Transmission Shops Gear Up for Bonanza

Got a call from an old friend we used to be real close… wait, this isn’t the beginning of “Movin’ Out’ by Billy Joel… I really did get a call from an old friend with whom I used to get to spend a lot of time… anyway – she said she’d taken her car for service and was told there was water in her transmission and sooner or later, which always means ‘sooner’ she would have to have a new transmission installed. She thought the auto shop was trying to buffalo her so she called for my advice.

That’s right. I asked if she’d recently been driving through these flood waters – no but she’d left her car parked at a friends and the street filled with water overnight and perhaps the water somehow got into her transmission that way. That’s really possible I said, there’s a ‘weep hole’ on every automatic transmission that helps balance the internal pressure of the gear mechanism with the outside air pressure – in a barometric way of speaking. They told her the transmission fluid looked like a strawberry milkshake… ‘but I like strawberry shakes’ she whined into the phone.

“You ain’t gonna like them mixed up in your transmission’ I replied with no hint of empathy and she wailed even more about the forthcoming costs and whether she could claim it on her insurance. “I don’t know about the insurance, but a transmission rebuild is not something you want to do every day.”

So now we’re confronted by more rain and flooding – even if it stops raining the rivers carrying the deluge downstream bear watching.

Among the basic reasons given for not driving your car/truck into standing or flowing waters other than you can DROWN, you can do a lot of damage to your vehicle. Even if water stays out of the transmission, just about everything on the modern vehicle is controlled electrically – and electricity and water don’t mix you can soon short out your wiring, blow fuses and/or damage the cars main computer.

So – when you hear tv or radio hosts along with law enforcement reminding you not to drive into water – there’s a whole lot of reasons for that. We’re concerned for your life, and also the level of hassles you have to put up with in your life, and extensive car repairs are one hassle in this case you can avoid.

And now, I’d like to actually hear Movin’ Out by Billy Joel – good thing 92.9 The Lake is always high and dry and transmitting great Classic Hits!