Still Delayed

Speedy is still in the Good Brothers Dodge service department.

They found the problem that caused the engine to stop while on the highway. It was a failing crankshaft position sensor, part of the ignition system. When it fails, the ignition system cannot tell the position of the cylinder heads and doesn't know when to inject the fuel and trigger spark ... so it doesn't and the engine stops. The failure can be intermittent, as it evidenced itself yesterday by first having a total complete failure, then failure after a few seconds, and finally working mostly where the engine would run continuously but not particularly smoothly. For how long would it run? We didn't want to find out on the road, so we went with the suggested replacement.

With the appropriately heavy application of money, a new sensor was installed and it was time to get back on the road ... once the predicted snow ended. Or was it?

As I left the dealer, all seemed well, but by the first traffic light, about a mile from the dealer, the check engine light came on. It was back to Dodge for Speedy. They were a bit perplexed but quickly diagnosed the problem as a different one, a bad oxygen sensor. We had an oxygen sensor replaced about 15,000 miles ago, before last spring's trip south. I told them this and that I understood that the sensor should last longer than that.

The reply was "Which oxygen sensor was replaced? There are two of them." They went back to look at the sensors. The currently failed one was, of course, the other one. The service manager explained that, given the age and mileage of Speedy, they should have been replaced as a pair. The incremental cost of labor would have been insignificant. Unfortunately, Good Brothers did not do the earlier repair.

They didn't have the sensor in stock, so it cannot be fixed until tomorrow, with the application of still more green. They said I could leave it or I could take it and bring it back in the morning. With 6-9 inches of snow predicted to fall overnight, I opted to leave it.

As we had expected that Speedy had been repaired, Ellen had left me at the dealership and went off to do some errands. I expected that she would still be out and tried to call on her mobile phone with no success ... seven times with no success. Such is the radio wave stopping power of the local Whole Foods. Finally, I called our friend, Sally, spouse of Harry, who I knew was out walking her dog near our house, hoping she would stop by to see if Ellen had returned. She offered to come get me. Sally and Nina the dog arrived in their Roadtrek. At least I rode a Roadtrek home, even if it wasn't ours.

Speedy is still at the Dodge dealer. It is snowing. Maybe the van will be fixed tomorrow. Maybe the snow will stop. Maybe we will get away by Wednesday, when the weather is expected to be clear and in the teens, another icy start on a trip south.

Needless to say, no photos today.