A Window into Car Repairs…

When was the last time you had a good experience with car repairs? Yeah, I thought so.

Let me tell you about my experience over the last few days. Our good old 1993 Isuzu Trooper has had problems with the power windows ever since we got here, but one night last week the driver’s side window died completely and of course it was DOWN at the time, and yes, of course it rained that night. (A garbage bag and duct tape saved the day, however)

The next day I went to a guy who my good buddy Jay had introduced me to before. He works out of his house/driveway and he’s my new favourite Costa Rican.

First day: He is able to get the window put up and then sends me to the auto parts guy to see how much the parts are. I find that a new part is over $200 US, and that is if I risk life and limb by driving into San Jose and get it from a parts store there. It would be over $250 to have it delivered back here to Atenas. A second hand part will cost half of that, but there is no guarantee. If we put it in and it doesn’t work, I’m just out of luck… So, back to my guy the next day. (Remember also that he doesn’t know a word of English)

Second day: I tell him what’s up and he says, “Well, how about this. I can get a new Hyundai window controller for much cheaper and I can make an ‘adaption’ to make it work and install it as best I can”. So I’m thinking that it’s going to look like crap with an ill fitting part, but I decide the car’s an old pile of junk anyway, and say “OK, go for it”

Third day: He has the car for the whole day, (from 8:00 till 5:00), and when I come to pick it up, he has taken the old window controller, cut a hole in it to insert the new, smaller Hyundai controller so it fits into the slot perfectly (It looks great!). He cut off the mismatched Hyundai connector, and re-wired it to match the Trooper controls. He did this in such a way that if some future owner ever wants to put in an actual Trooper replacement part, it will be a simple disconnect and replacement operation. Totally slick!

But that’s not all, one of the individual controllers didn’t work either, so he did the same thing with it, such that now all of the windows work (one of them hadn’t worked at all, and of course it was Nathan’s, the one most likely to get car sick)

But that’s STILL not all. I had mentioned in passing that we were also having a problem with the interior light going on and off intermittently while we were driving, but I wasn’t even sure he understood me. He determined that most of the doors had been rattled loose on the bad roads here, (big surprise) and so he adjusted all the doors so they now close nice and tightly, and had to make another adaption to one of the door’s little closer button so now the light works just fine.

And the best part of all - how much do you think all of that cost me? The parts were 34000 colones, and his labour was 16000, for a total of 50000 colones. At today’s exchange rate that comes out to a grand total of $94.08 Canadian.

This guy was a joy to deal with, and seemed to take real pleasure in seeing how happy I was with the results. I can’t remember the last time I received that level of service and value in Canada. That’s a shame.

The only unfortunate thing I foresee is that having a 16-year old vehicle on these roads will likely give me many more opportunities to be amazed by the mechanics here.