I Regret Listening to Them
I had a ‘99 Miata that I loved. It was the most fun thing I’ve ever owned with nice coil-overs and sticky tires. One day, I noticed my oil gauge was doing wonky things. It was jumping from 0 pressure to normal randomly. I actually drove back to where I was parked to see if there was oil on the ground. Nope. I looked it up and everyone said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. The oil gauges in these cars are mainly for show. If you change your oil regularly, you’re fine.” Oh, how I regret listening to those fools. Apparently, a lot can happen in between oil changes because one day, maybe two months after my oil gauge started acting up, I’m driving and suddenly, “TICK. TICK. TICK. TICK. TICK,” like the loudest ticking I’d ever heard. I gave it a rev and it went, “TICK. TICK. TICK.TICK.” I drive it home and check my oil levels. It’s at 0. Now I don’t know how this happened because I wasn’t leaking oil and some serious witchcraft had to be going on for me to burn that much oil in a convertible car and never smell or see it. But I refilled my oil and prayed that somehow it would go away even though I knew it wouldn’t.
I knew it was bad and my car didn’t have much time so I drove it to the DMV to get my motorcycle license to have a way of getting around while I figure out what’s wrong. As I pull into the DMV parking lot, I heard a loud crack and then my car turned off. The tow back to the mechanic cost $400 and was expensive because I requested a flatbed tow truck because my car is so low. But then they brought a regular tow truck and then told me, “Oh we can’t tow it with this truck. We need to get our flatbed,” which I had already said but apparently I still had to pay for their mistake. They quote me $4k for a new engine, which is almost as much as I paid for the car. I only paid the insanely expensive tow and did it myself, which cost me $1,200. But still, I could’ve saved $1,600, if I had just checked my dipstick when my oil gauge acted up. Now, I check my oil religiously on all my cars. th0maslv