So, I'm about ready to give up on my van. Given what I paid for it and all the repairs, I could have just as easily purchased a brand-new Vespa or something. ("But R^2!" protest many people when I recite this particular gripe, "A scooter isn't safe to take on busy highways!" Yeah, well NEITHER IS MY VAN.)
Anyway.
Since I bought this from a friend of my father's, my father doesn't want me to sell it for scrap and collect a few meager hundred for it. He's willing to foot the bill for repairs (up to a point) if it means I keep the "investment".
However, this means I have to take it to a mechanic he trusts for the new transmission/cooling system problems. Since he lives 250 miles away, this means he gets a referral for an Atlanta-area mechanic from the guy he's taken his cars to for longer than I've been alive.
He referred me to two places. The nearer of the two is a radiator shop 25 miles away.
So I went and dropped my van off. The angry djinn who lives in my radiator was in a particularly bad mood, so the van overheated twice on the way. I left it there for two days, and got the report back that since there were so many transmission errors popping up, I need to get it properly diagnosed at a place that specializes in transmissions because it probably needs a rebuild (this is the same diagnosis I got two weeks ago, paying my own money and a lot less trouble for). And there's no reason to investigate or repair the radiator if I'm going to decide not to bother with the transmission and scrap the vehicle, so they didn't fix (or apparently charge my father) anything.
The recommended transmission shop is nearly 40 miles away, and I'm pretty sure the van just plain won't make the trip.
And when I left the radiator place? Not only had they consumed the rest of the gas in the tank, but I oerheated within five minutes on the road. They hadn't bothered to put any coolant in the radiator, you see, making the angry djinn quite furious indeed. Thankfully I broke down right in front of a Walgreen's that happened to sell what I needed at a price I could still afford after refilling my gas tank.
Oh, and my tags expire in three days, which is why I'd decided to scrap the goddamned thing two weeks ago -- I knew I couldn't afford to fix it, get it inspected, and get my tags renewed in time. I may very well get a traffic ticket on my way to getting the fucking thing fixed now.