Check Engine Light

I just spent $70.20 to have my car’s gas cap tightened. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but not much. Last week, as I was driving down the highway using cruise control, the cruise control suddenly shut off and the “Check Engine” light came on and the “Cruise Control” light began flashing. I didn’t panic. This had happened to me last summer, and I read in the manual that it might be the gas cap, and sure enough, when I got gas the next day the lights went out and all was fine. So this time, I pulled over, unscrewed the gas cap, and then screwed it back on tightly. But the lights were still on. So a bit further down the road, I pulled in to fill up with gas, though I had half a tank. But after filling up and securing the cap again, the lights remained on. I figured it must be, or at least might be, something other than the gas cap, and more important (the “Check Engine” light is pretty ominous). When I got home, I called Evan, my mechanic of 30 years, he said to bring it in, I did, waited while one of his guys worked on it for maybe 15 minutes (including driving it into and out of the garage), and then was told it was indeed the gas cap, they had fixed it, and that the bill was $70.20 (one hour labor, no parts, it being merely a re-tightening of the cap). And should it happen again, they would have to replace the gas cap, though that would only be $16.34 – for the cap; the labor would be another $70.20.

I recall the first car I bought with power windows, a 1985 Honda Civic. It also had cruise control, power-operated side-view mirrors, rear-window defroster, and I don’t know what else. I hesitated. It’s always struck me that the more technologically advanced a car (or just about anything else) becomes, the more that can go wrong with it, probably by a factor of 10 for each “advance,” and that the cost for repair also goes up by about the same 10 times. That’s the way progress works. And progress sucks.