I’m feeling lucky
We found out online there is a Ford 05S28 recall on a faulty cruise control switch in our engine. It affects nearly 4 million SUV’s and trucks and Ford denied the problem for ages. They were dealing with two other recalls on the same switch with other vehicles at the time. My personal hero Ralph Nader and other consumer advocates demanded the NHTSA alert vehicle owners to the potential fire hazard in numerous models of Ford and Lincoln SUVs and trucks, which had already been linked to numerous deaths and destroyed hundreds of vehicles. A small, cheap replacement part and about 15 minutes of time at a Ford dealership fixes the problem, if you hear about it in time. Unfortunately if you’re not the only owner of a vehicle its hard to find out about these things.
The scariest part is the fires are spontaneous, often occurring when the ignition switch is off and the key removed! This is because Ford designed the cruise control switch to remain on or “hot” at all times. When a crack develops in the film separating the brake fluid from the electrical circuit, the leak will cause a fire. This could have happened while we were sleeping and Tristan would have been right above the engine! I feel so lucky it happened on the very first day and that Nathan got the fire out in time before we lost everything. And that we have RV insurance… wow we’d be screwed without it. We were lucky on so many levels, most of all that we didn’t die in an explosion. RVing as it turns out is rife with danger and sex appeal.
Who knows how many days we’ll be staying in hotels waiting for the repair work to be done. In the mean time all our stuff inside the RV is at risk while it stays in the repair shop. For obvious reasons we had to hand over the keys. Back when we were looking at RV options I wanted to have a truck and 5th wheel for this exact reason, (and because it makes shopping in cities a whole lot easier, especially for full-time RVers) but we simply couldn’t afford this option. So hopefully once the engine is fixed we won’t have any more problems… hopefully.
Julie
29 Jul 2008 7:59 pm
Wow, even though it sucks it happened at all, I am so glad it happened when it did.
admin
30 Jul 2008 7:11 am
Yeah for sure. it all seems to be part of some higher plan. You know, like one handed down from Canada.
Still waiting to hear from the insurance company on wtf is up, though. I don’t mind the delay as much, but the waiting to find out how long the delay will be is brutal.