I know that I say this on almost every post, but sorry I haven't posted for a while. I haven't had the desire to sit down and write anything recently. Mainly because of time.
Emma decided to start crawling forward last week. Previously she was able to move around on her own, just backwards. Also this week she has been very cranky. For those that know her I know that sounds hard to believe since she always seems so content. She's probably teething.
Evan has started school and seems to like it. Before he went he was looking forward to riding on the bus. I don't know if that is his favorite part now or not. He does seem to like art class though.
Now on to the latest news. Wednesday I was about to haul off the trash when Beth called me. She was in Princeton and has just got her hair cut. She was going to bring home some supper but she was having trouble with the van. Basically the engine stalled. She was too scared to drive it and wanted me to come into town. So I put the trash aside and rounded up the kids and went into town. She was sitting in front of the Princeton municiple building across from free parking. I started the van up and drove it over to free parking. It died on me just driving it over there. So we decided to take it to Best One in Princeton. Since it was almost closing time for them, they kept it overnight and looked at it Thursday morning. Thursday morning they call me with the laundry list of problems that it had. I already knew it had problems because the dash was lit up like a Christmas tree. Over the years we have had to put extensive repairs on the van. Some our fault, some not our fault. Keep in mind this is a 2003 Ford Windstar.
-Once we had to replace the gear box on the steering column. This is not normal
-Once I left the parking break on and Beth drove to Evansville with it on. We had to replace the brakes and the master cylinder.
-The brakes were never right after that because we took it to Vincennes Ford to fix them again a year or so ago.
-After leaving Vincennes Ford after getting the brakes fixed, the alternator went out and it had to be towed back to Vincennes Ford.
-Beth has "curbed" the van a few times and we lost hub caps. On the passenger side of the van were Ford hub caps and on thedriver's side was some cheap replacements that I bought.
-The anti-lock brake module had failed a long time ago and we never got it fixed.
-The back hatch, like other doors, has a switch on it to turn on the interior lights etc. This switch only worked in the winter time. The rest of the time the van thought the hatch was open.
-The fuel fill door had a switch on it with a light on the dash telling you when you left it open. The switch was broke and the light stayed on all the time.
-We replaced the battery one time.
-We put a new set of tires on it and bought the road hazard insurance. Good thing because we had to have them patched at least three times and one tire was replaced entirely.
-Once while at the Gibson General Hospital ER parking lot, a guy backed into the rear driver's side of the van. It cost him around $1800 to fix it.
-Beth hit a concrete culvert once and it put a gash down the side. I never fixed the dent/scratch, but when the guy hit it at the GGH ER, he replaced the rear bumper for us.
-Beth once hit a big dog out on highway 41 north of the Gibson/Knox county line. It ripped part of the lower bumper, which was plastic.
-Sometime later, Beth drove the van through some water and it ripped the rest of the lower bumper off. Part of it remained, but was barely hanging on. I reattached the remaining part with some bailing wire.
-The dash had a pull-out drink holder. Beth broke it off by getting her purse caught on it.
-It has a low tire pressure warning light that kept coming on. I checked all the tires and nothing was wrong. I kept resetting the light, but it kept coming back on for no reason.
-We took it to get the front end aligned one time. Aparently, aligning a van requires all four wheels to be adjusted. They had to replace a part on the rear wheels and they broke some kind of cover (which they replaced for free).
-The check engine light has been on for a long time and that leads me to the on board computer error codes that Best One Tire found.
-Idle air control solenoid needed replacing. Probably the cause of it stalling.
-The fuel system needed servicing. Probably dirty.
-Evap system leak
-wheel speed sensor input missing (probably the cause of the low tire warning all the time)
My hooptie rollin', tailpipe draggin'
Heat don't work an' my girl keeps naggin'
ANYWAY. The computer listed nine faults in the engine and Best One was going to charge $612 in labor. I didn't even ask how much in parts. It has over 135,000 miles on it, overdue an oil change, and the air filter was probably dirty. It had good tires though. And to think we drove this thing all the way to Pigeon Forge a couple months ago.
So after all that, I'm sure it would be no surprise to say, we traded it in on a new car. We bought a brand new 2009 Chevy Impala from Memering Motorplex in Vincennes. I had bought my 2002 Ford Ranger new, my 2006 Ford F-150 used, and the van was used when we bought it. So I told Beth that when we got rid of the van we could buy her a brand new car, so we did. They only gave us a little over a thousand dollars for the van. That was fine with me. I don't think it qualified for the "cash for clunkers" deal.
I drove the van from Best One Tire all the way to Vincennes. Beth followed along in the truck. With Evan being five almost six and the van hanging from a thread about to die taking it to a dealership, it reminded me of a story. When I was 5 or 6 my parents traded in their 70-something model Ford Grand Torino (think: Starsky and Hutch, only different color) on a brand new 1980 or 1981 model Mercury Monarch (which was later my "first" car). They took the Torino to Lindsey Lincoln-Mercury in Evansille.... on a flat bed trailer. Yep, they had a car that died and they traded it in instead of getting it fixed too.
