And Here I Thought $20 Hamburgers Were Bad

So my Ford Explorer is in the shop getting a $2500 water pump.

That’s best-case. It’s possible the water pump is bad because the timing chain system that drives it is bad. There is no sign the rest of the engine has problems other than being a Ford.

I will surely repeat a lot of things here, but off I go anyway.

Cars don’t really have water pumps. They have coolant pumps. No car uses plain water to cool its engine. But coolant pumps are called water pumps.

In the past, a water pump was a cheap part, and you could expect it to be on the front of your engine where it could be swapped by turning a few bolts and removing a couple of things. Even if you were a fool, you could do it in an afternoon.

There are good reasons for putting water pumps outside of engines. It makes them easy to replace. It also makes it impossible for them to shoot coolant into your engine where it will mix with oil and destroy the engine very quickly.

Ford and a couple of other companies, much like the ignorant children in every generation who reject time-tested wisdom and decide socialism is a smart new idea, have decided it’s best to put water pumps inside engines. This is like changing melanoma, which starts on the skin where you can see it quickly and have it treated relatively cheaply, so it appears first in the center of your brain.

Famous Youtube mechanic Scotty Kilmer says Ford had a very good reason for making their engines this way. It saves Ford money.

Well, that makes it okay, then.

Ford did some other brilliant things.

Ford made the water pumps inside Ford engines poorly so they were likely to fail early. It also designed them to be driven by timing chains. When timing chains go funny, they rattle around. This can make the water pumps fail even earlier.

My understanding is that when a pump fails, it means water is going out through the bearings, which should be sealed forever.

Ford came up with a genius solution to the problem. It did a recall, replaced all the affected motors, and redesigned the water pumps so they were harder to ruin.

No, it didn’t! Are you crazy?

Ford refused to recall anything, even after being sued in a class action. It chose not to change the pump design so new pumps that replaced ruined pumps would not fail. When you pay to have your old pump replaced, you’re buying a pump just like it. You might get 150,000 miles out of it. Or 10,000.

Ford also put two gaskets around the water pump cover. When the coolant breaks through the first gasket, it starts going out through a tiny hole between the gaskets. This hole is called a weep hole, because when coolant comes out, owners weep.

If you don’t know coolant is coming out of the weep hole, you keep driving, and soon the coolant wrecks the second gasket. Then coolant goes into your engine, and your engine falls apart. Scrap metal. Hence the phrase “Ford Exploder.”

In order to help owners find out when their coolant was leaking, Ford put the weep hole about three feet down a crack between the engine and the fender, in an area where it is impossible to see it.

If a lot of coolant comes out, you will see it under the car. If only a little comes out, you will have no idea unless you’re that 1% driver who opens the hood every day and checks his coolant level. Your engine can be totalled by a leak that never makes it to the garage floor.

You should be able to replace your own water pump on a Saturday for maybe $200. Dealerships quote figures more like $4500. That’s assuming the timing chain isn’t bad. Add maybe $500. Independent shops are cheaper because their customers are more intelligent.

There is, literally, no conceivable excuse for making a car this way. They can’t blame mileage or emission standards. They can’t blame safety standards. Ford is just incompetent.

If Ford is not incompetent, then Ford is evil, because it decided this plan was a good idea: create cars that need extremely expensive repairs other cars do not need. Then make money on the parts and repairs later.

The big problem with this plan is that people who have to have this repair stop buying Fords, because they can’t believe Ford is that dumb.

So if this is the plan, Ford is incompetent after all, but also evil.

I’m not too happy with this problem. Even if the timing chain is fine, I’m looking at about $3,000 in repairs and related expenses. That leaves me with the same setup that failed already.

Once the repair is done, I have to go and get multiple safety recalls fixed. On one car.

When I was a kid, I hated Fords. I had a great reason. My grandfather had a GM dealership. Later on, I realized that was silly, and I became open-minded. Since then, my family has bought a few Fords and GMS.

Let’s check their histories. To save space, I’ll just say that we had more than 10 GM cars, and not one major repair.

Let’s look at some Fords.

1985 Lincoln Town Car: trunk filled with rain
1991 Lincoln Town Car: caught on fire
1994 Ford Explorer: tranny failed, 4WD refused to engage, heating system failed very expensively, two wheel bearings failed
2003 Ford Thunderbird: ignition coil failed because all 8 were put in depressions that filled with rain, AC failed and started blowing very hot air, took nearly a second to respond to the throttle (normal behavior for the model)
2016 Ford Explorer: AC failed, water pump failed, timing chain may be gone

I had the idea that Fords were okay even when I told my dad he should get the second Explorer. I hadn’t considered making a list like this. Had I done so, I think I would have pushed for something else.

Dementia had set in, but he was still in need of a vehicle. We had reached the point where I had to take him to doctors, getting in my truck was hard for him, and his other cars were in such bad shape they were not good enough to keep using. And he was still sharp enough for short errands. Or so I thought. He had to quit driving a few months after we got the new Explorer. He only drove it once.

He loved his first Explorer in spite of the problems, so I thought the car-buying process would go easier if we got another one. I should have pushed for a Toyota.

I think I’ll end up buying a new timing chain, because you know how it is with expensive repairs. “As long as you have it apart…”

Some time this week, I’ll have a running Ford with a warrantied repair. Do I want to keep it?

Tough call.

The car is really nice apart from the fact that it could blow up at any time. It’s comfortable. It has creature comforts even luxury cars didn’t have when I was in college. It holds a lot of junk. It has zero rust.

On the down side, other than the horrific engine, it has a very harsh ride. The road noise and wind noise are bad. The GPS is 100% useless. It can’t compare to the GPS from a 2005 Toyota.

We are using a rented Nissan Rogue right now because my Dodge has an electrical issue. This is a cheaper SUV, and it shows. Nonetheless, the ride is way better than the Explorer’s ride. It goes over the dips in our private road with no problems. When you hit small bumps in the Ford, it’s “BAM! BAM! BAM!”

It’s those stupid rapper rims. I think. Tires used to have nice, high sidewalls that absorbed bumps and protected rims. Not any more. Now the tires are an inch high. Everybody’s ride has been pimped. Ridiculous.

I have been thinking about ditching the Ford and getting a Toyota 4Runner. It’s an old design. It’s a real SUV, which means it’s a truck station wagon. A Toyota Tacoma with a hatch. The Ford is just a tall car. The 4Runner has a full frame. The Ford is unibody. Like most trucks, 4Runners have real tires and grown-up-style rims.

People say the 4Runner is not hard to work on. Also, repairs are less frequent and cheaper. It’s a little bigger than the Ford, so maybe the engine area is not so jammed up. The water pump is not inside the engine.

Toyota is a much better company than Ford, which is why Toyota is the world’s largest carmaker and Ford, the company that invented the assembly line and the once-ubiquitous Model T, is third in its home country. Behind Toyota. Toyota obsesses on quality. It’s a sickness. They constantly improve things. Because the 4Runner is old, they have had a lot of time to improve it. There are no surprises left.

My wife wants a Land Cruiser. This is a big SUV. In the past, it was kind of like an Expedition, except it was a good vehicle. It was absent from the US market for a couple of years. They just brought it back. It has a 4-cylinder engine with two turbos, and it’s a hybrid.

Good luck getting me to buy that. Sell it to Buck Rogers. It’s exactly what I’m trying to get away from, except made by a good company instead of Ford.

Also, it would probably cost $90,000, so no. And you can’t buy one used yet.

The complaints people make about the 4Runner actually make me want it more.

“It’s dated.” YESSSS. MORE!

“The interior is old-fashioned.” What does that even mean? To me, a 2000 interior seems just fine. I love the interior in my ’07 Ram. I was madly in love with the interiors of my dad’s ’80 Cadillac and ’85 Lincoln. Does it mean there’s no big screen TV next to the driver’s seat? Does it mean each kid can’t watch a separate godless Disney movie with a homosexual POC protagonist? Where is the problem?

Maybe women complain about the interior. Surely it’s not men.

“It gets bad mileage.” So does the Explorer. The 4Runner is about 2 mpg worse, but we don’t drive much. If, may God forbid it, one of us has to get a job, we’ll get a Prius or something.

If we get a used 4Runner, we’ll take a net hit of maybe $25,000, which is a lot. It will be about 7 years newer than the Toyota, though, and we should expect to get 230,000 miles out of it without any major surgeries. For me, that’s nearly 30 years of driving. That’s 250,000 minus the 20,000 I will accept from a used car. Cars will probably be banned before then, and I may be with Jesus.

The 4Runner is what men buy when they have had it. When they want the most bulletproof gasoline-powered modern car known to man. Also, Toyota supports old models with parts for a very long time.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just drive the Explorer into the dirt. It will probably be cheaper in the long run. I know I’ll be mad the next time I have to buy a water pump. With leftists on the rise, it will probably cost $10,000.

I believe my family’s involvement with Ford is coming to an end. It’s unfortunate that Americans can’t run a car company.