I awoke Sunday morning in stages, as an increasingly urgent call raised me from the depths of sleep. It took a few seconds for the intruding stimulus to register: who is that laying on their car horn in front of our house?! The horn went on and on, until I grudgingly decided to investigate. Of course, as soon as I threw off the covers, it stopped.
Ah, probably some drunk who got turned around and thinks he’s serenading his girlfriend, I thought. Or, perhaps, I dreamed. I crawled back in bed…and it started again.
This time, I hopped up a bit more energetically, pulled on a pair of pants and stumbled to the front door, where my father-in-law was peering out onto the driveway, casting a baleful eye at the culprit, his own ’93 Chrysler Concorde.
“It’s your car that’s doing that?!”
“Yeah, it’s gotten to where it does that every now and then.”
“Oh, great. But you don’t know what causes it?”
“Well, it’s probably a short of some kind.”
At that point the noise stopped. I remarked that if it went off again, we were going to have to do something (as I had just seen the beam of a neighbor’s flashlight wash angrily across our drive); otherwise, we’re going to have the whole neighborhood marching on us.
We closed the door to the silence, and I almost made it back to the bedroom before it started a third time. I ran into the garage, hit the door opener while grabbing a set of Channel Locks, sprinted to the driveway, popped the hood and disconnected the battery cable, thereby quieting the clamorous beast forever. Or at least until daylight.
Did I mention the barking dogs?
With things temporarily under control, I returned to bed, noting the time for my testimony in the upcoming trial — 3:47 a.m. Sleep came back as grudgingly as I initially left it.
A few hours later, after breakfast, we reconnected the battery and pulled the fuse that controls the horn, radio amp, and cigarette lighter. My father-in-law will have to light up while listening to Rush in some other vehicle, at least until he gets the car to the shop to have the short fixed. We thought about disconnecting the horn, but have you looked under the hood of a car lately?
The good news is that none of my neighbors has left any threatening notes or phone calls, although I have an uneasy feeling about the dead goat hanging from the oak tree in the front yard. Ah, some drunk satanist probably got turned around and left it in the wrong place.
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I had a 93 Pontiac Sunbird that started doing that-when it was really cold. Oh, that was not good. Out in PJ’s at 3 AM trying to unfreezed the car to get in and shut it off.
Let’s just say we didn’t own that car for long after that.
Ooh, there’s a trend playing out here: 1993. That’s the year of the Concorde. Wonder what happened in ’93 that caused the balky horn circuits? 😉
Yeah, it could have been worse…at least the weather was nice!
i have looked under the hood of my car lately: and then quickly shut it again. the most “maintenance” i’ve done on my car consisted of replacing my air filter and headlamp bulbs (which was surprisingly difficult).
HOWEVER! i did learn something fairly interesting recently, which is worth relating. about two months ago i noticed my blinkers did not work. after dreading the cost of taking it into the shop (and confidence from my successful handiwork on the headlamps), i decided to try and fix it myself. i got online to look up possible fixes, and to my surprise and doubts of “no way this will actually work”, the internet forum i searched provided an answer, and i fixed my blinkers using…. (drum roll)… WD-40!
that’s right, a little wd-40 sprayed into the emergency lights and pumped up and down several times did the trick. apparently gunk gets built up in there. i was amazed, although not confident enough to replace the $500 evaporation sensor that went out shortly thereafter. (any connection??? hmmm.)
The fun thing about Jennifer’s Sunbird was that when I got the door open and scrambled inside, I found that the horn was working backwards.
As in, “press the center of the wheel to *stop* the noise.” I don’t think my neighbors found that as amusing as I did at the time. I had to test it a few times to make sure that’s what was really happening.
Then, had to lean on the horn (to keep it quiet) while flipping through the manual to find the right fuse to pull. Ah, joy.
Kyle, you didn’t read the fine print on the WD-40 can? May wreak havoc on evaporation sensors when applied to turn signals. I thought everyone knew about that. 😉
Brian, sometimes I think the UAW is just messin’ with our heads.
It’s so cool to know which fuse to pull for the horn.
Great title, btw. 🙂
Just blame it all on the previous guest.
The minute I read “Concorde” I thought of the short-lived Concorde commercial that still makes me giggle to this day – with the little girl asking her mom why she’s named Savannah and the mother explains that that’s where she was made and then the girl looking at her little sister and going “Eeww” and then you pull to see the rear of the car with “Concorde” spelled across it and hear the mom saying, “No honey, it’s in New Hampshire.”
Anyway, that said, I try to avoid peering into the vast and mysterious wonders under the hood of my car at all costs. I strongly feel that’s why God invented people who become mechanics.
I agree great title. I thought we were in for a post on the Bulwer Litton contest.
One interesting about headlamps. When I had a Toyota Tercel, there was no way to remove the big lamps without taking out the grill. (Really stupid design.)
Now with just replacing the bulbs on my current cars, the job is much easier.
Of course my best (worst) self repair story was when my brother and I decided that we’d do our own oil change. I found the valve that I thought drained the oil. What came out wasn’t black and sludgy. We re-checked what we did. It was the transmission fluid. I got the car towed and learned an important lesson. Stick to the lights.
Beth, I had forgotten about that commercial…very funny!
SD, oil changes were one thing that I was comfortable handling myself, until the disposal of the old oil and filters became problematic. Well, that and the fact that cars — non-SUVs, anyway — began to lose ground clearance, and they were engineered so that you needed a NASA-styled tool to reach the filter. At that point, I determined the hassle factor of DIYing wasn’t worth the few bucks I saved.
So *that’s* where my goat went!
Ah, go ahead and keep it. I can’t feed it spinach any more.