Click. That was all the Sienna had to say at the gas station in Cameron on Thursday afternoon. One click when I turned the key, then nothing. The dash lights were bright, the radio worked, the dome light came on. Turn the key again: click. Lainey looked up from her phone in the passenger seat and said, "That's not good, right?"
I had taken a vacation day to drive her to a one-day volleyball camp at a school in Cameron, about 40 miles east of home on US-36. Camp went fine. We stopped for gas and a drink on the way out of town, and the van decided that was as far as it was going.
A single click with strong lights usually points away from the battery and toward the starter. When a battery is dead, you tend to get dim lights and a rapid clicking, or nothing at all. We had replaced the van's battery in January after the cold snap, so it was only six months old. The lights were bright, and I had my own little meter in the glove box, which said 12.6 volts at the battery. That's a healthy battery.
The click is the starter's solenoid trying to engage. If the motor behind it doesn't spin, the starter is usually the problem. Some people will tell you to tap the starter with a hammer to get one more start out of it. On this van the starter is tucked down behind the engine, I was in a gas station lot in my good shorts, and I wasn't crawling under a car without jack stands. So I called for a tow.
The tow
We carry a roadside add-on on our insurance, which costs us $8 per vehicle every six months, so $16 a year for the van. I had honestly forgotten it covered much of anything until I read the card in the parking lot. I called the number, they confirmed the policy, and they asked where I wanted the van taken.
That was the decision of the day. I could have it towed to a shop in Cameron that I'd never met, or tow it about 40 miles home to our shop on the south side of St. Joseph. The add-on covered the tow to our shop, so I called the shop first. It was a little after noon. The service writer said if I could get it there by two, they'd look at it that day.
The tow truck showed up in about 50 minutes. The driver let both of us ride in the cab, which Lainey thought was the most exciting thing that happened all summer. The driver mentioned that a 40-mile tow without coverage would have run us somewhere around $250 to $300. For a $16-a-year add-on, that one tow paid for itself for the next fifteen years or so.
The shop and the bill
We got to the shop around 1:45. Tina picked us up in the Silverado, which I'd left at home that morning, so the truck got an unexpected trip across town. By 4:30 the shop called. They confirmed the starter had failed. It tested bad on the bench, and the battery and cables tested good. A remanufactured starter was in stock at a parts supplier nearby, and they'd already put it in.
- Remanufactured starter, after core return: $112
- Labor, 1.4 hours at $132: $184.80
- Shop supplies: $6
- Sales tax on parts: $9.20
Total: $312. A starter on a van with about 203,000 miles is not a surprise. I'd guess the original lasted fifteen years and something like 60,000 starts. That's a pretty good run for an electric motor that lives next to a hot engine.
What the day cost before supper
Here's the whole Thursday, the way it went into the notebook:
Gas in Cameron, which I'd put in before the van quit: $46. Two drinks and a bag of pretzels: $7. Tow: $0 out of pocket. Repair: $312. Lunch for Lainey and me from the gas station deli while we waited for the tow: $14. Total for the day: $379, and we were home by 5:15 with the van in the driveway and supper in the oven.
Two things I'm taking from this. First, the roadside add-on is worth checking on your own policy, because I'd been paying for it without knowing exactly what it did. I'm not going to tell anybody what to buy. I'll just say I read our card more carefully now. Second, the van picked a fairly good place to quit: a well-lit gas station with a deli, in daylight, on a day when I wasn't due at work. I'll take that.
The starter's back in its spot and the van fires right up. Lainey has asked twice whether we can ride in a tow truck again. The answer is a firm no.