Postcard from Oklahoma- 3

11 October 2012

Canute, OK

Or maybe it's Foss, OK... ?? Google & Garmin disagree about where we are. Happens a lot in the boonies.

Good news: the truck is fixed. First I got a number for Jerry Tosh (580-821-2520) who is a mobile repairmen for trucks, oil field equipment, RVs... whatever. If it has an engine, he'll work on it. He took a quick look, then jumpered across the starter solenoid with the ignition on and the engine sprang to life. He told me "Don't shut it off!" and said I should go to a Ford dealer. I called a Ford dealer in neighboring Elk City, but they were too busy to look at my problem.

Doug Gray Ford came to our rescue!

The good news, though, is they gave me the number of Doug Gray Ford in Sayre, OK (580-928-3369). Doug Gray Ford is about 25 miles from the KOA and Dennis, their service adviser, agreed to have the guys take a brief look at our problem.

It took their diesel tech all of about 5-minutes to figure out that one of the 3 exhaust gas temperature (EGT) sensors (yes, 3!) had failed and that they had the sensor in stock. I felt confident about what he said about our truck since all but 1 of the vehicles in the 8 service bays was a truck of one flavor or another. A good clue he probably spoke with authority.

You should have heard the lift groan as all 6,800# of our
truck moved up in the world.

The tech got started right away. They pulled one truck out and ran our truck in... literally stopped working on it to take care of us! It souinded so simple I thought I might be out of there in 10 minutes. But then things seemed to grind to a halt. Turns out the sensor was so corroded they had to cut it off the diesel particulate filter (DPF). Ford has an approved work around for this problem. To me it seems like a temporary solution since it involves a hose clamp, but it's supposed to work till we can have a new boss welded into the DPF and have the sensor mounted as it was originally. Hopefully we can wait till Benson, AZ to get the work finished.

So tomorrow we should be on the road to Amarillo, TX for a couple nights, then on to Tucumcari, NM and finally Santa Fe, NM. We're getting close to putting Paid! to this season.