[Sethomas]

The parts came to around $120 by buying on Amazon. The trouble was that many garages won't install parts you buy yourself, whether because of their profit model or warranty issues. To go to a place like Meineke and have these jobs done, they'd buy the parts at absurd mark-up and I'd be paying around $1400.

For most people it would have been worth it to just save up and have a mechanic do the job. The problem for me was that my car has an interference engine and I bought it at a point where there was no way of knowing if the previous owner had the timing belt changed at the recommended interval. If a timing belt suddenly breaks on these engines (and there is no imminent warning in most cases), the engine basically cannibalizes itself and the cost of repair is usually more than the cost of replacing the car entirely.

Now, the water pump is driven by the timing belt and my car started making a noise implying a bad water pump. To access the water pump you have to remove the timing belt. If you remove the timing belt, you're already investing so much time to the project you may as well replace everything else you can spend money on at the time. I developed a mental image of the water pump locking up and eating the teeth off the timing belt and ruining my engine within a fraction of a second, so I was worried to drive anywhere before getting this done.

In the past two years I've taken on a tone of DIY projects, including completely refinishing the basement where I live. Although I often launch myself into situations over my head and go insane trying to work my way to a solution, I've steadily lost my tendency to be intimidated by absurd DIYs.