Taking care of Stanley

The thing about having a 2nd hand car is the maintenance.  It needs more maintenance than new cars but when you don't have enough money to pay for a spanking brand new car then you have to live with the quirks and minor repairs of your 2nd hand car.  This is a lesson I'm learning with Stanley, our beloved Subaru Legacy.

Granted that so far, most of the repairs have been minor, like buffing up his paint or replacing his wheels.  These minor repairs can still cost you an arm and a leg! LOL The only major repair we've had so far was when his CV joints got busted and we were practically crawling from Pampanga to Manila.. but still, in other cars, their wheels would've just rolled off.  Other repairs include aesthetic things like a new sound system (we got the Sony Xplod thingy), grilles and garnishing (yeah, a car term!) and headlights.

One maintenance schedule that we follow is the oil change.  Unfortunately, when we had most of Stanley's oil changed last time, Ondoy arrived at our doorstep.  Stanley was flooded.  Goodbye to all that oil!!  It's only now that we're able to finally change his oil, after months of saving up.  We went to Speedlab along Quezon Avenue in Quezon City which was owned by Patrick's co-worker.  I can sense the difference as soon as we got in and went on our way home.  Stanley was practically purring like a cat :)

The next item on our maintenance schedule was the repair of Stanley's aircon.  This was looked at by my uncle who owns a car-aircon shop earlier.  They made stop-gap measures to keep the car cool.  But over the summer, the heat was just too strong that even at the highest setting, Stanley couldn't keep us cool.  What's worse, there was a leak somewhere and Stanley's dripping water!!

Patrick thought Stanley's condenser and one other part that I fail to remember now need to be replaced.  We took Stanley to Fusion R along E. Rodriguez since they're well-known to Subaru owners for supplying good quality 2nd-hand but original Subaru parts. Turns out, the condenser wasn't the problem but the tubes and fittings needed to be replaced.  There was a lot of detail that I didn't understand but all in all it was like I bought a room airconditioner for the price of all those repairs.  The bottom line, Stanley was breathing cool, cold air again and that was what's important.

I think next on the agenda will be the replacement of the glass tint.  We need to get the tint with more heat-rejection because it gets really hot.  If any of you have suggestions as to what tint we should get, feel free to leave a comment :)