Ford F150 – Riveted

Whoomp Whoomp, Cough, Sputter

Laura Domela — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 00:48:09 +0000

Do you hear that?
What?
That woop woop woooop sound?
No.
Is that just a suspension squeak or something?
Dunno.

Feel that jerking?
Isn't that just the bumpy road?
No, it's like a tugging – like something's pulling us backward.
Seems like just the bumps in the road to me.
No, it is different…

WHOOOMP! Bing!

Uh oh – we've got a problem. It's a little wrench symbol. Can you grab the manual and look that up?

Yep… Hmmm…. The Ford F150 manual says "Limp Home Mode – drivetrain problem has caused your vehicle to go into a reduced power mode to get home. Some gears may not be available."

Yeah, it's got, like, almost no power at all.

Forty nervous miles later, we pulled into our campground. The truck was shuddering badly, shifting hard, and misfiring. We disconnected the trailer, started the truck up to move it forward… everything was FINE.

We drove it around Charleston (without the Airstream) for several days. Everything was FINE.

Today, we hooked up and started the long drive to Asheville, NC. We got less than five miles when it started again, much more aggressively than before. Whump Whump Whump, Bang! Whump. The truck was bucking and bumping and coughing… Finally, after 150 miles or so, we decided to pull into a Ford dealership in Colombia, SC.

During the previous few days, I had researched our truck's symptoms online. We were not the first to have these problems. On the Ford forums there was a torch mob yelling about how Ford should fix this problem. It seems that the new engine design (which has turbochargers and an intercooler) has problems in certain cases with water accumulating in the intercooler, getting sucked into the induction system, and making the engine cough and sputter. It particularly happens if you're driving in humid weather for long periods at freeway speeds and pulling a load.

Hmmmm… We are the poster child for that problem.

Our service guy was named John, and he was super cool. He was a pilot (we chatted about airplanes and flying during most of the diagnosis process), and he rode motorcycles, and of course he was a technical nerd because he worked on cars with computers. He needed us to drive around towing the trailer while he had his fancy-dancy computer system connected to our truck's brain.

Cough Cough – sputter sputter – "Yep, it's missing on number three, now there's five… OK, sparks are all working fine, no codes from the transmission…. oops, now it's missing on number one… Hmmm… ALL the cylinders are showing misfires. The ignition shows OK, the fuel injection shows OK… I've never heard that noise before."

John took us back and we watched while he pulled up the service bulletins and diagnostic info on his computer.

The good news was that our problem matched EXACTLY the service bulletin just issued by Ford (which was also the problem I had read about online). Furthermore, Ford had just released a new, re-designed intercooler to fix the situation.

The bad news was that there were only two of the re-designed intercoolers available in the US, and they were in New York. Yep, the same New York that is now reeling from hurricane Sandy. Those parts won't be arriving in Columbia, North Carolina any time soon.

John's advice… "Drive. It'll suck and it'll make noise and be rough, and the Check Engine light will come on. When it does, stop and cycle the ignition to clear it. But, it's not gonna break down and leave you on the side of the road, and you'll be able to get where you're going. I'd say just keep calling Ford dealers down the road until you find somebody that can get you the updated part."

We took John's advice.

Cough, Cough, Woop Woop BANG! Cough Cough sputter… (repeat for three hours)

Now, we're in Asheville, NC. We got here after dark and headed over to a recommended restaurant for some dinner (Tupelo Honey Cafe, thanks Doug Trout!)

If It’s Broken, Get a New One

Laura Domela — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 00:11:58 +0000

This morning we got up early (see today's post about the 6am PVC cutters next door) and called a nearby body shop to get an appointment for an estimate to fix the damage to our truck. We met Scott over at Mahnke at 9am and he took a thorough look at our truck and said it would realistically be 4-6 weeks to have it fixed. He said we'd need a whole new truck bed, and there was a spot where the truck bed hit and dented the cab so they'd need to fix and repaint most of the cab, and there was likely a slight bit of frame damage, etc. (He also said there was no way the guy who hit us was going the 25mph speed limit. Duh.)

After we left the body shop, we stopped to have some breakfast and talk over our options. We landed at the Cowboy Cafe for an omelette and some coffee.

We figured we could probably (a) find an RV park or campground nearby where we could get a monthly rate, cancel our reservations that we have in Leadville and Mueller State Park over the next couple weeks, and just hang in Denver while the truck was fixed…maybe getting a friend to tow us from Alumafandango on Sunday to the new temporary home of our choice. We could rent a small economy car to get around, make the best of it. Or, we could (b) go to the nearby Ford dealer and see (1) if they had a 2012 F150 Supercrew Platinum with the max tow package in tuxedo black that our cool custom painted tuxedo black bed topper would fit on, and (2) what they would give us to trade in our crashed truck. The last option (3) against the advice of the mechanic at the body shop, was that we could attempt to tow our trailer the 1200 miles home and have the truck fixed in the comfort of our own city with our own backup car.

We decided to head over to Lakewood Fordland to explore option 2 a little.

So our sales guy Michael greeted us at the door and we told him what we were thinking about. He said he wasn't sure they had one in that color, but let's go check. We walked directly over to a 2012 F150 Supercrew Platinum in tuxedo black — with pretty much the identical list of features and options that our 2010 truck had. Same chocolate and black leather interior, same sound system, same nav system, same crazy color lighting options on the cup holders, same moonroof, same automatic running boards. It was kind of creepy. How did they know???

Some of you who've been reading this blog may notice a pattern here. See Example A, and Example B.

The 2012 F150 has an Eco Boost turbo-charged intercooled 3.5L V6 (different from our 2010's 5.4L V8, but apparently has more power, a flatter torque curve, and better fuel economy). (Kevin just read all that to me.)

Here's Jay, our Ford finance guy (I accidentally snapped this while looking for a photo on my iPhone, but I liked it, so here it is):

Jay is a photographer when he's not the Ford finance guy, and we spent about two hours hanging out talking about (and looking at) photographs. It was just about the best car buying experience ever, actually. We love Lakewood Fordland.

Our sales guy Michael (a total rockstar) and another guy took both trucks down the road to a truck bed topper place they work with and had the topper from our 2010 F150 removed and replaced expertly (including the bed rug and all the wiring and everything) onto the new 2012 F150. They did a perfect job! Ford will be swapping our towing mirrors from our old truck onto the new one in the morning and we'll be set to head over to Alumafandango.

So. A new truck. A new truck that looks and feels eerily the same as our old truck, only without a big crashy dent in the backside. There have been some improvements in this model, we have a 6 year warranty with this truck, the interest rate we got this time is half the interest rate we had, and we'll get a check from State Farm tomorrow after the adjuster shows up and they figure out what the damage was.

(Just like) new. Problem solved.

We drove back to the RV park and parked the truck in the same place where we were this morning, and our across-the-way neighbor, Bob, comes walking toward us with his arms outstretched and his face making that "WTF???" expression. We just said "I know dude. How about that speedy body shop we found???"