HAVING FUN BUILDING ENDURANCE.

 

"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you

encounter various trials.  Knowing that the

testing of your faith produces endurance.

And let endurance have its perfect result,

so that you may be perfect and complete

lacking in nothing."

(James 1:2 - 4 NASB)

I am trying to consider it "all joy", you know "FUN".

But it might be that my wife's car misses her after

she passed away,  Or even the possibility that the 

poor old car is tired and wants to retire.

In all fairness to the car it has served us very well.

We got it as a high milage car from one of the kids

probably ten years ago.  And now it is even higher

milage, 255,935 miles to be exact.

But, here is my story about it.

Just before my wife passed away it begin to develop

a miss on start up after sitting all night.  This usually

cleared up before getting out of the drive way.

But the computer gave no clues whatever.

After this miss got serious enough the computer 

showed it to be a miss on number four cylinder.

I wasted some time and money trying to cure it 

all to no avail.  But finally it got bad enough to

find out it was a blown head gasket.

Oh!  Joy number one.

So after putting a head gasket in at my leisure it 

ran fine.  I could of only been happier if my wife

had been here with me.

But, after about two weeks and a couple of short

trips into another county, still just a happy as could

be, a red dash light come on and the temperature gauge

dropped to nothing.  But it still was running fine

so I stopped to do some shopping

Joy number two.

It would not restart until I reset the computer.

But it would start and run fine until shutting it

off.  Then you had to reset the computer to get 

it started again.

The computer gave a code for a bad temperature 

sender unit.  But, that did not help.  Of course by 

now this old man is praying a lot.

After getting ahold of the manufactures wiring 

diagram book I found that Ford runs the temperature

sending units signal through the throttle position 

sensor.  Why, who knows.  But a new throttle

position sensor fixed it.  Praise God.  Back to 

running good and several more trips out of the county

for about two weeks.  Yes, oh! JOY.

Joy number three.

Again after about two weeks of running around 

just as happy as if I were smart  I stopped to get 

the mail at the mail box.  When I got out of the 

car I could hear a "clatter" in the front of the engine.

Joy, joy, joy.

After a few failed attempts to stop the noise in

the drive train I finally pulled the front off the 

engine.  Praise God.  There was the "noise"

just laying there in the front of the engine.  It

was a broken jack shaft chain tensioner.  And the

pieces were not scattered through the engine.

That's the image below.

And it was hiding there between the green dot which is 

anti-freeze and the chain.

Pray for this old man not to spend the rest of my life

just having fun.  I need to get some work done.

And now, a few weeks later the car is running fine.

It ran for a couple of weeks with no codes and seemed

to be fixed.

But, then it started giving the "check engine" light again.

Running very good, just some emission codes.  Oh, the 

joy of an old man owning an old car.

But as a friend of years ago used to say;

"PRAISE GOD ANYWAY!"