And somewhere around the time of 01/25/2004 06:42, the world stopped and listened as Andrew contributed the following to humanity:
One thing that I would like to add to this is the Chevy Caprice Classic Station Wagon. I beleive that it was a 1985 model. Well taken care of, oil changes every 3000 miles, etc...After 38,000 miles the engine suffered a cracked head or blown head gasket. Never found out which one it was. Coolent was going into the oil. What really pissed me off was the fact that the dealership wouldn't stand behind their warrenty. Their statement: "You will have to pay $1400.00 up front, and if the manufacturer feels it was their fault, then they will reimbuse you." Bullshit. It was imediately traded in at the Ford dealership across the street. Chevy? Never again.
Ford may have problems with their products, but their warrenty is quite good, and they stand behind it. It's just the routine maintenance costs that's expensive...At least in my case.
My Ford Ranger pickup has a few stories behind it as well. It's a 1991 XLT model. Let's see...It's been wreaked 3 times, broken into twice, towed about 5 times...
Major Problems:
- At 15,000 miles, a seal in the transmission blew out. Took it to the dealer, they replaced it. Under warrenty. At 20,000 miles another seal (different one) blew, also replaced by the same dealership. At
- manufacturing defect. Ford flew in these two guys who were experts at transmissions and basically built me a new transmission from scratch. Total cost $1300.00, my cost $50.00. Also about this time, I noticed that the tires were wearing unevenly. During the transmission rebuild, they rebuilt the front end and shimed it because they couldn't alin it for some reason. It's been fine ever since.
- At around 20,000 miles, I was driving home on I-680 through the Benicia corridor between Benicia and Cordellia over here in Northern California. I was moving at about 70-75 MPH when the engine suddenly lost power and quit. I shifted it into neutral, turned on the hazzards, and coasted to a stop. I didn't know what was wrong and it wouldn't start. After it cooled down, I was able to get it started and I drove it directly to the dealership. All guages read normal. The problem? The TFI module which is a sub-processor to the ECM and controls the ignition basically said good-night, but only when it got hot. It was fixed at no cost to me.
- At about 75,000 miles, my pickup truck suffered that flaming ford problem. More info here: formatting linkLuckly, itdidn't catch fire, but it did burn out the keyswitch, the wire betweenthe keyswitch and the starter relay, the starter relay, the batterycable to the starter relay, the cable from the starter relay to thestarter, the big main 4 guage battery cable from the batter to thestarter, and the starter itself. It cost about 0 to fix. I wouldhave traded it in at that point, but I couldn't afford a new vehicle, soI had it fixed. Never had a problem with it since.
- After owning this truck for about 6 years, the AC quit working. Turns out the O rings are gone. Still haven't gotten that fixed...One of these days...
- After about 120,000 miles, the pinion seal on the differental blew out and all the oil leaked out. Replaced the seal but after that it blew again, so I just left it alone until a wheel bearing went out. Then I replaced the differential.
- The latest one seems to be several things at once.
6a. First, the truck developed a leak. I was getting rain water INSIDE the cab on the driver side. Took the carpets out could find it, but it was leaking pretty good. Took it to a mechanic and he ran a dye test on it. Turned out the sealer was giving way in multiple places. He fixed a couple to slow down the leak but he couldn't fix it. Told to go to a body shop. I pulled the driver side fender off and we looked inside and we couldn't see where it was leaking from. First body shop that I took it to told me to go pound sand, but they refered me. I went to the shop that I was refered to and it turns out that they specialize in this type of thing. They must be good because there was a CHP cruiser being worked on there. After completely removing the dash to get at it (they took pictures. There was only the steering wheel and a mass of tagged wires), they put a very genorous amount of seam-sealer in the joints between the welds. Still waiting to see if it still leaks as we haven't gotten any rain yet.
6b. After putting the truck back together, we took a trip to the next town to look for a blower motor for the heater/AC because it's acting up. Well, when I pulled into the drive way, my step-dad who was with me made a comment about smelling anti-freeze. I smelled it too and saw steam come from the hood. "Oh Shit!" I turned off the engine and popped the hood. Coolent was everywhere. Fired the engine back up and found that the water pump died. So we replaced the water pump. Seems to be doing pretty good for a Kragen water pump. The old pump was the original pump as it had the Ford logo on it. It lasted 12 years and 200K miles.Why didn't I trade it in along time ago? Because at the major junction points I didn't have enough money to buy a new vehicle, otherwise I would have. But, on the flip side of the coin, other than listed above, all of the problems with it have been little or minor things like coils, hoses, belts, electrical parts, etc. Equipment does get old and parts do wear out and break, but for the most part, all the bugs have been worked out and there are no major issues...Except the AC. Plus, it's cheaper to fix the old one than it is to buy a new one, and who knows what you get when you buy a new one these days. Truck still runs good, and it is still mechanically sound. I figure I'll keep it till it finally dies, but if the engine goes, I'll probably rebuild it.
All in all, it's been a good little truck.