I have owned an Epic Envoy for some years now. It's a good car and I like driving it, but it is rather small. Only a 4 seater really though you can shoe horn 5 into it. I have found that it just isn't big enough for my needs at times so I decided to buy a new car, well, new for me. I found just the thing, a 1983 Chevy Capris Stationwagon. Seats 8 with seat belts and can carry lots of stuff. It has a roof rack to let it carry even more. No question that it was a good buy.

The first sign that anything was wrong came when I went to start the car one day and nothing happened. Not so much as a single wrr. No click of the solenoid. Nothing! My first thought was that the solenoid had died so I called up Bob, a friend who knew something more about cars than I did, and the two of us when on an expedition to find the fault and fix it.

To test my theory, which my friend agreed was a good one, we had to take the starter motor out. Now this should be all of 5 minutes of work normally, but although the three wires that attach to the starter and the two bolts that hold it onto the frame all came off in minutes, we found a problem. The starter motor wouldn't fit through the space in the frame because it was too big. We tried turning this way and that and no matter what, it was always just a bit too large. After about 15 minutes of struggling with it, we gave up and started to dismantle the engine around it to make the space. We took the cover off the fly wheel and then we unbolted the exhaust manifold and dropped that down to make space and finally we turned the starter upside down and twisted it to have the solenoid come through first and with a bit of tugging and pulling it came out. Almost landing on my friends head as it came loose suddenly. By this time we had spent close to half an hour.

Now that we had the starter off, we were able to replace it with another starter we had sitting there. It only took us a couple minutes to get it pushed through and we could bolt it in place. Then we had to put the exhaust back and the cover on. In all it took us about twelve minutes to get it back in. So now we went to try the car and to our surprise, nothing had changed. No grind of gears, no whir, no click, nothing!

Well, we got out the repairs handbook for the car, a thing we were lucky enough to have gotten with the car. We looked under trouble shooting and came up with the possible problems. It could be the wiring at any point in the ignition system, it could be the neutral start switch which prevents you from starting in gear, or it could be the ignition switch or the starter motor. Well, one possible answer was illuminated.

Next step was to check the neutral start switch by running a wire from one side of it to the other so as to bypass it all together. We tried, it made no difference at all. Next we tried to find a fault in the wires. Carefully we traced all the wires. There was power right through to the neutral start switch. The only thing past that was the ignition switch. I was not thrilled to find this out since to get at the switch you have to pull the steering wheel and we didn't have a puller to do that. This was going to be a garage problem.

I phoned up Patriot Motors since they were the dealer in our area. They told me it was a $25.00 part but the labor would be $80 to $100. What could I do? We hot wired the car to drive it over and left it there. We were told to come back the next day. When we did, the bill was for $145.00 rather than the $125.00 that they had indicated was the top end of what it would cost. The thing that really hurt was that I had read over the procedure for replacing the switch on my car and it was simple. You needed the puller which I didn't have, but with that the whole operation should have taken no more than fifteen minutes. That meant that either they had been too incompetent to do the job in the time the manual said it should take, or they charged us for a quarter hour at a rate of $480/hour. Actually my friend told me that they likely charged one hour minimum, so they billed us at a rate of $120/hour and had us pay for a forty-five minute coffee break. At least that's how I see it.

You know, this is the point that one starts wondering just how good a deal the car was. But, with the ignition switch fixed, all that seemed to be needed was a tune up. Even with the bill I had just paid the car was still a bargain, though not as much of one as it had been before. So I called up Randy, a mechanic who worked out of his truck, and he said he would do a full tune up for $100. In no time at all he was here and working on the car. About forty-five minutes later the job was done. He turned on the car and listened. There was a sound that shouldn't be there. He listened closely as if for effect and then turned to me and said, "You've got a worn cam there."

I waited a minute expecting something more to be said, but when it became apparent he had said all he was going to I asked, "Can you fix it?"

"Nope. I don't do that sort of work."

"How much should it cost for me to get it fixed?" I asked.

"It'll cost you about $700 to $800 to get it fixed. That or you could replace the whole engine for about $1200."

I looked at him, thoughts of having wasted the $245 I just spent ran through my head. "I see." it was all I could think of to say. Then a thought crossed my mind. "What if I had an engine that could be grabbed out of another car to replace the one in this car?" I was hopeful.

"Well, that would be a simple swap. I know a place that would do it for about $180."

At last, something I could live with. I got the number of the place and a name, Sam. I thanked Randy and called up Bob. As it happened, he owned a Chevy Stationwagon that was the same year as mine, but the frame was rusted out so he was going to scrap it. I asked him if he minded my using the engine out of it and he said that would be fine. I knew that the engine was good in it, just the frame had fallen apart.

I phoned up Sam, the owner of a place called Auto Base Collision and he told me that it would cost $320 and I could bring the cars in on Thursday, just 3 days from then. Not the price I had expected but still in all, it was a price I was willing to pay if it was the end of my car problems. I called up a tow truck to get the beater towed down and drove my own car over. Sam wasn't in and the fellow who was there said he couldn't do it for less than $400. I argued that Sam had said $320, but he just looked blank and said "Sam isn't here and I won't do it for less than $400." He didn't budge one inch.

Having already towed the car down, I wasn't in a good position to argue, so I agreed even though I didn't like it one bit. I was told the car would be ready on Monday so I left. Come Monday afternoon I headed down to pick up my car, but when I got there the hood was up and no one was around. Looking under the hood I could tell there was a lot of work left to be done.

A fellow noticed me looking at the car and asked if he could help me so I inquired as to the state of things. He said the mechanic who had been working on the car had gone home early and I would have to wait until the next day to pick it up. I was unimpressed, but what could I do? I went home.

Tuesday I phoned first thing in the morning and was told that the car would be ready by noon. I caught a ride down at 12:30 to find the mechanic working on the engine. "How soon will it be ready?" I asked.

"In about an hour." he said, "the engines were totally different and I have had to take apart all the linkage, all the belts and all the hoses and I had to replace it all. A lot of extra work!" he continued. I could see the price tag rising and I didn't like the look of it. He went on to say, "With all this extra work that I didn't know I was going to have to do, I'm going to have to charge you an extra $50.00, that's just for parts, I gave you my quote so I won't add to the labor charges."

There I stood, not knowing enough to even know if anything he had just said made any sense at all and certainly not able to tell if I was being taken for a ride. I was suspicious, but once again, what could I do? I asked if there was a coffee shop near by and he directed me to a hotel a block away. SO I went to sit and have a few cups of coffee while I waited. I returned an hour later and found him still working.

At this point I decided I would try standing and watching him to see if maybe he would work a little faster. Finally at 2:15 he was finished. It cost me $450.00 and more than a little stress. I got in and turned the car on, there was a squeal from under the hood. I asked what that was and the mechanic popped the hood to see. He took a spray bottle and wet the belts down with whatever it contained. A strange thing to do, but though it left me feeling uneasy I couldn't say that there was anything wrong with it or not.

The mechanic then said that the squeal would go away quickly, it was just "parts settling in" and nothing to be worried about. I was real dubious but since I couldn't say for sure that I was being taken for a ride I just nodded a non-commitment and put the car in gear and began to drive away. I found that that the steering was like wrestling a bull so I stopped and backed up and called the guy back. "What's with the steering?"

Looking at me with a blank look he responded, "Wasn't it stiff when you brought it in?"

"No it was not! I want to know what the trouble is." and I turned the car off, popped the hood again, and got out. "You know perfectly well that the steering wasn't like this because it would take a Sumo Wrestler to turn this wheel the way it is."

He looked under the hood, poked around a bit and then announced, "You just need to put some power steering fluid in because it's a bit low." Now in my mind, that should have been a part of what was done in the engine swap. Top up any of the fluids that might be low. But I was fed up enough that I didn't feel it was worth it to argue the point. I got back into the car and turned the ignition and the starter went "wrr ... wrr ... wrrwrrwrr ...". I was NOT impressed. I looked at the mechanic and asked him why my car suddenly wouldn't start.

He checked the battery cables and did whatever mechanics do under the hood and after a bit he ventured, "It must be the starter motor, the old one didn't fit so we had to swap noses before putting it in." By this time I was more than feed up with these excuses and I really suspected that the guy was making things up as he went along and praying on my lack of mechanical knowledge to get away with it.

"So fix it." I said.

"I'll have to go and pick up a rebuilt from the auto parts shop and it will cost you about $45 for parts, no charge for labor." I just glared at him and told him to do it. It was now 2:40. By the time the guy got back it was 3:00. It took another 15 minutes or so for him to swap the starter and I left just about 3:20 after a total cost of $495.00 for the whole job. A tiny bit higher than the $180 that Randy had thought it would be.

I drove down the street a block and into a service station where I asked the guy to top up my power steering fluid and check everything else. He checked the level and informed me that there was not a single drop of power steering fluid. In fact, everything was low or empty. The radiator was only half full, oil was down a quart, transmission fluid needed to be topped up. Lucky I only drove a block!

Yep, this car was a real bargain when I bought it. To bad the bargain didn't last longer. Now you might think that by now everything that was going to happen with this car would have happened. You might think that, but you would be wrong. Not more than a week after I got it back on the road it started to rain and I found out the windshield wipers didn't work! I can't have a fair weather car, it just isn't any good to me. So I went down to an auto wreaker and bought a replacement wiper motor. That was another $40 down the tubes but it would have cost me more if I had bought a rebuilt. Put the new motor on and it STILL didn't work. Now if it isn't the motor then the ONLY thing it could be is the switch. I tried calling around and everyone agreed that I'd have to go to a dealer to get a replacement switch. So it was back to Patriot Motors to see what the switch would cost me. I had visions of $20 or $30 and was none to happy about that but when I called they told me something that left me speechless. The switch for a wiper with delay for my car was $159.00 and tax! That's about $170 after tax!

Now understand that this is JUST a switch. There are no electronics in it at all. It should cost about a dollar or maybe even two to make it. How do they justify charging that much for it? Well, the answer is that you can't buy them from any other source but the dealers and you can't do without them in rainy weather so you either buy a new one or sell your car. They charge what the market will bare. How they can do it without being kept awake at nights raked with guilt I'll never know, but they get away with it because people have no choice.

I decided that I was going to try a different approach. I got together with Bob and we built a switch from simple parts in an electronics store. Not so elegant but it would work. Flip the toggle on and the motor would go, flip it off and the wipers would stop wherever they were and then you pressed a button and they would park themselves. It worked and wasn't too much of a hassle. Especially when you compared the $20 it cost for the switches and wire and case to make it look nice and all with the $170 the "right way" would have cost.

The trouble was, it STILL didn't work! Now we were sure the switch was right and we tried it out on a work bench with a car battery, the motor and the switch. It worked on the bench but not in the car. This had us puzzled for a while until we realized that what it had to mean was that the replacement motor was also no good. Sometimes parts from an auto wreaker don't work, they are sold basically as is. This time I went to an automotive parts dealer and bought a rebuilt motor with warranty. Cost was $60. Guess what? Not only did our home made switch work with it, but the original switch worked too. So now I have the correct switch doing what it's supposed to do and the wipers are working fine.

I can only hope that there will be nothing else go wrong. Oh, I still need a tune up since the new engine is in need of one. That means the car will have cost me $960 to get it into shape. When you realize I only spent $400 to buy it, you'll see why I don't feel like I got quite the bargain I had thought it was when I bought it.

But I have always gone for the bargains, it seems I never learn. For example, I wanted a vegetable slicer/dicer sort of thing. There was a nice hand cranked one that would do all I wanted. Die cast steel construction, high precision, wonderful kitchen aid but it cost a lot of money. Then I saw the same machine for a quarter of the price. This one was made of molded plastic with stainless steel blades. I bought it. I discovered that it lacked the strength and precision required to actually do the job well. It's under my kitchen cupboard with a dozen other plastic imitations of quality kitchen tools. I saved a fortune on them all, but I have almost never used any of them because they work so poorly.