mechanics

I know a little about cars. I know enough to talk a good game and know when the mechanic is telling the truth. Most of the time I can piece together what the car is doing and where and have a pretty good idea of what's wrong before I go into the mechanic. I'm a good guesser with Click and Clack too, so I think that counts for a lot. Anyway today I went into the mechanic to have the Check Engine light looked at. The car failed the Chicago emissions test so I had to have something looked at. The report from the Emissions tester said that it was something in the catalytic system (which the manager said doesn't necessarily mean you Catalytic Converter). Well in this case it was the catalytic converter and the O2 sensors, which amounts to a lot of money. I was sort of hoping we could somehow squeak under the 500$ mark but we didn't. I don't know prices. So now we're working on lining up a new borrowed car but it looks like we'll need to do a bit of a marathon drive next week to return the faulty borrowed car and pick up the new borrowed car. Sigh.