Car (96 E320) crapped out today.

[Lunagen Labs]

I'm beginning to wonder if it's finally hitting that point where repairs start coming in waves. It was dead reliable for over a year then last week a coil pack died and today(well Saturday) it decided to not start and left me stranded for the first time.

I gave some people from my church a ride to some local hiking trails and everything seemed fine. We walked for a couple hours in the beautiful weather and headed back to the car. Everything came on as usual when I turned the key to the run position, but when I turned it farther to start it, nothing. When I say nothing, nothing additional happened, but nothing went out either, like when the battery goes dead. On some tries, there'd be a faint relay-type click, but not on others. The battery seems fine, it just won't engage the starter. Maybe it's the starter solenoid. Seems kinda sudden. There's been a couple times in the last year that it rolled over slow, but started. I just chalked those up to the battery being run down or something as it didn't persist.

Anyway, I had to get the car towed to the dealer. A guy parked next to us in a BMW 330i offered to help and ended up giving the people that rode with me a ride back to their cars. Then he came back to check up on me. Super nice guy. Guess I'd better not make any sweeping generalisations about BMW guys for a while, my karma might take a major hit.

Oh yeah, when the service manager brought me into his office he said "I just want to say first off, that's the cleanest E class I think I've ever seen." That just made my day.