Our pizza store has 5 delivery cars. Most of the time 4 cars is enough but we have to have 5 on the weekend. Business is picking up generally so it's best to have all 5 cars fully functional for busy hours during the week, just in case. The drivers told me the other day that car #3 wasn't starting. I tried taking out the key and twiddled the battery wires, and then it started fine. I told the drivers to let me know if anything changed.
Today they reported it wouldn't start again, so I repeated the same routine, but the car wouldn't run. Well, it would run for 7 or 8 seconds, then all the lights on the dashboard would go out and the engine would die.
It still seemed like it might be an electrical problem so I tested the battery. Results were ambiguous, so I tried replacing the battery with one I knew was good. It got worse instead of better. Now the lights would come on but the starter would never crank. Just to check I put the first battery in and the starter still wouldn't crank.
To make a long story short, it turns out the battery was fine but the motor had to be replaced. Well, it didn't have to be replaced but new engines that supposedly meet the same specs are cheaper than the labor it would take to diagnose and fix the problem.
So I dropped a new engine in, hooked it all up, and double checked the mechanical and electrical connections. It all looked good, so I tried starting it. vroom! But the moment I put the car into gear the gas pedal and steering wheel stopped responding and a big blue light came on the dashboard, saying "STOP! Error 0x000000008b (0000000000 1089374019 10893710DF 4778392010). "
Since the car wouldn't go into gear I couldn't read its owner's manual, so I went and looked at the owner's manual on a similar car. It didn't say anything, so I called the help line for the manufacturer using the phone in the working car. They said the code meant the key couldn't talk to the spark plugs correctly. I cried, "but the engine was running, so the spark plugs were obviously working!" But that's all they would tell me.
On a hunch I flipped through the yellow pages looking for references to "Stop 8b". It turns out other people had had the same problem. I called a few of them, and they told me I needed to upgrade the key. The car was originally a 1999, so one choice would be to upgrade to a 2003 key, but if I did that I would have to take all the tires off and put them back on again, plus I'd have to pay a hefty upgrade fee, almost as much as I paid for the new engine. Upgrading to a 2007 key was completely out of the question because my tires aren't certified for a key that modern, and won't be until the first repair pack for 2007 keys comes out and is stable.
I spent way too many hours trying to get my key to work with the new engine, and was about ready to give up or spend the money on a 2003 key, as stupid as that seemed. I finally realized the problem was all the aluminum parts in the new engine. My key was made of brass. So I made a copy of my old key out of aluminum instead of brass, and TaDa! the car runs fine. I ended up having to rotate the tires anyways, but all the maps still work and I didn't have to spend money on a new key.
And that's what my 14 1/2-hour day at work was like today!
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