My BFF also abandoned my tail nearly two years ago to pack up and move to Maine. I'm not bitter or anything. Nah.
But anywhooo....
She and her husband had bought the same car that I had just bought. They got theirs first a few months ago. I bought mine earlier this week. Again, long story.
However, they had a light on in the car that she was wondering what in the world it meant. They hadn't called the dealership and couldn't find it in the manual. So she sent me the image on her cell phone...
It was this light, and surprisingly enough, I was very familiar with this light. Knew EXACTLY what this light meant...
This light is a warning light that a tire is low. Yup.
It is not a warning that there is a golden horseshoe close by. It it is not a warning that a round bottomed woman is going to cross your path.
It means very simply that one of your tires is losing pressure.
Wanna know how I know this so well? This light came on in our truck when we were six hours from our home, in backwoods WV, with a podunk Toyota dealership thirty minutes away on back country road. After a lot of yelling and scrambling and shuffling the Owners Manual, we find what that symbol means. But none of our tires is flat...or low.
So we turn off the truck.
We wait ten seconds.
We turn it back on.
The light is still there.
Craaaaap.
So across the mountain and through the woods we go. Get to the podunk Toyota dealership. They work us in.
Its the spare. The spare is low on air. Which, I am glad that it warned us, cause if we had needed it, and been screwed on the side of the highway in summer heat with an infant, I would have been pissed.
They reset the computer, filled up our spare, and away we went.
A light that reads "NEED AIR" would have spelled it out rather quickly. "NEED AIR IN SPARE DON'T PANIC" would have been even more appropriate.
But no...that weird symbol means I need air in my tire. Yeah, that was REAL clear.
Then there is the story of the MAINTENANCE REQUIRED light. What in the world are you supposed to do with THAT light? Really? MAINTENANCE REQUIRED. What kind of Maintenance...and why is it Required?This light came on while The Husband and I were between Tampa and Orlando, running six hours behind schedule because our cruise ship was tilted over so far coming into Tampa Bay that the water was pouring out of the pools and that slowed us down a little bit. Plus gave us a cool story to tell. We were trying to get plenty of ground under us before we gave up for the night. Suddenly this light appears on the dash of my practically brand spanking new Corolla. I had just BOUGHT the car for CRYING OUT LOUD! I'm about to start crying. We have a dog in a kennel that needs picked up the next evening by 6pm. We have another 14 hours of straight driving ahead of us. What ???
We started digging in the owners manual while I am frantically trying to call the dealership where we bought the car...of course they are closed...its freaking Sunday in the Bible Belt in 2005.
Then we found it. You know what MAINTENANCE REQUIRED means?
It's time for an oil change.
Holy cow. Scare the beejeebers out of someone won't you? For an oil change.
A light that says "TIME FOR JIFFY LUBE" would have been more appropriate...hello!
And last but not least...the light we have all seen...
I've seen that light more than I care to admit. My first car was a 1978 Ford Thunderbird. My parents drove Beaters. They beat them in the ground, then beat them some more. My dad would take a piece of black electrical tape and tape over an offending light if he couldn't figure out what was wrong. Yup.
The CHECK ENGINE light is pretty obnoxious.
What do you mean CHECK ENGINE? I can open up the hood and see that it is still there...I checked it. That's about all I have...otherwise, complete loss...where's the black electrical tape?
1 comment:
Btw, that tire pressure light also comes on when it's cold outside and your tires do funky things because of it.
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