I get attached to cars and since
I’ve never had the wherewithal to own a new one, they’ve always been old and
cranky. They’ve always had their share of dings, marks, rattles and quirks, but
I’ve never cared much about outward impressions. As long as their hearts and
moving parts are in reasonable or fixable state, I just carry on. If it’s a
Toyota, like my ’88 Camry, you kinda feel like it’s a pretty solid machine
that’s worth putting money into and maintaining. Wherever you go and especially
in Cambodia, the most popular cars will be easiest to keep running just because
of spare parts and dependability, but that doesn’t exempt you from a myriad of bewildering
and mysterious problems, more of which I’ve encountered with my car than any
one human being ought to have. Just like women, bewildering and mysterious.
But better than buying a KIA
Sportage. I’ve known two guys who bought them. The first had fuel injector
problems which could only be solved with four new injectors at $450 a pop. When
a second friend bought one I hesitated to break his heart with the sordid tale
of the first Sportage debacle. I only broke the story after he recounted how he
couldn’t leave town with his because of certain disaster if it was driven very
far.
For this comparison I’m not
suggesting your wife, or cohabitating girlfriend, is equivalent to an old
beater car (though she might well be) but rather the kind of hell she regularly
puts you through just because of the nature of the beast. In this case the more
beautiful and snazzy they are the more likely they are to give you the most
shit. (To be fair, it’s not like we don’t also put them through some trying
times, but they’ve got to make their own analogies.)
You wouldn’t dump your wife every
time she asks you for a new bangle or bead, or breaks down in tears for
unfathomable reasons or freaks out for (what seems to you) trivialities so why
begrudge taking care of such a handy device as your car just because the bugger
needs new brakes or an alternator or a battery or a new headlight switch once
in a while. Even when it eats up three right front CV joints in six years and only
18,000 miles - twice happening on the road – you just grin and bear it. However,
I wasn’t so smiley when it stranded me 40 kilometers from Kampot without the
money to pay for the repair. When the mechanic who I managed to locate, with
some difficulty, found out I could only pay half of the $65 repair job, he put
me on lowest priority and made me wait from mid-morning till nearly 5 pm before
he returned to finish the job. It turned out okay for him since I made up the
shortfall with everything of value I was carrying with me: a rim and good
quality tire, jumper cables, set of wrenches and a jack. As I discovered later
when I went to replace the tire and rim, they alone were worth about $50.
But that was truly an
excruciatingly, mortifyingly embarrassing episode. It happened on a bypass
where a new bridge was under construction, so everybody on Highway 3 had a
chance to see the morose barang struggling to smile and be nonchalant as they
filed slowly by. The only saving grace, other than the mere magical fact that
the mechanic actually did the job not knowing what he’d receive in return, was that
a giant overloaded truck, which had even been elongated by two meters, but
which only had a single rear axle, got stuck in the soft bypass road surface
trying to climb back up to the highway. It was a sight to behold and took hours
of unloading his cargo before he could get the thing unstuck.
Now I wouldn’t travel without a
spare C-note or two in my pocket except in direst emergency. To top it off, I
was forced to drive home at night which is a terrifying experience on
Cambodia’s highways. You’ve got pedestrians, bicycles without lights, slow
moving carts, diesel farm tractors and such which you can’t see until you get
real close – at least I can’t with my tired old eyes – combined with giant
trucks which blind you with their high-powered headlights. Besides, I gave the
mechanic every riel I had so went the last 10 kilometers with the gas warning
light on and (I’m convinced) made it up to my driveway on leftover fumes and
angelic intervention.
The second time the CV joint went
out on the road was a piece of cake in comparison, not that any breakdown on the
road could ever be pleasant. I broke down in a small town and found a mechanic
who had worked for the UN for 14 years and spoke good English. Not only that,
but there was a hammock out back overlooking a small river to wait out the repair
time.
If you’re planning a road trip
with your old beater, you thank your lucky stars when it breaks down just
before you leave, rather than on the road. In similar vein wouldn’t you rather
be berated, yelled and screamed at at home, rather than have the old lady barge
in while you’re having a peaceful beer with friends at your favorite suds depot
and start screaming insults there?
Dealing with Khmer mechanics is
also a lot like dealing with Khmer wives or partners. If that’s your situation,
you’ll understand when I tell you about replacing my master window switch.
Power windows are a great convenience but a big problem when they stop working,
especially if they stop working when the window is stuck in the down position
in rainy season. Having spent a lot of years as a mechanic, though of the
untrained shade-tree type, you get to see which parts break down the easiest
and where the vehicles are most vulnerable. The master window switch is one of
them, especially here in the tropics where constant heat and humidity play havoc
with electronics. It would work fine for a week or two and then just get locked
into place. Sometimes it would start working again after a day or two. Other
times I’d have to go to my Kampot mechanic and he’d take it apart, clean it up
and it would work again… but only temporarily.
At first my Phnom Penh mechanic (they
are definitely not available in Kampot) said a used one cost $50, but he
couldn’t find one since they were prone to problems, so I asked about a new one;
at $280 that was out of the question. Later he located one that was used in America
but new to Cambodia at $80. It’s from a ’91 and the wiring’s a little
different, he says, but he’s the primo electrical man so no problem. Fine, I
say, it has to be done. I go to pick it up, the driver’s window now has an
automatic switch, which is very convenient, actually, but when I closed the
door the automatic shoulder seat belt – a feature of American cars – doesn’t
work. (The majority of cars in Cambo were brought here used from America when
they were about 10 years old.) Without it you only have the waist belt, which
really isn’t enough if you actually want to be safe, so I ask why it doesn’t
work. You didn’t tell me to do it, he replies. WTF? It worked when I brought it
there, but according to his logic I was supposed to remind him to hook up
everything that worked previously just like it did before. Khmers will say
anything that comes to their minds when they don’t have a proper answer. The
switch has been okay with minor problems except nobody else but him understands
the wiring so when my Kampot mechanic looked at it, he was completely
befuddled… so shit out of luck if anything does go wrong with it.
Then there’s the headlight switch.
You know, you’re riding merrily along and totally without warning your
headlights go off. The brights continued to work, but it’s not a great idea to
blind vehicles coming your way. Then it’d work for a few days and same thing
would happen. Mechanic takes the steering column apart, cleans up the switch
and it works for a while. Finally, after doing that twice and the problem still
reoccurring, I asked how much for a new used one, new ones again being
prohibitively expensive. $28? For that little why am I messing around trying to
make the old one work? However, it wasn’t that long before the ‘new’ old one
started acting like the ‘old’ old one. I had the new one cleaned up recently and
now it seems to be working.
The humidity here corrodes
electrical parts with abandon. Now the thing to remember about the headlight
switch is that it’s always hot, that is, it has power going to it whether or
not the key is in the on position. Which means if there’s a short somewhere in
the switch it’ll drain your battery. In my case it used to take only two days
without driving it to kill the battery and I took to unhooking the battery
after every time I drove the car… a real bore.
Of course, this is nothing new since the lovable
rattletrap has not started when it was supposed to at least a hundred times in
the six years I’ve owned it and maybe a lot more… I lost count a long time ago.
At this point I always carry a set of jumper cables and battery charger with
me, just in case. Actually, I should also have an extension cord in the event
the nearest plug is not close or people nearby don’t have one. It wasn’t always
the switch that was the culprit, just in the last couple years I’ve replaced
everything having to do with the starting and charging systems. It’s got
140,000 miles – 220,000 kilos – so you have to expect things to break down, though
this car has really tested my patience.
I asked a friend who has an
identical Camry about his. Very dependable, he says, in four years it’s started
every time he turned the key. I was incredulous. He did have to do a few things
to it, he said, so I thought I could do a ‘gotcha’ with CV joints. First he
said 6 or 7 but then thought about it and said 4. So my 3 in 6 years is not so
bad after all. One of the other things he had to do was replace the engine for
$400, so, old cars, like wives, you just gotta deal with them.
I’ve heard guys say they bought an
old jalopy, drove it for two years never having put a penny into it and then
dumped it when it broke down. That’s never, even remotely, been my experience.
For me they always need something, at least partly because I’ve spent enough
time with cars to know when things are not working right and partly because I
always want to correct the problem, which in some ways is easy here since it
costs so little in labor to repair them. Unfortunately, low cost also implies
low talent, even if highly intuitive, and the absence of diagnostic equipment
so that many mechanics here are no more than shade-tree types like myself.
This is represented by a
persistent problem I’ve had. From the start it has had the shakes at idle and
especially stopped in gear. It’s not a big fault, just really uncomfortable. I’ve
taken the problem to three mechanics. All three started with timing, no problem
there. Then the air intake was cleaned out and the plugs and wires replaced. No
change. While the PP mechanic was doing other stuff he noticed that the transmission
made a strong clunking sound when put into gear and suggested maybe I needed a
new one at $240. He even assured me that that would correct the shaking
problem. I didn’t really believe him but it was a time when I had money in the
bank and since I knew that wouldn’t last it seemed a good time to do it rather
than wait until it broke down with me broke also. Being a Toyota it’s entirely
possible that it might have kept going long after I was in my grave even with
the clunking sound, but I didn’t want to take the chance. Of course, it made no
difference whatever to the shaking.
I think it has to do with the
valves, though nobody seems to have a compression gauge, let alone a computer
to do diagnostics and taking it apart to check would cost some money.
Meanwhile, after all the peripheral work that’s been done, it runs really
strong once it’s out of idle range. Hit the gas and it flies. And it’s really
comfortable on trips and the upholstery is perfect and original - not that fake
leather - and a pleasure to relax in, so I’m in it for the duration, it’ll
probably last as long as I do. Believe me I haven’t begun to exhaust detailing
its troubles, but I have run out of space in this article.
So whatever it needs, I’ll do my
best to placate it. Trading it in for another old beater could be courting
disaster, at least I know what I’ve got and what to expect. Relationships are
always a hassle, whether it’s a car or a wife; no matter how compatible you
are, you’re going to have a lot of learning to do. And valuable learning at
that. All you wives, wives-in-waiting and girlfriends out there, I hope you
don’t take offense, I don’t mean to belittle your contribution to our
personality development. Having done the husband thing three times myself I can
attest to its importance regardless of the torture it sometimes put me through.
Though my most difficult ex is still giving me shit 40 years since we parted –
we have a kid to connect us - whenever her fickle sanity dissipates, which
fortunately, at least towards me, isn’t very often, I begrudgingly have to
admit she also taught me the most.
In some ways it’s easier to go
without a wife than a car: once you’ve gotten used to having wheels, you feel deprived
without them, even when you don’t use the car that often, whereas you can take
or leave being a husband. On the other hand, it’s a lot easier to get rid of a
car than a wife, it’s just a machine which can easily, if expensively, be
replaced. But regarding a wife, if you ever cared about her, your parting will
be extremely difficult, so until then it’s, Yes dear from now on I promise to
pick up my socks from the floor and be more considerate of your often
inscrutable feelings and listen to your nagging without going apoplectic with
frustration and turning to the evil drink for solace.
