This van is cursed….
So we made it about 400km into our trip to WA, when the van split another fuel line. We managed to limp it into Blackall, QLD and rang RACQ who helpfully have a depot right in Blackall with a “very good mechanic”.
Unfortunately said mechanic ignored my advice about air bubbles in the line necessitating a vacuum evacuation (per Ford, multiple times), let the thing stall out, then proceeded to torch the starter trying to crank the bubbles out, eventually burning out the fusible link on the negative side of the battery as well. This also meant we couldn’t put the windows up or lock the doors either.
RACV ended up agreeing to pay the depot to truck the van into Charleville, where a Ford dealer could fix the original problem and the damage the mechanic caused. They ended up fixing everything up rather quickly, and even put the fuel line costs under warranty - since it was a ford dealer that installed the last fuel line.
So we headed out to Brisbane to take a load south, confident our mechanical problems were done with. Since it was the first Tuesday of the month we even celebrated with pizza. After picking up the ‘za, we went to take off to find the truck and… I stalled it about five times.
Turns out the thing has no balls at all - won’t even take off in first. Rang to get someone to replace us, then went to bed in the parking lot outside the pizza place.
The next morning I rang RACQ again, and the guy who came out was incredibly switched on about common rail diesels… I was very impressed. After I’d already determined it wasn’t a blocked exhaust/cat, he diagnosed the shit out of it and ended up unplugging the battery. Turns out it looks like the engine management computer might be going out, and resetting everything appears to have helped… this time. I think this van’s days are numbered though.
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Goondiwindi QLD 4390, AustraliaNavigation: Older Entry Newer Entry