Keep up with Maintenance!
Well, it could have turned out a whole lot worse. Roxanne started running all sorts of crappy as I was driving a couple days ago. I had her towed down to Vol-Tech for further investigation.
Fortunately it just turned out to be a coil pack that had died causing a bunch of misfiring in cylinder 5. They did stumble across another issue though, the Timing Belt. Granted I should have had this checked out sooner myself as there are now 140,000 miles + on the vehicle, but I'm just glad it was caught in time. There were cracks big enough to stand a dime up in.
For those of you that don't know, this engine has an interference head. Meaning if you don't have the timing belt to keep the piston from destroying the valves, well you're screwed. All in all it ran me about $900, but it's a price I'll gladly pay to not have to replace an engine in a vehicle I still owe $5000 on. I dealt with that once already and that was enough for my tastes.
Anyway, long story short, keep up with recommended maintenance.
For those of you that don't know, this engine has an interference head. Meaning if you don't have the timing belt to keep the piston from destroying the valves, well you're screwed. All in all it ran me about $900, but it's a price I'll gladly pay to not have to replace an engine in a vehicle I still owe $5000 on. I dealt with that once already and that was enough for my tastes.
Anyway, long story short, keep up with recommended maintenance.
