Car Repair Cont'd.

So awhile back I took Miranda's car into the shop to get it aligned and have the wheels rotated/balanced. She had been complaining that it was shaking pretty good making turns at high speed. So I took it in, and had them look it over. They found a bad ball joint on the right front and the back left tire spindle bearing was loose. So they replaced them, aligned it and rotated/balanced the tires. After the took care of that they brought to my attention that the car needed motor mounts replaced. They said they would recommend them being replaced soon, due to the fact that they were pretty much shot. So, a week or two later I made an appointment to have them replaced by "our" mechanic. He's usually more affordable, and does good dependable work. The alignment, rotations, bearing and ball joint cost about $350+ to put on. He gave me an estimate of around $280, which is a heck of a lot cheaper than it would of cost the actual "shop" to put them on. I think they said about $350 ish. So , a day or two before we took the car in, Miranda calls me one morning on her way to work. She says, that they car like "stalled" going up an on ramp. Come to find out, the engine hesitated and wouldn't accelerate up the ramp, but finally "caught" and took off. I knew it wasn't the transmission because the engine wasn't revving, and the "catch" wasn't a violent jerk. It was almost like it didn't know what to do. Like a sensor was out, or going bad. I talk to a couple guys at work, that are pretty knowledgeable about cars, and they said its probably some sensor on the throttle body, either a TPS (Throttle position sensor) or something along that lines. So I had our mechanic take a look at it. He said the TPS tested fine, but the idle on the car was really erratic. So he check out the IAC (idle air controller) because apparently there was a tech bulletin if you have these list of problems * cold start, sluggish accel, etc* that it needed to be replaced. So he replaces it. Fixed it, runs like charm now. So the grand total after he replaced the motor mounts and the IAC was $380, which is more than the "shop" but he did more work, So I figure that the shop would of probably charged us more if we had them put on the sensor. So I think we made out ahead.
So, anyway, after all that ta-do, I thought now would be a good time to change her car over to a synthetic /synthetic-blend. Just to the fact, its had a lot of miles put on it, and probably wasn't taken car of the best. Probably had crappy oil put in it, and cobbled together to keep running.
So I decided to put in Valvoline Max-life 10w-30 , its for vehicles over 75000 miles. Its supposed to condition seals, and help prevent deposits and all that stuff. So I figured it wouldn't hurt. Plus if it worked and fixed the leak she's had the whole time she's had the car, then I would switch her up to a full synthetic,like Mobil 1.
So we'll see how it goes. I've changed the oil and oil filter, and cleaned up the engine from all of the old oil that spilled over it over that past however many years of neglect. So I figure I will check it about 500+ miles into the new oil and see how its working, leaking or not. She usually have to put in a quart ever 3000 miles. So we'll see how it works.
I will keep you updated when I see what happens.