okay okay, try reading the entire thread instead of just my post. First of all, if you make 10k a year or 100k a year, $196 + tax (Gaudin Ford Las Vegas) is to me "exorbitant" considering I can do it myself for 1/4 of that. My reference to a college degree was in RESPONSE to the statement "with no callouses from manual labor, and my neck isn't red & leathery from working the fields. I come from a long line of folks who have no idea how to pick their own cotton for their shirts & ties." made by Fifty150 which to me, was an implication that do it your-selfers are uneducated laborers. The fact of the matter is that do it your-selfers are able to do just that which is finish the job themselves, and to me that says a lot about their education, or at least how much they know? As far as outsourcing, I'm a HUGE opponent as well as you, but I sincerely doubt car repair is on the chopping block of outsourced jobs.

As far as what I do for a living, I'm a nurse practitioner and I work in an ER, so if you choose not to support my livelyhood, please don't get sick and please don't plan on dying. As far as it being affordable...that's to start a whole new debate

 

Relax. I'm taking my truck to a local shop. Not outsourcing my maintenance service to India. We are leaps & bounds from sending our trucks out to Tata Motors for service. At least I think we are. Maybe when their dealerships open here in the U.S.A., they will have an even "quicker" lane and be able to do oil changes for $9.95.

 

If my memory serves me correct, Ford recommends that you change your transmission fluids at scheduled intervals (refer to maintenance schedule) by flushing. This being the case, you will not need to drop the pan, nor replace the gasket & filter, ever, if you follow your maintenance schedule.

From what I remember, the owners manual states, "Your vehicle's rear axle is filled with a synthetic rear axle lubricant and is considered lubricated for life. These lubricants do not need to be checked or changed unless a leak is suspected."

The service manual recommends that Police & Taxi vehicles change the rear axle lubricant every 100,000 miles, but that the service could be waived if filled with 75W140 synthetic gear lubricant - which should have been how your truck left the factory.

This would explain why the transmission pan and rear differential are constructed without a drain plug.

B&M Racing makes deeper transmission pans which hold more fluid, provide for cooling, and have a magnetic drain plug. This may work out better for you than drilling the factory pan.









Sorry. I'm old school. I still believe in the old fashioned M.D. when I fall ill. But that's just me. In all fairness, with M.D.'s in the family, and a P.D.R. handy, it's not often that I find myself filling out forms in a waiting room. Don't get me wrong. Here in CA, the N.P. does a fantastic job of keeping health care accessible and affordable by running local clinics - alleviating the work load of the M.D. at the local hospital E.R. trauma center, which frankly has better things to do than take the temperatures of people who think that the E.R. is a substitute for having a regular physician. Believe me, I face the frustration daily of having to present patients who actually need emergency treatment, and looking at a roomful of disgruntled faces of those who clog the E.R. with common flu symptoms & belly aches. Then they wonder why the attending physician hasn't seen them after they've filled out all the forms and waited for hours. HELLO!! I've got a gunshot wound over here, and you want a couple of free sample sized bottles of Tylenol Cold? Sometimes I feel like (although I never do) running the hold for psychiatric evaluation patients through there, just so as they're flailing and resisting, one of those public assistance cases catches a head butt or kick.



Beers To You, 7lug! I respect what you do. N.P.'s aren't known for being in it for the money and I commend you for your service to the public.

 

It may not be long before that option is not available to you, and is solely dtermined by your insurance... and as far as your frustration, I am empathetic to your plight. I often describe the condition of patients in reference to car maintenance and/or repair. If you do what your supposed to do, like see a PMD, take your meds, manage your lifestyle then you won't find yourself in the ER waiting 8 hours to be seen, or in a worse case scenario "needing a rebuild"...but take into consideration that Vegas has among the highest percentage of uninsured patients who feel they have no other resource but to use the ER as a PMD office, and you get the "clogged ER"

Thanks for the comments...I appreciate your commendation

 

If everyone did what they were suppose to do, then we wouldn't have half the problems that we do in society and you and I would be looking for work at Jiffy Lube - with me doing what I hate doing - oil changes!

Just think: In a way, we should be thankful for those in our society who act out to disrupt social order. They maintain the balance. They keep us employed. Me? I keep the service bay employed at my local dealership.

 

I do it myself in my drive way takes less then an hour. I saw a report where 5 out of 9 shops charged for service including tranny flushes they did not perform. My own brother in law who is a transmission r& R guy told me shops he's worked for often charge for things they dont do. I want to know it got done right so I do it myself.

 

Thank you for the recomendation of reading the entire thread I'll give it a shot sometime.

Actually, I do choose to not support your livelyhood by taking good care of myself (by myself) and I don't plan on checking out anytime soon, but if I am in the process of dying please let me go a.s.a.p. and not in a hospital. As far as getting sick, I don't go to the hospital everytime I cut myself or have a fever. You work in the highest of unfair and exorbitant pricing field out there, and as far as competency and education goes, how do I know you are skilled enough to help me heal from anything? (not you persaonally). The Medical field is "almost" as big of a scam as the insurance business. No offence to you personally . As far as outsourcing in the medical field goes, that is directly related to the immigration problem, and not just with doctors and sugeons, nurses are being affected too, the only difference is they live here but are not permanent residents of this country, let alone citizens, look it, up it's true, and wait till' you see the houses they get to live in and cars they get to drive. Ugh, this could go on and on.

 

No, the service business is still far away from outsourcing and actually D.I.Y'ers (or as we like to call 'em, D.U.I'ers) help the good shops after they break somnething or the Autozone or Pep boys parts fail two or three times we get to repair them correctly.

 

Those are the shops in reference here and I have worked for one of those for about 6 hours, besides, most of the ones in the report were Jiffy pubes and are chain "lube stores" and not real repair shops. It's mostly media hype anyway and often overexagerated. It doesn't surprise me though.

Nice car by the way.

 

You can't compare the auto business to medicine and make any intelligent comparison. People aren't material items nor is collection of funds close to being the same. I don't see Ford or the local shops writing off my bill b/c I show them I have no money. Yes, medical services are expensive but look at how much money is lost by the hospital providing "free care" to those with little to nothing as well as to those who have money yet manipulate the system. Yes, the state helps support the hospitals but even this budget is exhausted quite rapidly. The dam- ER is one of the top, if not, the top money looser for the hospital, if not directly, indirectly. Physician uncertainty/incompetence or just the lack of having a set of ***** causes many ER's to loose money for the rest of the hospital due to unncessary FREE CTs, MRIs, labs, the list goes on and on. That combined with sorry triage evals on arrival to the ERs opens the door, like has already been said. for any and everybody with no insurance to walk in and get "serviced". Sorry if I offend, but I'm a lot more partial for P.A's than I am anybody trying to make and control medical care without M.D. overseeing, even though N.P.'s in most settings are governed this way as well thru protocols, etc.. The price of healthcare is high, no doubt, but to hear it being called a scam when compared with auto service/repair, hypocrisy and irony has no bounds.

 

Imagine if you will, the dealership service writers and techs having to take a Hippocratic Oath, and provide service without prejudice to anybody who comes in their driveway. Then an entire army of social workers and collection specialist will help the vehicle owner find a loop-hole somewhere so that some government sponsored sort of vehicular repair welfare, like Medicaid, picks up the tab via our taxpayer dollars. For those of us who don't qualify for free cheese: we would have to pay for overpriced maintenance insurance, which requires us to either make a co-pay or only receive limited reimbursements, where the premiums climb if we actually used it for maintenance, and the insurance agency has a right to terminate our policies or refuse coverage based upon our maintenance records.

 

The only medical profession I can compare auto repair with is Dentistry. Like most dental offices I know, they want their money at the time of service. I mean really, how many people have dental insurance. Hell, I work in medicine and I don't have dental insurance. I have to pay up with my dentist similar to how I do with Mr. Ford Dealership.

 

Not hypocricy, but maybee lunacy.

It is way too easy to compare it to the auto repair industry, but, $33.00 for one tylenol won't compare to $3.00 for a quart of oil, both are overpriced but one is just to make a profit for the business, the other is to say, screw you, you needed it and we'll charge what we want. So I guess that you may be right. I don't know, maybee I am to biased, as my father was a physician for 55 years & my mother an R.N. for 35 years, my best friend is also an R.N. My parents both retired and sold their practice when the medical business became more and more of a business than a necessity. My father still did house calls up until the day of his retirement party not to long ago, you don't find that anymore. (and not just because of malpractice ins.) Funny thing is, the hospital that my parents worked for, my insurrance co. recently advised us they will not cover us if we go to said hospital (unless it's an emergency and then only minnimum), but, the other hospitals they will. I found this out first hand, just for blood testing $1,000 from them, and $450 from the other? what's up with that? That is the total costs for the same exact testing. My out of pocket expense was $585 from the one and $25 from the other, splain dat one. My father was appalled, he also no longer supports that hospital. That is unfortunate. Oh and by the way, my father drives a ford escort and has for a long time, never had a luxury car in his life and has always been very conservative, unlike most other Doctors. So, I do compare the two very closely, the two (people and cars) are just made from different materials. Hypocratic oath my ****.

 

I'll have to remember my truck is being considered a "person" by FMC's dealer/service departments(this applies more though to the local shops) the next time I'm told I need a new this or that on top of what I actually brought the truck in for, while fully knowing there's absolutely nothing wrong with these parts. Just a way to screw me out of more money. I would compare it to me telling a patient they need a new spleen and could benefit from a lung transplant when all they are seeing me for is a mild case of hemorrhoids(which is kinda the way I feel after visiting my dealership sometime ).

 

Exactly, thank you for understanding. That has happened before, but not a lung transplant.