Matt's "New" Car Problems (a little lengthy)

When we decided to move to Bakersfield, Matt decided to sell his truck....purely for practical reasons (well that's what he tried to tell Kelly!) Actually it was partly for practicality. He wanted to get a more economical car for commuting. His ulterior motive, however, was starting a new 4x4 project. He figured with the money from selling his truck, he could accomplish both without having to pay anything additional out of pocket. His truck sold the same day he listed it and then we were down to one vehicle for about a week and a half. Apparently it's not so easy to find a little commuter car, (they are very desirable right now with the way that gas prices have been) So after driving all over LA and Orange County test driving vehicles. We finally found a 2001 Nissan Sentra 5spd with low miles (only 46K), was well maintained and gets 34 mpg. Sounds great, right? Well,the day after purchasing this wonderful vehicle...... on the way back from our 4th of July celebrations (about 11:30pm) we decided we better get gas since we were on Empty. The car started acting a little funny and then died at the gas station....no big deal, we must have ran out of gas, at least it died at the gas station. So we filled her up and turned the key...nothing. Luckily our friends were nearby and we were able to get a jump start and make it a few miles closer to home before the engine died again. The next day Matt did several things to "fix" the car and it was running great.....until he was on his way back from Bakersfield. He barely made it to the freeway and the car completely stopped again. He managed to push it (in over 100 degree weather) for "a little ways" to get it off the freeway. Luckily he wasn't too far from Jamie & David's house, so we had it towed there. He charged up the battery and then decided to change out the Alternator. Surely it would be fixed now. He managed to make it home, but barely. I won't go into all of the bazaar problems this car was having, but matt was getting pretty frustrated!!!! It was at this point, we vowed never to buy another Nissan! Having no other options, we finally took the thing into the dealer. They said that the whole engine computer needed to be replaced . That's kinda a major thing to go bad on a car with less than 50K miles and it's pretty pricey....luckily it was all covered under warranty and it was an easy fix. We got the car back from the dealer "good as new" just in time to go on our long awaited anniversary trip. We made it North of Santa Barbara (Goleta) when once again, we were stalled on the side of the freeway. We were hungry (and needed a restroom!) so we decided to walk to the nearest fastfood or gas station...unfortunately, it was 2 miles later before we found one. Not that far for Matt, but way to far for a pregnant Kelly! It was too late to cancel our vacation reservations, without losing all of our money and we were stranded with no way to get there....what now? Well, thank God, Matt's parents were camping in Ventura. We charged up our car and then switched it with Emily's car and went on with our vacation. We decided not to talk about the Sentra on our vacation. When we got back we took it back to the dealer and they once again told us that there was nothing wrong....Hello!!!....it stalled on us again! Finally, we took it to an auto-electric mechanic. He hooked it up to his big computer that runs an 8 hour test to diagnose the problem....our car shut down his computer! Finally, it was determined that there was a major short somewhere in the wiring that also caused several other parts to go bad.Since this guy seemed to at least admit there was an actual problem, we had him fix everything. We have taken it on a couple long drives and it hasn't given us anymore problems, but I don't think that Matt will be forming a bond with this car like he did with his truck :)