Just got home, what a trip!


[Follow Ups] [Post Followup] [Dodge Power Wagon Forum]


Posted by Tim Holloway on Wednesday, January 03, 2007 at 19:14:43 :

Just got home from Florida, 1550 miles, drove straight through in 28 1/2 hours. I drove, Joan slept then we would switch. I am glad to be home!
We had the worst luck, vehicle wise we have ever had. Fist, the day after we got to my Moms house, the drivers side wheel was getting VERY hot. I pulled the caliper and it seemed to be pretty rough on the slides so I replaced it with a new one. Bled it out and it worked fine. Then we had the transmission problems discused in the earlier thread. After Christmas, we headed further south to Joans Mothers house. The van ran fine on that leg, 5 hours. After we arrived, Joan ran an errand and came back saying that the wheel was hot again. It was dark out and sure enough the rim was glowin red. Pretty cool looking but obviously not kosher. There is no way for me to work on it there so the next morning we dropped it odd at the local Dodge dealer, to have those highly trained journeyman mechanics take a look at it. An hour later they called and said it needed new calipers, (both sides), new discs, new pads, new lines and they might have said master cylinder too, I was not listening anymore. Over a thousand dollars to fix it by the shotgun method, replace every part and hope like hell that one of them was the culpret. Maybe thats how they train them these days.
The van is a 99, with 133,000 miles and has been nickle and diming us for a while and we had looked at replacing it, Joan just hadnt seen anything she liked.
We ended up trading in the van on a very nice low mileage 03 Dodge Grand Caravan. I didnt trust the service dept, but I never trust the sales guys either so it was a level playing field then. After spending the afternoon screwing around with them we came up with a price that was agreable and we drove it away. It sure is a lot more solid than the old one. The only draw back is that the new one is not All Wheel Drive like the old one. Good luck finding an AWD van in South Florida! So, worst case if she really dislikes the Front Wheel Drive, we will sell it and find another one. With the amount of snow this year its a mute point anyway.
Anyway, its great to be back, I hope you all had a great New Years holiday.
Tim



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