My '97 Thunderbird LX with 3.8L engine has been throwing a "Service Engine Soon" light every now and then. Checking and retightening the fuel tank cap is about the only remedy I know about, and that hasn't worked in stopping the light from going on and off. I stopped at my local Autozone yesterday to have them read the codes and purchase the necessary parts to repair this annoying problem. The counter guy came out with me and started looking around for the connector and couldn't find it. I suggested perhaps it was under the hood, and we searched around under there as well. As we walked back into the store, I told him my owner's manual was in my tool box at home, but I doubted it revealed the location of the DLC, and we'd have to look it up in "The Book". He told a woman that was obviously the store manager (she was wearing a white shirt) of his difficulty in locating the DLC, and, without even looking up from her paperwork, she said "Maybe it's in a place we're not supposed to go. Tell him (me) to check the books out over there (pointing to an aisle with Haynes manuals)." The clerk takes me over to the shelf of books and selects a Haynes Ford Thunderbird manual and hands it to me. "Maybe you can find it in there," he says. Now, this book is wrapped in a plastic sleeve that has to be destroyed to open the book. I'm going to have to buy it, right? Well, I said that I'd go home first and check my owner's manual. As I was leaving, I approached the manager and said that I don't think *I'm* going to buy a book to tell *you* where to find that connector. They should have some data source more readily available for their employees if they wished to provide a service, albeit free. She just made one of those annoying faces and returned to pushing her pencil. I later recalled that they gave me the wrong brake pads some time ago that weren't discovered until after I'd removed the rear calipers from the car (royal PITA). And a time before that, they sold me an incorrect heater hose for the car. Is it me, the car, or Autozone that's such a problem? Since I'm me, and the car's a keeper, I won't be going back to AutoZone again.
Tom Flyer