SURPRISE!

So, you know the bolt that was supposedly responsible for my car's A/C malfunction? You know, the one that was going to cost me $700 to fix? Well it turns out that I paid $100 to my dealership for nothing. The bolt (which was supposed to have punctured through the filter and was holding the "hole" shut) did not actually puncture--it only dented, and it was barely holding on. My BF only had to flick it away, and guess what! No leaking fluid. So my mechanic is going to be getting an earful as soon as we can stop playing phone tag.

In other news, BF was able to replace my starter motor successfully. The unsuccessful part of the whole endeavor was finding the correct starter. Apparently Honda makes two different types of starters for my car, and there is absolutely no way to determine which one is which. The manufacturers that make the part don't even know, because the part they had pictured was correct, but the part in the corresponding box was not. So it took me three hours to track down the correct one, had a guy at the auto parts store tell me that I could just un-mount the piece of the part that was wrong (DO NOT go to the Checkers on 45th and State if you live in SLC. Their employees are obviously retarded), and ended up paying $300 for the correct part from Honda. Thankfully the BF talked them down from closer to $400. Still--uber ridiculousness.

All in all, though, I saved about $400 replacing the part by hand instead of having it done at the dealership, thanks to The Wrench-It Center (which I HIGHLY recommend to anyone!) and my darling gear-head BF (it is so nice to have a man that is handy with tools and can fix a car around!). Hopefully I won't have to replace the starter again EVER.