Aurora’s End

     “The car won’t start.”

     “What?  What does it do?  Will it go er-er-er?”

    “No, it won’t do anything.  The dash won’t light up.”

     “Do the headlights work?”   I knew the answer to that before Number 2 Daughter could reply.  I heard the alarm bell going off to let you know you left your lights on.

      “Yeah, they work.”

      “Probably not a battery connection.”  Our conversation was interrupted by a Good Samaritan in the gas station where she had stopped to fuel before heading up into the hills for a job interview.

      Daughter Number 2, living in Florida, had flown in and was looking for a job.  She needed a car to get where she needed to go.  We had recently added the Concorde to our fleet, so the Aurora was available.

      Jumping the battery wasn’t the answer.  After a few minutes of troubleshooting, I heard over the telephone the dinging of the seat belt alarm.  The thing had suddenly come alive.  This time, turning the ignition switch forward activated the starter and the engine started right up.

     The phone conversation ended abruptly as Daughter was on a late start to her interview.  The problem with the Aurora wasn’t done.  Faith in the car was vastly diminished, too.  From here on out, when you shut the car off, you wondered if it would start again.

     Sure enough, while DN2 was visiting friends in town, the Aurora played dead again.  She had to make other arrangements to get to the airport for her flight back to Florida.  At my earliest convenience, I visited the Aurora where it sat curbside in town.

     Removing the back seat, I opened the battery box and cleaned the cables.  They really didn’t need it, and just as I suspected, that didn’t solve the problem.  Turning the switch on produced no fruit.  The car would have to sit there another month.

      One Sunday morning, I towed a borrowed car dolly from Kansas and pulled up in front of the dusty Oldsmobile.  With a winch and some help from the property owner, I managed to get the heavy machine’s front wheels in place and strapped to the dolly.

     The Dakota strained pretty hard tugging the Aurora away from the curb.  Crossing the dips at the intersections was adventurous, but eventually I reached the highway, and soon I had the Aurora in front of the garage on the farm.

      I found out that backing a car dolly with a car on it was quite different from backing an empty dolly up to the front of a car.  My attempts to back the Aurora into the farm garage soon ended.  I decided I would try starting the car one more time.  If it failed to start, the car would have to sit outdoors for another while.

      This time, when I inserted the ignition key and turned the switch, all the bells and whistles came to life.  The car started.  It was as if the little trip into the country was the prince’s kiss that brought the princess back to life.

     The car was soon off the dolly and into the farm garage, and the Dakota, the car dolly and I were on the road back to Kansas.  Some weeks later, on a visit to check out the farm, on a lark I decided to try starting the Aurora.  It fired right up, so I left the pickup in the farm garage and drove the Aurora back to Kansas where I could work on it in my spare time.

      I decided to change the starter.  As I look back on it, that didn’t make much sense, since the starter worked whenever the ignition worked.  On the internet, I found a handful of instructions on how to change he starter. 

     On the Aurora, the starter was on top of the crankshaft, beneath the intake manifold, nestled in the V between the two banks of cylinders.  A lot of stuff had to come off, including the fuel rails, throttle body, and the intake manifold.

       As usual with me, getting started was the biggest hurdle.  Removing the big plastic cover revealed all the things that had to come off.  The fuel rails had flexible connections to the fuel line.  Once the rails were unfastened, you can swing them aside out of the way without having to break into the line.  No fuss, no muss, no spilled gasoline.

      The intake manifold was plastic.  Remove the bolts and lift it off.  Pretty simple.  And there was the starter, in plain sight and easy reach.  The wires were easily disconnected, two or three bolts quickly removed, and the old starter was out.

      Installing the new starter was equally simple.  The job was quickly done.  The new starter was in place, and I didn’t have to block the car up, crawl under it, struggle with getting wrenches on bolts, lift a heavy starter motor out and back in over my head, all the while keeping the greasy dirt out of my eyes and mouth, the usual starter-replacement protocol.

      Everything back in place and buttoned up, I tried the ignition.  Nothing.  I knew which wire activated the starter.  I bared a bit of the wire where it crawled out from under the intake manifold.  I ran a small jumper to the jumper terminal for the battery.

      The starter whirred perfectly.  The motor turned over and over, but wouldn’t start.  No ignition.  I went to the last step on every DIYer’s list.  I called the mechanic and told him to come get it.

     A day or two later, about an hour before the towing crew was to arrive, I tried once more to start the car.  It fired right up!  I called the mechanic and cancelled the tow.  I drove down to his garage.  I shut the car off.  He said to pull it into the bay.  The car started right up.

     In the bay, we shut it off three or four times.  Every time it started right up.  Adam explained to me that the problem was likely in the ignition key.  He pointed out the microchip in the key shaft.  He said it sent a mini-volt to the switch which allowed everything to work, an anti-theft device, I guess.

     Possible fixes, buy a new key, which didn’t always work.  He said they fixed the GM cars with that problem by installing a chip into the wire that went to the switch.  That way, it was always ready to go, whether the key’s microchip was functional or not.  In the meantime, he said a lot of times, if you turn the switch backwards to the accessory position and let it sit for a short time when it doesn’t work, it will come to life.  I wished I had talked to him a long time ago.

       Installing the chip would be about $180.  I opted to turn the switch backward.  We were a three-car family.  Taxes, license, and insurance added up.  It was time for the Aurora to go.  After about a year, we eventually did sell it.  The air conditioner wasn’t working properly and a myriad other small problems finally determined its fate.

     The Goodwife loved the Aurora.  It was comfortable.  You could drive for hours without fatigue.  It was quiet, very little road noise.  The instrument cluster was like the panel in an airplane, in a slight concave all focused towards the driver.  Everything was electric, seats, mirrors, windows.  It was a pleasure to drive.

     But there was the other side of it, the side in front of the dashboard.  It was a maintenance nightmare.  It took eight quarts of oil.  It had a leak in the seal between engine and transmission.  I consulted the friendly dealer.  His book said nine hours to change the seal.  Nine hours?

     You had to take the transmission down to get the exhaust pipe down to get the oil pan off.  I lived with the leak, adding oil all the time. 

      It had four ignition coils, one for every two cylinders.  They had to be changed two or three times while we owned it.  Changing them wasn’t hard, after we figured out that was the problem.

       Anyway, when all was said and done, I wasn’t sorry to see the Aurora go.  Its maintenance problems didn’t make it a very good spare car.