Kuhn on Kars?

Yes, yes this is still a legal and Poker blog. But sometimes we have to expand our horizons to learn new skills (whether we want to or not).

A few years back I got a killer deal on a 1998 Honda Civic DX. For a mere $300 dollars I was able to get a fully working well taken care of car all for the price of a single car payment. The catch (there is always a catch), it had over 400,000 miles on it.

It served me very well, a chariot that only required fuel an occasional oil change and monthly insurance payments and most recently a registration fee along with a mandatory smog check.

That is how it started.

Wanting to pass the smog test without a chance of failing, My brother (a certified Motorcycle mechanic), his buddy and myself installed a used but good Catalytic Converter to replace the old one. We replaced it and went to the Smog Check facility to take the smog test so we could get updated tags for the car.

Being that the tags were "bad" we needed to get this done or run the risk of having the car impounded by a gung ho CHP or Police agent who needed to make their quota.

The beginning of the week we paid the registration in full $200 and asked for an extension so we could have a few weeks to take care of the legal requirements to drive the car. Well the DMV required us to pay an additional $50 for this AND required that we failed the "smog check" first before this could be offered to us. This meant that the DMV would only allow one day of legal driving to get a smog check done.

Since we did not have the opportunity to fail the smog check *first* we were even unable to even pay the $50 for a 20 day extension in the first place. So we had to take our chances with the roving CHP and Police patrols just itching to satisfy their ticket and car auction quotas, after all in sunny California the land of eternal debt. I logically selected a Saturday to do this and for a week we had to drive "under the radar" back and forth (from Riverside to Orange County), to drop off and pick up our ride sharing crew.

When Saturday came, the smog check place was closed for the weekend so we lost the one and only "legal" day to do this. To make matters even worse, the car over heated and we blew a Head Gasket.

So what became of all this?

Well in addition to being an Accountant and Legal person. I became a novice mechanic.