Things have been tight financially, recently. I won’t go into all of the long litany of things, but suffice it to say that we are running on the edge of red and black ink. Well, to top things off, yesterday (Friday), I took Brandon to the Mountain for work, it’s about a 1 or 2 mile drive. About half way, the oil pressure gauge went to low. There was now smoke or anything so I dropped Brandon off and went home. I opened the hood and the oil level was full. So I didn’t lose any oil. In the past, I had a bad sensor on the truck and so I thought that this was what the problem was. I was wrong. I forgot that there is a pump that maintains the oil pressure in the truck and that it failed. So when I went to work in the afternoon, the truck started, but as soon as I began to drive down Elm Street, the engine died. I tried to restart it but it wouldn’t go. I called our roadside assistance and the Ford Garage in Gaylord and made arrangements.

Once at the garage, I got a rental car and proceeded to work. Then the phone call…they pushed it into the garage and tried to start it, but the engine had totally siezed. It wouldn’t even try to crank like it did for me. A remanufactured engine with labor would be $4000. So we are looking at options. We have a great one from inside our family here that looks like we can do. We just have to wait until Monday to work out the paper work.

However, I’m still a little down. My little Ranger has been with me for 9 years. I’ve driven that thing all over the eastern part of the US. I know that it is just a truck, but sometimes you run into one that just seems special, and this one was one of those. Goodbye old friend…