the Angie’s List Blue House Blog

My boy’s been sick. For a while, he seemed to get worse by the week.

This is the same boy who carried my sisters and me to the East Coast last summer (and was accidentally rammed against a fence by my twin sister; he required cosmetic work that cost more than a grand).

He’s also the same guy who took me back and forth between Northern and Central Indiana nearly every week for almost a year to visit my then-fiance, and he accompanied me on my dark three-hour drives home on roads surrounded by cornfields.

And of course he was with me on my way to and from work as I slid on ice and snow in Northern Indiana, an area my husband calls Siberia because of the day we got a dreaded 18 inches of snow.

My boy is my beloved silver Chevrolet Prizm.

The 2002 four-cylinder car — the first one I independently owned — suffered from a fever for far too long. It mysteriously burned oil for months and shook randomly. In fact, it seemed like every time my husband and I put oil in its engine, the black gold would be halfway gone in about two weeks. The strange thing was that we never saw a puddle of oil underneath the car, and no black smoke ever trickled out the exhaust.

Family and friends told us the car, which had fewer than 100,000 miles, shouldn’t have been guzzling oil like that. And when my husband and I recently poured some engine restorer into the engine in a desperate effort to heal the car’s wounds, the poor boy’s fever turned into something like convulsions or whooping cough.

So we recently took the Prizm to a local auto mechanic we found on Angie’s List. We resorted to using my husband’s Chevrolet Malibu (or as I call it, his “boo” ) for transportation for a few days. My husband prayed that my car would act up for the mechanics so they could identify the shaking/oil-leak problem.

When we returned to the shop, it just so happened that the ol’ Prizm just didn’t feel the urge to idle poorly for them. In fact, he ran smoothly the entire time he was with the mechanics. My husband is convinced my Prizm is possessed. I like to think he’s just ornery and likes to play games, a bit like me.

We learned that three of the car’s four cylinders were burning oil (we still don’t know why). We had to replace the spark plugs, which were worn and oil-covered (that’s actually helping the car to run more smoothly — no more shaking!)

Now, we just need to monitor the oil consumption. If the car continues to leak oil and ruin the spark plugs, we’ll have to either keep regularly replacing the plugs, or replace the engine for a more permanent solution.

Otherwise, hey — I have an excuse to a get a new car.

Can you spell Cadillac?

Nah, I’m sure my husband won’t go for that.