So I had an entertaining (if somewhat expensive) episode with my car. A little while ago, I started noticing a kind of a groaning noise coming from somewhere on my car. At first I thought it was the wind, but it kept happening on quiet days so I eventually took it in to have it looked at. They quickly narrowed it down to a loose ball bearing on the right wheel, which had to be taken to another shop to get replaced. I had to bring it back the next week because no one was open on New Years. On the second day the car was in the shop (this took 3 days total, four if you count the first day before I brought it back), they got the right wheel assembly back only to discover that this didn't solve the noise, and that they thought the problem was on the other side. Once they got the second one fixed (we're in to day three at this point - I think Kirstin was getting tired of having to get up to drive me to work), the noise still persisted.

The manager at the shop who I had been talking told me that she'd had all of her best guys look at it, they can't find the problem, and as an apology she didn't charge me labor for any of this (this brought what had gone up toward $700 back down to just above $300). She said at that point my best bet was to have a dealership look at it, although she didn't think the car was unsafe to drive. As an afterthought, she said that one thing I could check was to see if the ski rack was making the noise. I tried taking the rack off today, and lo and behold - of course it was the ski rack.

About a month ago, I took of the snowboard attachment on the rack (I moved it to our new, more snow friendly four wheel drive car), leaving just the frame. This apparently caused a vibration of some sort or an interaction with the wind. Guess I should have listened to my first instinct. I'm not too upset, the shop was pretty straight with me and it was probably good preventative maintenance. On the other hand, now my car looks weird without a ski rack. The ski rack used to be the only thing separating genericar from the rest of the Japanese early nineties 4-door sedans that all looked exactly the same, but fortunately most of those besides mine are off the road by now.