Although getting the Camry back was pretty damned awesome, I noticed a serious problem after I drove it around a few times: it was very difficult to start sometimes. Seemingly at random, the starter would very slowly turn the motor over, indicating that there was a charging, connection, or stater motor issue.
The problem is that I'm pretty screwed without my car. Things change dramatically when you work for a living and don't have friends with the types of flexible schedules that university life provides.
I ended up buying a battery way out in Bellevue, because I happened to know that there was an auto parts store there. $80 later, and the Camry actually runs. Unfortunately, the battery is smaller than the outgoing one (which, as I remember, is the original—it's 8 years old) and I ran out of threads on the clamp. It's held in there, but it can nevertheless slide around.
The weird part about this all was the fact that the starting problems were completely unpredictable. In the six or seven times I started it while I was figuring all of this out, I exhausted the possibility that a difficult start would follow a long/short drive (indicating charge storage problems), drives with/without accessories running (indicating charging system problems), or short/long breaks (indicating charge storage or connection/shorting problems).
Whatever. It works now.
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