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Friday Slide Show: The Rumbalino Returns
31 January 2025
We don't like to repeat ourselves but sometimes life feels life Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. An epic poem, that is, "filled with themes of valor, divine intervention and the struggle between good and evil."
A week and a half ago, Glenn the New Mechanic called to say the Rumbalino was ready. He finally got it running. It had no spark so it would start but not run. There was an issue with the timing and the carb but they were only slightly off.
He had to put two new horns in because both were bad, but the horns work now. And do they sound sweet. The old ones sounded like a Buick. These sound like kids in a playground.
He changed the oil and coolant and replaced both front calipers on the brakes as well as the front brake hoses. He also bypassed the brake booster, which you don't really need he said, because its small piston was sticking, dragging the brakes. Probably from sitting around.
Then he replaced the hood latch and the driver side headlight wiring.
The tires are old but as long as we don't drive 100 mph for hours they should hold up because they have very few miles on them. But he recommended some Pirelli rubber that "will make the car feel like it has power steering."
The fuel gauge works, too, he confirmed.
The problem he can't fix, though, remains our double vision, which prevents us from driving safely. We could get a ride over but we couldn't drive the car back.
He had a solution, though. He offered to drive the car over himself on the weekend. He thought he could get a ride back from the person who helps out now and then in the shop and lives in the city.
So that's what we did. Except his helper bailed with the stomach virus that has been going around. So he took BART back to Berkeley.
After his description of the work he had to do to get the car running again after 13 years of abuse, we were a bit anxious about the total bill. But we kept reminding ourselves that we'd gotten a settlement that was based on making extensive repairs, including a few (like rebuilding those calipers) that were unforeseen.
We had hit an impasse with the guy who screwed the job up when he demanded an additional $2,000 to change the engine and transmission oil and coolant. That would get it running, he promised. No, it wouldn't have.
Before trial he tried to settle for doing $4,000 worth of work to get it running even though the arbitrator had awarded us nearly twice that much.
Of course, we weren't going to let that clown touch the car again. Glenn, who owns the same model, knew exactly what to look for and how to fix it. In weeks, not years.
And, it turned out, he charged only a bit more that what the clown wanted to change the fluids. With free delivery to the infirm owner.
Which we'd call divine intervention.
