After nearly 237,000 miles, countless road trips all over the country, and 20 stadium adventures, my Quest Mobile may have taken it's final road trip. The dependable 1997 Ford Explorer that I bought in 2004 with 84,000 miles on it is really starting to give me some problems. What began as a fuel pump replacement, grew to include the replacement of engine sensors, and then the discovery of a broken timing chain tensioner. We had to remove all the accessories off the front of the engine and open the front cover to replace the timing chain tensioner. While we were at it, in an attempt to be proactive, I replaced the water pump, some hoses and the serpentine belt, expecting that they might be the next thing to go and knowing full well that it won't ever be any easier than right now to replace them. We've been working for two weeks tracking down proble
ms and discovering new ones all in an attempt to resuscitate my fallen companion. With the tensioner replaced and the vehicle buttoned up again, now the issue is that the damned thing won't idle without stalling. So I'm working through the process of trying to eliminate potential causes of this latest issue. The biggest problem is that I'm having a tough time trying to find the time to work on the vehicle. Holding down my 9-5 and trying to make arrangements to get to and from work has been a major challenge. Thank God for family. Jim, you really helped me out here.
So after a $1200.00 repair bill, I decided that the trip down to Charlotte, NC for my bachelor party would be the perfect lithmus test to see if the repair took. After shelling out a cool G to have the rear axle rebuilt by a place called Ring & Pinion in Mt. Clemens, MI, I took the truck for a test drive and found that the original problem I took it in for (a strange clunk coming from the rear of the vehicle) was still there. I returned to the shop, they gave me the run around, but we settled on having the transfer case rebuilt for an additonal $200.00. I'm not sure about Ring & Pinion, but I don't think I'll be taking another one of my vehicles there. After they rebuilt the transfer case, I pulled it out of the lot and everything appeared OK. No mysteriouos clunk to be heard ... which brings us to the 13-hour Charlotte road trip. Fours hours into the trip, my AC quit ... it was 90-degrees. Midway through the trip the clunk began to return. I was pretty damned furious.
I drove that stupid thing around Charlotte for a week in the blistering heat with no air and the back end clunking around like the rear axle would break off at any minute. It was miserable, but I made up my mind that this would unfortunately be the last road trip for the Questmobile. IF it would make it back to Detroit, it would be unceremoniously replaced as soon as I could find something else. I feel like I wasted a lot of money trying to keep my beloved companion road worthy for the last leg of our journey, but once the air quit, that was the last straw. The Questmobile actually did make it all the way back to Michigan, so I had one last road trip with an old friend, but now I seek a successor.
