I've got a little Ford Focus that has been crapping out on me lately. Now, when I bought it I knew it had some issues.
The headlight issue is the last straw. I very rarely drive as I like the slow pace of walking through this nice little town on foot, but sometimes I just want to errands when I get off work at 1AM which means driving to Wal-Mart. The thing is, dimming the dashboard lights inside the car also dim the headlights and when the headlights go out, so does the dash lights. There is a knob to enable the lights, and a dial(?) to adjust dash brightness. I can keep it in one place for 2 days and it be fine, then all of a sudden they come on/off at random and may be off or very very dim for 20 minutes and come back to normal brightness without me touching a thing.
With all this said, what am I looking at, cost wise, to get all this fixed? It's not a very nice car, I bought it with cash for $900 so trust me when I say I am not expecting it to operate without some issues... but headlights I sort of need. Any rough idea of what this could potentially be so I have an ideal cost range before I just drop it off somewhere?
Do I need an automotive electrician or a priest to perform an exorcism on my car?
Thanks.
- Trunk was broken into, trunk latch broke and doesn't latch.
- As a result of the above, driving it constantly 'dings' to let you know a door is 'open'. I tune that out.
- Dash panel likes to flash lights to tell me everything that could be going wrong is going wrong.
- Lately my headlights have decided if and when they want to work. They may be bright as day driving down the road all happy and then they want to take a rest and dim to about the brightness of an illuminated cellphone screen... then maybe go back to being regular brightness.
The headlight issue is the last straw. I very rarely drive as I like the slow pace of walking through this nice little town on foot, but sometimes I just want to errands when I get off work at 1AM which means driving to Wal-Mart. The thing is, dimming the dashboard lights inside the car also dim the headlights and when the headlights go out, so does the dash lights. There is a knob to enable the lights, and a dial(?) to adjust dash brightness. I can keep it in one place for 2 days and it be fine, then all of a sudden they come on/off at random and may be off or very very dim for 20 minutes and come back to normal brightness without me touching a thing.
With all this said, what am I looking at, cost wise, to get all this fixed? It's not a very nice car, I bought it with cash for $900 so trust me when I say I am not expecting it to operate without some issues... but headlights I sort of need. Any rough idea of what this could potentially be so I have an ideal cost range before I just drop it off somewhere?
Do I need an automotive electrician or a priest to perform an exorcism on my car?
Thanks.