turn affects the alternator.

They also figured out the check engine light and the stalling as well. Apparently, the other day a bulletin came through that described the exact problems that we have been chasing around for almost a year now. Turns out that something is wrong with the valve cover and something about oil seeping into the intake. Again, I’m not a car guy but I usedstand how that would be a bad thing.

They also got the rear brakes to mess up like we had been saying they were. They tried for over a weekbthe last time and couldn’t reproduce the issue and visually, everything checked out.

To their credit, Waterloo is fixing the engine at no cost. That will be a huge money saver there. We are so grateful for that. We do need to worry about the A/C condenser or compressor because that affects our ability to even drive the car. We will also need to deal with the rear brakes as well.

Dare I say that, hopefully, this will be it. We have replaced or rebuilt almost every major part, at least once now.

Either way, I’ll figure it out and Waterloo allows us to make payments. So it should be manageable.

On a humorous side note, we bought this van last year because we couldn’t afford a car payment. We have on average, been making payments of at least $180/month to the shop for all the repairs to this thing on and off for most of the year. My attempts to avoid a car payment seem to have backfired. Sigh