Quiet Dignity and Grace

As you know I’ve been having trouble with my truck and this video shows how I’ve been handling not being able to get it fixed{ the truck is Frankenstein}, with quiet dignity and grace. OK not really. At first we thought it was a bad oxygen sensor so I replaced it. Eighty dollars later the truck was still doing the same thing, it would run great as long as the outside temperature was above sixty degrees. When it got chilly the truck would die. Next I replaced the fuel filter, another ten dollars down the tube. I got my neighbor to come look at it and he brought a fuel pressure gauge so we could check the fuel pump, it was OK. We poked around under the hood a while and found a vacuum leak. We fixed that but no help. While we were under the hood we unplugged the vacuum line on the MAP sensor and the truck would run. So I replaced the MAP sensor. The next morning the truck still wasn’t fixed. Another eighty dollars wasted. CRAP!! By this time I’ve pretty much decided that I know absolutely nothing about cars.

I decide to take the truck to a real mechanic so they can put it on their diagnostic machine, that will surely tell us what is wrong. They tell me that I have the wrong plugs in and the is a vacuum leak under the throttle body. OK I let them change the plugs and put a new gasket under the throttle body. They keep the truck overnight to make sure they fixed the problem. I pick up the truck the next day when its warm outside and the truck runs great!! The following morning when its chilly again the truck is acting up again, they fixed nothing! Three hundred and fifty dollars gone. But this actually restores some faith in my mechanical abilities, two mechanics have now looked at it and they can’t fix it either! I call them that morning and they tell me to bring it back in and ask permission to leave the truck outside. What? The problem only occurs when it’s cold outside and they left it inside at night in a nice warm garage. I doubt they ever actually saw the problem and were just guessing. So I take the truck back and they leave it in the cold for the night. The following morning they find the problem, one of my fuel injectors is sticking when it’s cold. When it warmed up the injector would start working. They cleaned the injectors and it seems to have worked the truck ran this morning when it was forty five degrees outside. If it turns out that I need a new injector. My neighbor says he will “pop it in” for me The shop quoted me a price of $450 just for the injector. I found one at Autozone for $98. I wonder if they were exaggerating the price a bit?

Soooo to sum this up. It cost me about five hundred dollars to find out what was wrong with my truck. When a thirty dollar injector cleaning kit seems to have fixed my problem. Yeah, I got taken but I’m handling it with quiet dignity and grace.