Today was set aside for maintenance of Charlotte’s wonderful 6.4 liter turbo diesel engine so we took her over to Gosch Ford in Hemet, CA. We got up pretty early, for us, and drove about 20 minutes to the dealership. We initially met the service writer, Ben, and described the services we wanted: change the oil, rotate the tires and perform an inspection of the serpentine belt that powers all the mechanical bits attached to the engine.
The dealership had a shuttle for the unfortunates required to wait on service so we were introduced to Manny, a shuttle driver, who dutifully took us to a tiny restaurant called the Hangar at the local Hemet Ryan airport. He was very nice and he zipped us over to the chow hall and dropped us off. The food was okay and sitting on the porch of the restaurant watching the planes come and go was actually quite nice. On the horizon from our perch was a line of snow-covered mountains remaining from the recent rotten weather and they were spectacular.
Partway through breakfast we got a ring tone from our new Nexus 6 cell phone hooked up to Verizon and quickly started the series of completely bizarre and mysterious motions required to force the device into allowing us to speak with the caller but, alas, we were unable to implement the stuff required to answer the phone before the ringing stopped. We figured we would open up the voice mail app or service or thing but were politely told by the cursed device that voice mail was not set up so we wouldn’t be listening to any pithy messages left by the unknown caller. After considerable fooling around and some harsh words, we were able to get the phone number of the unknown caller and called back only to have the phone answered by the receptionist at Gosch Ford who had no idea who may have called us. We eventually were put in touch with Ben the service guy who asked us if we had the doodad required to get the locking lug nuts off Charlotte’s pretty wheels.
We have had the tires rotated previously by Kearney Ford in San Diego and they had no problem getting the locks off so even the presence of the locks was news to us. Gosch was unable to rotate the tires without the doodad and, since we were both unaware of needing it or having any idea what it might look like, they were only able to tell us it was time to consider replacing the front disc brake pads and they would be more than willing to perform this service if only they could get the front wheels off the hubs.
We settled for just the oil change and scrutiny of the serpentine belt and the dealership sent Manny over to pick us up at the airport. We will take Charlotte to Kearney Ford when we go see our kids in San Diego in a few days. I suppose the brakes will just have to be okay until then.
We have a couple pix available by clicking here