I have really good meds to take the stress away

Yeah, my car makes me wanna beat it up sometimes. I've just taken to cussing it out instead. No one gets hurt, tons of satisfaction.


And I feel for ya dude, I know how frustrated you are :(

Thanks for all the advice. I do regret that I've dented the car, lucky I think the heat/freeze method can save it.


I've gained my rationality back and I'm ready to get back at it.

Even though I just want to go nuts, I know that it won't get me anywhere. So, I just suck it up and try to fix whatever went wrong.
Theres always something worse that could have happened that didn't.
Theres always a way to fix something.

And most of the time, when something goes wrong, you can learn from it. So, if you fix it right thats one less thing that can go wrong in the future.

Imports have their problems too. Maximas, for example, have rear calipers that seize, knock sensors that go bad, and coil packs that fry. (just to name a few)

well I am sure I get just as frustrated as you if not more so but what I do is go into the house and play a few levels of some racing game and that seems to calm me down enough to go look at it rationally

I've been in a few accidents and could have died in the last one. So its really a matter of telling myself "It could have been worse".

If something breaks, yeah its money down the drain but life will go on.

I keep a half-bag of cuss words in my glove box for emergency use. When I'm really pissed, I make up my own.

Truth is, you are who you is and if you have a short temper or frustration gets to you and you explode, bad things can happen. I've put my share of dents in my cars (but only my beaters, NEVER one I had to get a loan to buy!), chucked a tool or two, kicked a few things...

When you get to the point that it blinds you, ya need to walk away. Even if your car strands you somewhere highly inconvenient - cuss, get out, walk away for a few mintues (who knows, if you're lucky you'll see someone getting mugged and you can walk up in your rage and kick the living sheet out of the perp - wouldn't THAT feel good?). Just don't put your fist through the instrument panel before you take the walk.

This doesn't help now, but most folks mellow with age and someday stuff like your gas filler doing a geyser imitation just won't bother you near as much.

When you figure it out let me know. I think my biggest frustration is that I need our vehicles for work every day, so if something goes wrong and I can't fix it I get stressed out. Like my wife'* suv has something going on with the charging system right now. It was tested as a bad alternator at Advance on Sunday, but I just have this nagging feeling that it'* something else and it'* pretty much stressing me out worrying about it. With the '68 it'* nice because I've had some things to fix, and have a couple more I should do, but because I can let it sit in the garage however long I want it doesn't worry me. For some reason most car related stuff I would rather not deal with. If I could have a vehicle that never need gas every week, oil changes, or any other maintainence my life would be pretty much perfect.

But I do have to realize at times that I have been lucky. Knock on wood the only serious issues I've ever had was three blown head gaskets and two warped heads on a Thunderbird I had in college. Everything else has been fairly minor.

As far as the import comment, I decided I won't go that route because they will break just as often, and cost me twice as much money to fix.

Chemicals.

not the bad ones....