I can’t think of anything more annoying and frustrating than getting in your car in the morning to find it not wanting to start. This was the situation I found myself in this morning.

Over the weekend, it rained very heavily. I don’t usually bother to drive my car on weekends because it’s usually just easier to use my wife’s car. There’s a good reason for that: my car is a big brown turd. It’s an 1982 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera that was my grandmother’s and was given to me when my last car was wrecked (not my fault). When it was given to me, it had a smidgen over 30K miles. That was 5 years and 65K miles ago. It hasn’t had much major servicing since then. There are a few problems that have cropped up over the years, such as a busted radiator, worn fan belt, worn plastic tubing, broken A/C pipe connection (never fixed), bald tires (still need replacing), several batteries (don’t ask), worn windshield wipers (still needs fixing), several headlight replacements (still need to replace one), broken glove compartment latch (just made it worse, more later), and this new problem.

Okay, so it rained all weekend, which is what caused today’s problem. After Goggling around and checking my engine (rinsed and repeated) for about 4 hours, I finally found the problem: distributor cap. Either it is cracked, loose, or needs to be replaced. Either way, it at the very least needs to be cleaned out. When moisture enters a distributor cap, the firing mechanisms that turn your engine over do not set off and it sounds like your engine will forever crank. So after it started drying up outside (thanks Big Guy), securing the spark plug cabling, and cleaning many parts, it finally turned over.

I had to go through a large routine of checks to isolate this problem. I found several guides online to help try and pinpoint car problems, but all seemed to be pointing to this conclusion. I tried to find my distributor cap but had no luck. I checked Google’s images long enough and eventually stumbled across this page that showed an image of an engine in which I was able to identify my cap. Checked my engine, and the damn thing appears to be mounted on the back of the engine between the engine and the firewall. It took me about 2 hours to find this elusive part because everything in my engine is coated in grime and made from metallic gray parts. Everyone kept telling me to find a plastic cap, generally round, but I couldn’t tell what was plastic and what was metal, let alone unique colors.

Since this car needs to last until I can decide and pay for a newer car, I will be keeping my eyes open for a Haynes manual. It was my intention to get a newer car this summer, because I will have to drive much more for school than I currently do. Only a few months to go.

I’m going to go out on a limb here: I hate cars. I hate everything about them. They are expensive but lose much of their value usually before you finish paying it off. They always need huge amounts of maintenance and the people performing such services are generally considered low-lifes and untrustworthy. None of the internals are labeled (how hard could it be to laser inscribe the engine parts). Every car should come with a COMPLETE maintenance manual, not just a “this is the oil gauge” type of manual. If I pay $20K for a car, you would think they would provide you with all the knowledge you need, in print or digital form, for repairing, maintaining, and diagnosing your investment.

Jerry Seinfeld hates clothes; I hate cars.