They Blew Up My Car

but it’s nothing more sinister than incompetence: the old Dodge minivan, with 190K miles on it, needed a new timing chain. We went for it, figuring $1300 for another year of use (gulp!) would be worth it.

Well, the dude working on the car evidently started it up before setting the timing – this is a mystery to me, but that’s how it was explained – and, because the timing was way off, basically bent, blew out or otherwise destroyed the valves.

So, we get to drive a nice brand new Dodge minivan for a few days while the shop rebuilds our engine, puts in new values and whatever else got fubared, and redoes the timing belt – all on a vehicle that is *this* close to being hauled off as junk.

Hey, maybe we can get *2* years on it…