The Timothy Trilogy

The tale of Timothy (our 1993 4-Runner) is long and sordid, so here's the Reader's Digest version (in 20 brief acts):

1. Josh buys the car who would come to be known as Timothy from a man who, he finds out later, brought pizza to the mechanics whom Josh had hired to investigate the merits of such a purchase.
2. Thanks to a faulty oil gauge, Engine Meltdown (the original) occurs as Josh is driving to his former job at Park City Mountain Resort.
3. Josh researches his options and decides--since he's still paying the car off--that it makes sense to get the engine rebuilt and that Clegg's Machine Shop is the place to do it.
4. Josh's mom tells the tow-truck driver to take Timothy to "Clegg's," which he interprets as Clegg's Automotive (next door to the machine shop but, confusingly, unrelated to the former and not known for engine rebuilding).
5. Clegg's Automotive "fixes" the car.
6. Josh and I get married. We spend a fabulous honeymoon on a cruise in southern CA and Mexico. On the trip back from LA--in the middle of nowhere (a.k.a. somewhere outside of Beaver, UT)--Timothy experiences Engine Blowup: the sequel to the meltdown.
7. After surviving a round chastisement from a torn-out-of-bed tow-truck driver who blames all of Timothy's problems on us, we hunker down in a hotel behind that Chevron with the huge rocking chair and wait for the male members of Josh's family to rescue us.
8. Said family members (heroes) arrive, place Timothy on a trailer, and get slightly past the site of Engine Blowup, the sequel, when their truck tire blows. Our rescuers are rescued by small-town cops, and Timothy finally makes it back to Provo.
9. Still under warranty, Timothy is "fixed" again by Clegg's Automotive, who acknowledge that the first job had been faulty.
9. Timothy serves us very well for the year we live at Sundance. Without his 4-wheel drive we would have been stuck in our house, or in the valley without a house, for much of the winter. He is able to rescue many a stranded driver on the way up to Sundance too.
10. Timothy's transmission dies. Considering all the money we've put into his engine, we decide to fix his gears.
11. One week later, his head gaskets blow.
12. Considering all the money we've put into his transmission, we decide to fix his engine.
13. Not wanting to fool with Clegg's Automotive anymore, we get a recommendation to go to Smith's Garage. We do. Smith of Smith's garage "fixes" the head gaskets.
14. Josh is again driving to Park City, this time for a job at the Sundance Film Festival, when Engine Catastrophe: the final installment (oh, please!) strikes. (Incidentally, Josh loses the job, having shown up 4 hours late his first day.)
15. We take Timothy to Smith's, who says he's thrown a rod. Several weeks of tortured contemplation pass. We finally go to Clegg's Machine Shop (the ones Josh intended to fix Timothy in the first place) and plead. Out of pity, they agree to fix the car and only charge us for parts.
16. After Japanese Motor Exchange--who R&R's engines for Clegg's (I've learned all the lingo)--removes Timothy's damaged engine and reinstalls the "fixed" version, we learn that there is still a problem. Smith's must have screwed up the gaskets. The engine has to be removed again.
17. After some fanagaling, Dave Smith returns our money--hooray!
18. Clegg's Machine Shop finds that in fact Smith's has totally and utterly (that's redundant but appropriate) screwed up Timothy's gaskets, which--to make an already long RD version shorter than it could be--Clegg's ultimately fixes.
19. Timothy goes in for his transmission check-up to find that the computer chip telling him when to shift is broken. The mechanic's remedy: "your automatic is now a manual." Works for us.
20. What we thought was simply a lack of freon in the AC turns out to be a major system hole. It will go unrepaired.

Though I would have never spent a dime on a gas-guzzling, environmentally-unfriendly, over-sized hunk of metal such as Timothy in the first place, I have now developed an affection for him akin to what I imagine I'd feel for a terminally ill relative (perhaps a distant one). I realize the time we have with Timothy is probably short and we need to focus on getting the most from each day that he's with us.

However, we're praying that this trilogy and any installments to come are separated by at least as much time as the two blocks of Star Wars movies.