Ugh with a sidebar of people are idiots…
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First, the ugh…
Karla’s 2021 Honda Pilot died Monday afternoon. The timing belt (which was replaced last March, 25K miles ago) snapped and tore the hell out of the valves.
On the plus side, when I broke my own rules about buying a new car in 21, I went ahead and broke a second one.. We bought the extended powertrain warranty. I normally never buy an extended warranty, but we figured that we were investing so much into the vehicle, and considering how many miles she puts on it in a year, the extra cost would be negligible by the mile and even if we didn’t need it, the peace of mind would be helpful. One of the things that I confirmed with them at the time of purchase was that the maintenance did not need to be done by a dealer, it just needed to be documented. So we’ve had some of the more expensive maintenance like the timing belt done by our regular mechanic.
Now the warranty folks are slightly balking… They asked for the documentation this morning, but they might give us an issue and blame the local mechanic stating it was their fault, which maybe it was. Of course, the local mechanic is blaming the part, which is the Honda recommended belt… This is about to become a little ugly.
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On the people are idiots sidebar: The breakdown occurred right outside the plaza where Karla was picking up Finley from a class. She was in the far left lane of the two lane exit/entrance to the plaza at a stop light. She has that damn automatic idle engine start/stop on her car, and when she went the light turned green, the engine wouldn’t start. There was no way to push it onto the median and no way to shift it to neutral anyway, so she put out two small cones and turned on her hazards. She ran over to get Finley and Trey went back to the car to wait for me and the tow.
When I got there, I pulled them over to the parking lot as the cars even in the turn lanes were driving way too fast, and it wasn’t safe for them to be in the vehicle. Then I went back to kind of direct traffic around, because there were way too many people that simply couldn’t comprehend there was a vehicle with cones and hazards on broken down in front of them. That lasted 15 minutes, during which 8 cars nearly took themselves out driving way too fast and nearly going into the Pilot (there was a clear line of sight, and there was still another left turn lane, and plenty of space before the light to go around). After the 8th car nearly wiped us out, I went back to the parking lot and watched. It was astounding. One time there was a car behind the vehicle for 3 minutes with no other cars around. I walked back over, and there was an early 20 something texting away not even realizing the car in front was broken down or that she had missed her lights. Another time I went back over because there was an elderly lady sitting there for 5 minutes. I walked back over, and she saw me and made sure her door was locked (I was in a suit, with my dress coat, btw). I got in front of the car and tried waiving her around, telling her that she needed to go around. She sunk down in her seat, scared. I tried to motion for her to roll down the window while standing like 30 feet away. She just looked at me with a panicked look. Finally, I just looked at her and started yelling like a loon and monster walking towards the car. She panicked and drove around…
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The timing belt was replaced last year at 100K miles.
