Monday, May 3, 2010

5/3/2010 Uh-Oh…..

We decided to go visiting family and friends today.

We didn’t get far.

Sitting in the truck all ready to go and Bob turned the key and we immediately knew something was wrong. Rough running does not even begin to describe how the engine rumbled and sputtered and about the black smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe. Uh-Oh. This is NOT good! I could tell by the language Bob was using that this was not good.

Back into the house we went and called our Good Sam Emergency Road Service. Everything with that call was going well until the fellow told me where our truck was going to be towed. Their policy is to tow it to the nearest place for repair and we insist on Ford repair facilities. The closest was a local Ford dealership but we wanted it taken to another facility that works on nothing but the big trucks, Bayshore Ford. It was a few miles further and the guy was insistent that we pay for the extra mileage. Like 6 or 7 miles probably but I wasn’t hearing any of that.

After several phone calls back and forth and one to the dealership where they wanted to to take it we found out that the nearer place doesn’t even work on F-550’s. When I called Good Sam back to let them know they had already decided to take it where we wanted as a courtesy. Perhaps they called themselves and found out they couldn’t work on it but I would like to think they changed their minds because we’re good and loyal customers.

So the flatbed truck arrived and The Beast was loaded. As a side note the building in the background is the school I went to in first and second grade. It is now the town hall.

IMG_4797

IMG_4798

IMG_4799

There it goes…

IMG_4800

So much for visiting today.

Needless to say Bob got on the computer right away to the Ford and diesel discussion boards to get an idea of what we’re looking at. It has been determined that we are looking at two possible scenarios, that it is going to be fairly easy to fix but expensive or a real bear to fix and even more expensive. Even though our truck is a 2006 we have no warranty. The truck was red-lined when we were in Montana and the warranty voided because of the aftermarket stuff added to it. Either way this is going to hurt and this Queen of Cheap is not happy.

It wasn’t exactly a pleasant afternoon because all either one of us could see was huge, enormous, humongous dollar signs.

No comments: