Help Lindsay's Family Fix Their Car

Introduction

My name is Lindsay. My husband and I are the parents of 3 amazing little girls. On Friday, while running errands for my work from home freelance job, I hit a large piece of an engine block in the middle of the road. Now we are looking at a few hundred dollars in parts and time to fix one of our 2 daily drivers that is out of commission.

The Full Story

I was driving with my 2 youngest (1 and 4) to pick up inventory for my e-commerce freelance job. I came around a curve in a 40mph and saw something large and boxy in the middle of the lane. Since I’m not used to seeing large pieces of engine in the middle of the road, I couldn’t process what it was. My best guess is that it fell off a scrap truck that didn’t secure it properly. I did slow down to try to assess the situation, but I was afraid to come to a full stop on a busy 4 lane street and wait for an opening in the left lane. Since the vehicle in front of me seemed to clear it fine, I made the bad judgement call to chance it.

Upon retrospection, the vehicle in front of me (a small SUV) had a higher clearance. Upon impact, I knew I had done some damage. I pulled over in the very next parking lot, parked, and turned the car off. There was oil dripping from a piece of the engine undercarriage. When my husband arrived, he determined it was transmission fluid. (He’s very good with vehicles and has done tons of repairs and maintenance for all of the cars we’ve owned.)

The Upside

This vehicle (2016 Honda Civic) is one of our 2 daily drivers. My husband has been tuning up a 2010 Odyssey for us and has been using it for work while I use the car for school drop offs/pickups, grocery runs, doctors appointment, etc. Luckily, the van is close enough to 100% that we were able to swap me and the girls over to it.

The Downside

Unfortunately, this leaves us without a super reliable vehicle for my husband to get to work. We have a “back up” of sorts. It’s a 1999 Nissan that hasn’t been driven in months. He seems confident that it will be good enough to get him to work for the week or two it will take him to fix the transmission pan, but I worry about its reliability. I mean, it’s old enough to rent its own car, at this point.

What the Money is for

While there are some pretty cheap options on Amazon, it’s very difficult to be sure to be sure they will actually fit and last. The exact OEM part needed is about $250-275 through reputable online retailers. While he has the transmission pan off, he is also going to service the transmission. It’s a bit early that needed, but you have to replace the seal any time you take the pan off, so he might as well do it now instead of having to buy an additional gasket kit later.

He estimates with the cost of parts and fluids to be around $350 when it’s all said and done. I, however, know that our estimates usually fall short. Many time while working on our cars, we have found that special tools are needed, or encounter unexpected circumstances that require additional parts.

We also may need to have the Civic towed (about $100) if the parking lot security will not let us do the quick patch up and refill needed to try to stem the leak and drive it the 4.2 miles home.

Beyond that, the back up vehicle may need some minor maintenance to get up and running.

In the worst case scenario, we all share the van for a couple weeks. This would mean the girls and I getting up a lot earlier to drop him off at work before they go to school. I suspect this is going to result in at least a few breakfast drive through trips since the girls and I are going to be more tired than normal, causing difficulties in our regular mourning routine.

So I’m including a $150 buffer to account for the unforeseen additional expenses that I am sure will pop up.

Why we Need the Help

In early 2023, my hours were cut to about a 3rd what I had been doing in years before. In early 2024, I was laid off. This wasn’t anyone’s fault. The company was struggling with increased seller fees and a slowing economy. They just couldn’t afford to keep paying me a livable wage and had to outsource.

Since then, I’ve begun reselling on eBay. It’s been a slow process, but there has been steady growth. That being said, I haven’t consistently reached the monthly net income to cover my portion of our bills. So we’ve been having to finance a lot of things (including a few hundred dollars of much needed dental work for me). We have the room on our credit cards to cover these parts, but that will just add to the monthly interest and just be another bill put off.

Conclusion

We could really use any help we can get and NEED to keep this car reliable and functioning. It is the newer and better cared for vehicle, so we rely on it if anything goes wrong with the other. Please help us fix this so we can get back to our regular routine and have 2 well functioning vehicles again.