I haven't been posting much lately, mainly because I've been playing with my new Yamaha 2700 (
). On the other side of the happy face I've been dealing with a rather major problem involving my car. (
)
It all started a few weeks ago. When I would drive my car, say, 20 miles and stop somewhere. If I tried to start it within 10-20 minutes while it was still hot it would run terribly on 3 cylinders and burn oil like crazy. Water seemed to be getting into the cylinders and I also found that exhaust was getting into the radiator. I decided it had blown a head gasket.
Well, this weekend I decided to try and fix it. It was all going good about an hour into it. I was ready to remove the cylinder head. All but one bolt moved freely. The one that didn't was
really stuck. I worked on it for over an hour and didn't get anywhere. The bolt came loose easily but quickly stopped turning and wouldn't budge past a certain point. That is, until it broke.
I now have a broken bolt in the engine block and a head gasket that appears to have been perfectly fine. One cylinder is soaked with oil. There is no water in the oil or vise versa. To top it all off, I found that there is about two inches of water inside the car. Appearently it developed a leak just in time for the biggest rain storm we've had here in decades. The car, a 1990 Honda civic with 347,000 original miles and a bad paint job is worth very little.
Now I am seriously considering a new car (
Mazda3 Grand Touring). The problem is that I am only 19 and I have no credit. I can afford car payments and insurance but I don't know if I will be able to get any sort of decent interest rate on a car loan. Should I go through the company or a bank? Does anyone have advice for a car buying noob?