I HATE that car

Maggie was loading crap into the hatch of the MPV when the left strut failed. The hatch is heavy.

The gas strut is bolted to the car, but has a ball-and-socket fitting bolting it to the hatch (to give it enough degrees-of-freedom); the ball sheered off from the strut.

I probably could have popped the ball out of the socket,but that still would have left the problem of reattaching the ball to the strut. (Time to learn welding?)

So: new strut $81.05, new socket bolt $8.50: total with tax, $96.71. A hundred bucks, simply so that we can continue to use the hatch conveniently. How stupid.

I guess this means my age is showing: a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks, but I guess it's trivial today: it's the price of two tanks of gas....

Mercifully, at least the dealer parts dept. was open on Saturday morning.


Update: BoingBoing reports Sony charges $82 for a single "special" screw:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/26/sony_charges_82_for_.html