It begins, as was inevitable...
I was driving to work Monday or Tuesday and the car started "shifting" when it shouldn't. Nothing stupid, just didn't need that downshift but it was there anyway. I moved to the right lane and waited. Dashboard goes Christmas tree on me. Hill hold assist, ABS, TCS, check engine, AT Trans Temp and cruise control lights all come on with the last 2 flashing. OK. Nothing is red and I can live without all the nanny crap anyway. Found someone w/ an ODBII reader at work and got a "TCC Pressure Control Solenoid circuit low" code. Did a little research. It's not pretty. Cleared the codes but then it threw them again on the way home. Took the car in yesterday and I called today to find out its a 1500 dollar job. Ouch. The car has nearly 182K miles and I've literally put 500 dollars into repairs in all that time. So, amortized over the life of the car, it's not terrible. Just sucks that it's tax time and we just dropped a bunch of money on a fence and skid steer rental. Whatever. It's not 22K in taxes owed. I'm not a huge fan of paying dealer prices but they've always been awesome and we got a brand new Forester w/ 72 miles as a loaner, no questions.
Funny part. None of our vehicles have any of this intelligent crap so when Kim started driving this Forester with all the new stuff activated, she freaked out. The car was trying to steer for her, then it hit the brakes when she didn't want it to and then it died at the stoplight. She was certain it was demon possessed and wanted to kill it. Listening to her tell the story, I nearly peed. She's clever tho. She figured out how to turn some of it off and I'm sure she'll turn the rest of before embarking on her day today. Still funny.