Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Weekly Spending - 5/19/13 - 5/25/13

It's that time of the week once again...let's see how I did! My weekly spending for this week consists of the following:

Sunday 5/19:
None

Monday 5/20:
Charcoal Chimney Starter - $12 - $5 Amazon GC = $7

Tuesday 5/21:
None

Wednesday 5/22:
Gas - $20

Thursday 5/23:
Car Repairs - $300

Friday 5/24:
None

Saturday 5/25:
None

Total Week Spending: $327


This week was everything going really well with my extra spending for the week looking to come in under $50, until the check engine light decided to come on in my car on Wednesday. My car had trouble accelerating at times, and it took a few times on the gas pedal around 20-30MPH where I would have to let off the gas pedal and try again. It would work perfectly fine for stretches on the way home, but then this would happen again and I knew I had trouble.

I took it to Autozone immediately and had them do the check engine diagnostics so that they could get a reading on the error code. It said that I had either a faulty camshaft position sensor or a crankshaft position sensor. They said it would be OK to drive in the short term, but obviously I shouldn't bring it on the highway or do any long distance driving. I obviously did not plan on doing any of that and drove it straight home.

I did some research with my Dad to see if we would be able to do this ourselves, and it did seem relatively simple but they were both in awkward positions and unfortunately we didn't know exactly which one was malfunctioning. We decided it was best to just take it to a mechanic. Of course having great luck - the mechanic replaced the camshaft sensor and the car still had problem, it turned out that both of the sensors had gone faulty!

This was some pretty bad luck, but I guess it could have been much worse. This is the first major problem I have had with my car, and I'm around 62,000 miles (bought used at around ~28,000) so I can't complain. The total cost ended up being just shy of $300, putting a big dent into my monthly spending. I can't wait until I am able to move out, hopefully to a location much closer to work enabling me to commute with bike and drastically cut down on the car usage.

I also purchased a smaller version of a charcoal chimney starter off of Amazon for my camping trip next month. We already have the larger one, but this one is portable and should pay for itself by eliminating the need to buy lighter fluid. I had also filled up my tank for $20 on Wednesday morning. I'm definitely hoping next week goes much smoother, no major purchases are in the plans.

Photo Credits for this post: Pixabay

2 comments:

  1. Dang, that sucks about the car. I don't think I've ever had a car issue indicated by a sensor that didn't turn out to be the sensor rather than the supposed underlying problem. Nice job keeping the costs down!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, fingers crossed that there are no more car problems in the near future!

      And I have definitely been working on that, been skipping buying lunch a lot more. We'll see how badly I bust my monthly budget, haha

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