Subject: My 2000 F150
Date:    5/4/2004

Dear Todd,

I cut and pasted my story from my web page just because it is such a headache
to rewrite and makes me yell at my kids J (just joking) I have a feeling that
I am just at the beginning of my Ford nightmare.  You know the funny thing is
that my dad owned a dealership all my life and finally retired 10 years ago.
He sold Cadillac, Buick, Chev…all GM vehicles and I always thought those old
sayings: Fixed Or Repaired Daily, Found On Road Dead…. Were just typical
competitive hoopla, I mean some were Chevy people and some were Ford and there
was a small strange group who liked foreign models and Dodge; however, those
old sayings are starting to come true at least in my opinion.  My husband
drives a 1995 Maxima with 130,000 miles on it and it is the best car I have
ever driven including all the demos I drove in my teens and early 20’s.  I
will probably buy new Maxima in several years or longer because I anticipate
that I will throw a huge chunk of future earnings toward getting out from
under this lemon.

I recently bought a 2000 4 door Ford F150 Lariat, from Goodson Acura in
Irving, TX. Shortly after bringing it home, we noticed that one of the
tires had tread separation. This occurred after purchase because we thoroughly
inspected the tires on the truck because we knew how expensive it is to
replace tires after having put 4 on our 2000 Tahoe. Then a few days later we
had a heavy rain and that is when we learned that we were in big trouble with
this truck. The day after the rain, our windshield wipers, radio, air
conditioner and door locks seemed to have a mind of their own. The windshield
wipers would go at an extremely fast pace as long as the truck was in gear.
If the truck was in park, they would not work at all. The control to the wipers
was useless, they did not respond to the control and did this even in the off
position. The door locks went up and down for several minutes after engine was
turned off as well as the radio and air conditioner. Yes, my truck was
determined to blow cold air even after 10 minutes of engine being turned off.
My children believed that our truck must be under the control of aliens.  I
wish it were that simple because surely our truck would not keep them
interested for long. Jokes aside, it was bizarre and certainly not a problem I
had ever seen before. Well, we finally unhooked the battery in order to
preserve it from the persistence of the air and whatever else might happen
until we could get it to the dealership. We had one bit of hope, though, and
that was that we had purchased the top of the line extended warranty and
hopefully it would preserve our dwindling money supply due to an upcoming move.
The next morning we reattached the battery and the whole neighborhood became
aware of our Ford problem. The anti-theft system started blaring on this quiet
Sunday morning waking the neighbors a little earlier than they may have wanted.
Well, our remote operated keys suddenly were not recognized by our truck and
perceived its rightful owners as thieves. It would not start of course and the
only way to keep peace in the neighborhood was to disconnect the battery once
again and call the tow company. Our very costly extended warranty came through
like a champ for the tow fee, but we would later learn that that would be about
all. We had to take it to a Ford dealership and it seemed that they knew the
cause right away (later in this page you will know why). It seemed that a
mysterious (at least to us) windshield leak has caused water to leak into the
fuse area corrupting the GEM (Generic Electronic Module). And wouldn’t you know
it, warranty doesn’t cover windshield leaks. I was puzzled when I questioned the
service manager about the leak. We had not seen any signs of a leak and the
Carfax search done on the truck had not indicated any wrecks. The window was a
manufactured windshield and how or why would it leak if it hadn’t been replaced.
He offered no suggestions except that he had seen this many times and we were
on our own on this one if we didn’t pay the $1200 he quoted to replace the GEM
and fix the windshield.

I wanted to see if maybe there was another market for these mysterious GEMs so
that I would not have to pay the quoted Ford price and then have it replaced by
someone with cheaper labor rates. That is when my internet research began and
when I learned that Ford has had a long list of problems with this little
electronic gadget. I have found that there have been recalls over this (of
course my F150 was not included) since 1999 and Canada and some European
countries have had far more success getting Ford to recall this major safety
defect than our government has had. I called the customer hotline at Ford and
the operator asked me “What did I want them to do about it” very rudely and then
I decided that I would have an answer to his question very soon and created web
page and this is just the start.

Here is a link to my webpage (it doesn’t compare to yours, but I do have a huge
listing of defects, complaints and recalls on the Ford F150 and some other sites
that could help.  Thanks, Todd.

http://home.earthlink.net/~trajag2000

Reagan