Jason Murphy

Website Producer

A Ford from Hell.

That’s what my Ford Explorer (please, it’s a Ford Exploder, we’ve determined that already) has become. In the past 14 months, there has been a “self-destruct” button that was hit somehow. I know it’s old. 1998. But that 10 year mark has never been so hard to hit before. I mean, this thing dates back to pre-Windows XP days. You know, as in Windows 98. It’s friggin ancient!

Some of it we’re to blame for sure. I know in the eyes of the Ford Gods we must have seemed like we were trying to kill the poor beast while they struggled to save it from the hands of total destruction. Add a toddler, a baby, and a wife that prefers driving on two wheels instead of four (pick a side, Cruella) , and I bet my Ford has been begging for mercy via a suicide wish for some time. It sure has been attempting to give up the ghost lately.

July 2006: my wife took my Son to the community pool. It was crowded. They have an overflow dirt-parking lot that my wife parked on. It was lined with HUGE-FRIGGIN-BOULDERS to show a rough outline of the front of a parking space. Kiss the bumper to a boulder, dump the kids and pool toys out the back, and have a fun day at the pool while your Ford cooks in the Nevada sun. But when my wife came back, she forgot about said boulder, put the car in DRIVE and attempted to go forward. She couldn’t figure out why it the car wasn’t moving, so she stepped on the gas to make it not move faster. She heard all sorts of grinding and scraping, and the car was moving weird, so she finally got out and realized that she had high-centered the car on a boulder. I don’t know if this was genius or not, but she had to rock the car back and forth, drive then reverse, to get it off the big rock. In the meantime, we lost a radiator which I miraculously was able to replace on my own. I’ve shared that whole story before. $400 for parts and tools.

August 2006, hit a deer. Nuf said. $200 for parts.

September 2006: we had to repair a windshield. We live in an urban explosion of master planned growth, and that means a million gravel trucks and dump trucks take the same routes into our community as we do. When the signs on the back of these trailers say “Stay at least 200 Yards Away at your own risk” they mean it. We’ve seen those trailers lose a ton or so of rock in a single bounce. We’re pretty good about staying a good distance behind these truckers, but unfortunately the rock that got us was a stray from a dump truck coming the other direction on our little two lane highway. When a rock going one direction at 50 miles per hour hits a windshield going the opposite direction at 60 miles an hour, the windshield is going to lose. Luckily, the windshield caught it and didn’t puncture. From what I remember from sleeping through physics class in High School, the velocity achieved on that rock could have been as lethal as a bullet. It did leave an impressive spider-web crack though. $200 for glass repair, still may need to replace whole windshield.

October 2006: New brakes. No biggie. This was maintenance work. Did it myself. $90 max.

January 2007: Compressor exploded. Literally. Shrapnel all through the engine compartment. Replaced the whole A/C kit, lots of other hoses, and of course the compressor. $1200 sacrificed to the Ford Gods.

May 2007: New thermostat. Again, no biggie. This was something I supposedly could do myself easily. Except it didn’t go as planned. Took me about a week because I stripped the bolt to the thermostat housing and had to drill it out. No drills would fit in the space to get the job done right. I cut off the top of the bolt and was able to drill a little into it. I then actually busted a titanium reverse threaded bolt breaker inside of it. Talk about screwed! So I had to use a dreml and cycled through about a dozen diamond bits to drill out the rest of the titanium bolt breaker and the remaining bolt. It was like a dentist drilling into an old filling. Took me several days to work at it from different angles, but finally broke through. I decided to stop and count my loses before I had to replace the whole upper intake manifold. I used a self-tapping sheet metal bolt to secure the housing in place in the hole evacuated by the bolt breaker. It’s worked like a charm since.

June 2007: New tires. Luckily, this was a shop job. Ordered online and had them balanced by my local Wal-Mart Tire Center. $550 total.

August 2007: Engine and transmission failure. We noticed it was having troubles switching gears. Took it in and it was well overdue for some tune-up engine work as two cylinders were mis-timing. One of the fuel injectors was toast too. And of course, as I was afraid of, the transmission was almost completely toothless. $800 for engine work and $1400 for transmission.

September 2007: A/C Compressor has a leak in the front seal. We’re still sorting this out, but it may still be under warranty. I’ll find out tomorrow. $FREE? I sure hope so.