Thanks for all the encouragement.
OK, Without boring you with all the details, I'll sum things up.
Saturday we pulled into a gas station in Hays, Ks and the 2007 RV acted as it was in neutral. I called the Ford road service number and they dispatched a tow truck to get us to the Ford dealer. We sat in the Ford parking lot Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The good news is they have a power hook-up for RV. No water or sewer but thats OK. They did not look at us until about noon Monday. They first dropped the pan. Nothing really telling there. There were metal shavings but nothing like I expected. They then put the pan back on added fluid and did the pressure checks. All values were very low. Next thing was to pull the tranny and take it apart. This reviled the clutch was burned up and some of the bands had been slipping. With this information they were able to work up a cost estimate to email to Ford but of course it was too late to do on Tuesday. Ford was contacted first thing Wednesday. To my surprise it only took Ford a couple of hours to replay with the answer of “replace rather than rebuild”. This was good news because that should be faster. Just get a new tranny and put it in. There was a transmission in a town about 120 miles East of here. They were going to have it overnighted which would have put it here some time Thursday. I suggested that I just drive over, pick it up and bring it back. I could have it here by 3pm (more later on what I drove over to pick it up). So this is what I did and I had it here right at 3PM. The mechanic unloaded it and started working on it. I told him that if he could finish by the end of the day(6PM) there would be a 50 dollar bill waiting for him. He perked up and was getting interested in the job. It looked as though things were moving in the right direction so Mary Jo and I decided to see what there is to see in Hays, Ks, This really is a nice little town. We returned a little before 6 to find that the RV was in the exact same state that it was in when we left. We did not find out until this morning that the problem was WRONG transmission. The right one was suppose to be on the way an due at any time. It did get here at about 9 AM. The problem was that they now had “our” mechanic working on another car and when he finished that one he pulled in another one to start on. This did not sit well with Mary Jo. Now, you all do not know Mary Jo yet but she weighs in at about 98 lbs but don't let that fool you. As a retired State of Florida probation officer I have see her makeover 250lb redneck men cry. Back to the situation... She with her STONG southern “charm” talked to the service manager. By the end of the conversation “our” mechanic was dispatched to get back on our job. We think again that all is well, at least for about 30 min, then Brian (our mechanic) stops working again. Here comes the parts manager over to our C-Dory. By the way we have been “camping” in the C-Dory, in the parking lot since Tuesday. He says a little more bad news. This transmissions has the wrong cooler with it. So, no way we're getting out of here today. The right cooler is being Fed-Ex from Michigan. With luck it will be here by 10 tomorrow. In the mean time Brian did get the transmission in and all that is left is the cooler. I don't know which is worse to keep thinking that this repair is going to be over and getting disappointed or just knowing from the beginning that it would tke this long.
Now to an aside. The people we have met in this town can't be beat. On Sunday, we decided to breakout the bicycles and see the town. It's only about three miles long. We get to the far end and we have four flat tires. We found a service station with air but we can only go about two blocks before the tires are flat again. We push the bikes to a place that looks like it may have some air. It turns out that this guy has an internet auction business for things too big to ship. He sales all of the state of Kansas surplus equipment and stuff like that. Anyway, he just puts the bikes in his truck and takes us back up to the Ford place. On the way, he get's our whole story. He insists that I ride back to his place and get his old Mazda truck and use it while we were stuck here. What a guy!!
Thats the adventure so far..... Are we having fun yet???
Keep your fingers crossed that we get out of here tomorrow. If you see us move on SOPT you will know we are back on the road.
