Category: Utah

Notice the pickup is gone.

Monday morning September 11, 2017 we towed the pickup into St George to get the Neutral Tow system I screwed up fixed.  It turned out strange.
Since I didn’t know exactly where we were going and I needed to find a place to park the motor home while towing the pickup we left early and arrived at 8:45 for our 9:45 appointment.  The service writer I talked to came out to the pickup when he started  it the dash still said the transfer case was in LO 4X4, he moved the transfer case selector from 2 wheel to 4 wheel to LO 4 wheel and back to 2 wheel.  The transfer case came out of neutral and the pickup was able to move on its’ own.  This is great.
I asked the service writer what I owned him and he said nothing.  I thanked him, said I was going to unhook the pickup and drive it around the shop to ensure it was really working.  I did this, hooked the pickup back up to the motor home and we drove a couple of blocks down the street and stopped for breakfast.
After breakfast I went back to the pickup to check one more time that everything was working.  This time the pickup stayed in neutral (LO 4X4 was displayed on the dash) when I went through the steps to engage the transfer case.  I moved the transfer selector switch from 2 wheel to 4 wheel to LO 4 wheel and back to 2 wheel, this time the transfer case made a clunking sound.
We went back to the dealership and I talked to the same service writer.  This time one of the shop people was walking by and the service writer asked him what he thought might be the problem, the shop person thought it might be the transfer case selector motor.
I unhooked the pick ( it is now 10:15 ) and we left the pickup to be looked at.  We drove back to Zion and about 2:15 the service writer called and said the pickup was working just fine and I could pick it up anytime.
We drove the hour back into St. George and the pickup was still parked in the incoming service vehicle area ( not the serviced vehicle pickup area ).  I went inside and the service writer said the pickup was working fine and when I asked him how much I owed him he said “Nothing”.
I went out to the pickup and tested the steps to put the pickup into towing neutral and then out of towing neutral twice and everything worked just like it is supposed to.
The more I thought about this the stranger it seemed.  It looks to me like dealership reprogrammed the transmission because the light on the neutral tow indicator is working like it should the transmission is making all the right sounds as it has made all the previous times I have engaged and disengaged the transfer case.  The question is why not change me for the work they did because they surely had to have done something and the Ford dealership in Enumclaw told me they don’t do anything for less than one hours labor.  They never made up a work order, never had me sign anything just had the pickup for 4 hours and returned it fixed.  After think about this it just doesn’t seem to be the way a dealership would be operating if everything was up and up.  I think the service writer found out he should not have moved the transfer selector switch so they reprogrammed the transmission to cover for his mistake after my mistake.

Life on the Road.

 

Thursday and yes the pickup  is still hooked up to the motorhome.  Yesterday when we got here I was unhooking the pickup so we could go dump and fill with water I got into a little bit of a hurry.  Note I have hook and unhook the pickup maybe a hundred times and I have already unhooked and hooked it up at Safelite in St. George when I got the motorhome window fixed on Wednesday.

Anyway I got into a hurry and when engaging the transmission I moved the ignition key to fast and the transmission is now stuck dis-engaged.
The steps are:
Foot on brake peddle
Turn ignition key to ON from OFF but steering wheel not locked
Pause = while the transmission engages
Move the shifter into Drive position
Move back to Neutral and start the engine.

I went from ignition key in OFF to START and then shifter to Drive.

I’ll be making up a new checklist. 

Pickup is not happy, the dash saying it’s in low 4X4 and in fact the transmission is still dis-engaged.   We have an appointment at the St. George Ford Dealership at 9:45 Monday morning to fix my mistake.

Oh well, as they say it would have been worse.