Is that it's strongly advisable to also have a good AAA membership that covers the entire area of where you go to car shows. My $350+ tow was covered by my $51/year AAA Plus membership. The best automotive purchase I've ever made.
So as part of the 2014 NJ OPPOFEST I had taken the SL out for a big jaunt with a bunch of other Oppos to Northern NJ, and then again to meet with a couple more Oppos up in Yorktown for their Cars & Coffee.
So, driving around in an SL600 is a pretty big experience. Add to the fact that it's a Sport model makes a bigger difference. Add to the fact that it's not only a Sport, but the first year of the Sports, and an almost fully optioned car changes that even more. Then you get into the fact that it's one of less than about 400 cars, so I've been able to figure out so far, and the thing feels like a million bucks. We'll ignore the fact that I bought it for pennies in comparison.
Well, things break on every car. My Magnum dropped a valve seat which resulted in some rather impressive carnage.
So as Silvestro, and a number of other attendees of the car show can account for, starting the SL when I went to leave the show was a rather loud experience. Not only was it loud, but it was rather destructive. As it turns out, the funny metallic noise that I heard was actually the tensioner pulley breaking clean off the mount, flying up, and then back down to rest on the belly pan. #winning
So not realizing exactly what had happened at first and with no fluids were falling, we hit the road, me chasing a supercharged 550+ horsepower LWB Range Rover, in a car that should have just gotten a tow. But it ended up working out better for me having tried.
I made it about 25 miles with no tensioner, and things didn't really go amiss until I tried to make one last pass in traffic. At least the car made it across the Tappan Zee Bridge before the belt came off and found it's way to the top of the motor, instead of staying put in the front.
Well, a wonderful NY State Trooper was only minutes behind me, and with all the glory of the radio had me picked up by a nearby tow driver, CJ, in less than 15 minutes. Off to Dover, NJ where my great new friends and their shop is located. 59 miles off of what I had to drive wasn't so bad, because the odometer is sitting at 99,8xx miles, and I need all of them before 100k to make sure the car is going to behave for Caffeine & Carburetors where I plan to hit the magical 100k mile mark in one of the most beautiful and greatest cars I've ever had the chance to experience, much less call my own.
So the car is getting a whole lot of maintenance done on it, and it has an extra 60 miles more than I anticipated. The cooling system is being bled, or may just get fully drained and started over, the oil leak is being identified, and to wrap everything up, the full oil change, and belly pan cleaning, as well all the other oil coated parts underneath.
I'm sad to say it has finally travelled on the back of a tow truck for the first time, but it did so with a great tow driver who I'll hopefully see again. How many people do you know have an S10 with a Honda S2k motor with a massive custom fab turbo setup under the hood?