Time For A Change !

Well the holiday weekend came and went and we both survived it. Actually we had a very good group of campers this weekend, with the exception of a couple of people, the holiday went smooth.

This week also has seen a few changes. Cindy got her hair cut short, I lost a friend of the past 37 years (Dylan calls it my "stach" ) I shaved it off. I also had to go and buy a hat, not a cowboy hat, but something to cover my bald head and tops of my ears. I found out the sun and the tops of my head and ears do not get along. Yea I know you all want to see pictures of us, well I guess I might as well put them out there

.


This past week has been pretty much doing the usual, fishing, taking care of the campers that come in and spending a night in Bozeman. Let me back up and start from the beginning. While we were in Wichita visiting David, the last day there it got pretty warm out so I decided to turn on the ac in the truck. The only problem was it did not want to cooperate and cool the truck down. Now our truck only had 69,500 miles on it, short 500 miles of the warranty expiring. I called a Dodge dealer, told him the problem and he got us in the next day. He found out the ac compressor was broken and would need a new one. Thankfully the warranty covered it and the only cost to us was the $100 deductible.

Well sometimes it pays to listen to your gut and sometimes it doesn’t. We knew the warranty was going to expire by the time we got to Denver so we talked and decided that maybe we should extend the current warranty while we were still within the 70,000 miles. Long story short we purchased a new 2year, unlimited miles warranty and felt we had done the right thing. We felt if we were going to be towing the camper and driving more miles than normal, maybe this was the thing to do. So we bought it, and hoped we would never have to use it. Which brings us up the night in Bozeman.

The previous week we drove up to the big city to stock up on food and other necessities, (one could not afford to buy all of their groceries in West Yellowstone) beer ( my essentials), fruit and veggies (Cindy’s essentials), small gas grill that we could stow away, ( to keep Yogi from wanting to come and enjoy our leftovers that were clinging to the wire grill), these kinds of things. We went to a Costco, bought some stuff and started toward Wal-Mart (Randy McKay’s favorite store) and the truck did not want to accelerate properly. Got to Wal-Mart, done our shopping and started back to West. Well the whole 90 miles the truck ran like an old farm truck I used to drive working for Don & MaryAnn, no power what-so-ever. I could not get any rpm’s out of it unless I turned off the Overdrive. We got back home and had no other problem with it. I called Jimi and told him I saw on the net a topic about error codes. He told me how to bring up any codes stored and I found 2 error codes, (thank heaven for smart sons). The first being a fuel injection pump, the 2nd excessive turbo boost. Called the dealer in Bozeman and set up any appointment to have them look at it. Long story short, bad lift fuel pump, and bad fuel injection pump.

Now this is where listening to your gut sometimes pays off. Our “new warranty” we just purchased, covered a rental for 5 days if needed and more importantly it covered the above-mentioned items. Dealer had both items in stock; we took the rental and hung around Bozeman for the day. The only problem that came up was the new fuel injection pump leaked and the dealer did not have another one. We decided instead of driving back to West Yellowstone and turning around the next day and drive back we would go all out, celebrate my birthday early, and eat a nice meal, stay in a nice cheap hotel and get the truck the next day. Unfortunely not all plans go as planned. The dealer called the next day after our evening of staying in Bozeman, and explained he could not get a new pump until ????. So for now as bad as I hate to tell anyone, we are left driving a KIA minivan around. In defense of KIA, I will have to say it is a very nice riding van (nothing compared to a Chrysler) but all in all a nice van.

Hopefully Monday morning will bring us some good news and we will be able to get our truck back then. Until then I just want everyone to know that I have not abandoned the American Made vehicle, just that I have no other choice in the matter!