If you have been reading some of my recent posts, you are probably aware that I have been talking about some of my exploits and experiences after being assigned to the JITC at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Well, today’s story centers around a subject that I have written about a few times in the past. You may even remember reading about some of those stories such as an ill-fated camping trip that occurred at Riggs Flat Lake located along the top of the Pinaleno Mountains near Safford, Arizona. You may even remember a more recent story about that problematic Tempo from hell, as I liked to call it. That car gave me nothing but consternation and pain. Actually, it gave my wife consternation and pain. Cuz that was actually her car. You may even remember that I recently posted about replacing that problematic Ford Tempo from hell. That’s right. My wife and I finally bit the bullet, so to speak, and we replaced that bucket of bolts with a new vehicle, a 1997 Ford F150 pickup truck with a super cab. No. We didn’t actually bite a bullet. That’s just a figure of speech. And we didn’t actually get rid of that Ford Tempo. Oh no. We just handed off the keys of that Ford Tempo to my daughter. You see, my daughter had recently received her driver’s license, and she was working at a restaurant job “downtown” in Sierra Vista after school and on weekends. She needed transportation. We figured that the Ford Tempo was good enough for that. Now back to that new 1997 Ford F150 pickup truck, we made some upgrades after breaking her in. First, we added a bed liner to protect the inside of the cargo bed of the pickup truck. Second, we added an A.R.E. camper shell with a full walk-in door built into a swing-up rear hatch. That truck was now on the right track and running fine (for now). Things were also going along well for a while with that hand-me-down Ford Tempo and my daughter didn’t have any problems. Maybe I should have started to worry. But I’m not that kind of guy. But you know, when you have that many problems with a car, perhaps you should worry just a little bit. Anyway, my daughter started getting pretty brave with her driving skills, even though she hadn’t been driving all that long. Translated, she didn’t have that much driving experience. I kept trying to warn her. I kept telling her that the hammer was about to fall. One day after school, my daughter left the house and proceeded East on Kachina Trail toward Highway 92. She proceeded to turn North onto Highway 92 without fully ensuring that traffic was clear in both directions. There was a car driven by another lady sitting opposite of her on the opposite side of Highway 92 who was coming straight across Highway 92 when traffic cleared. Since my daughter was turning left, she was supposed to yield the right-of-way. As it was, she collided with the lady. The accident was very minor and caused little to no damage. However, it really shook up my daughter. After that, she became a very cautious driver. One Saturday her manager sent her to open a branch restaurant at the intersection of Highway 90 and Interstate 10. That was the longest distance she had driven that car since we had passed the title to her. On the way back home, that car died about five miles South of the intersection of Highway 90 and Interstate 10 and wouldn’t start. She attempted to start it several times with no luck. After about an hour, a friend who knew her who was traveling back to Sierra Vista stopped and gave her a ride back home. She called me and told me about the problem she was having with the car. I grab my toolbox, some jumper cables, and a tow chain and put them in my Jeep. Then, I told her to get in and we would go up to check out her car. When we got to where her car was stranded, I asked her to get in and try to start it. Cuz it could have been any number of things. It could have been the timing belt, it could have been the fuel pump (again), or it could have been something to do with the ignition system. As soon as she turned the key, the car roared to life. The engine started just like that. I knew exactly what the problem was. The ignition coil was shot. Okay. Parts like that do fail over time, and this car was getting old. That Ford Tempo from hell had an old classic ignition coil with a primary and a secondary winding and a distributor cap. More modern cars have a better system with multiple coils, but they can still fail. In that Ford, there was a winding in the coil that had broken and had built up too much resistance when it heated up. However, when it cooled back down, the resistance dropped enough in the coil to allow it to function. I told my daughter to drive her car in front of me on the way home just in case she ran into problems again, but she made it all the way home with no further problems. The rescue effort was successful. Once again, that Ford Tempo had proved to live up to its name ‘Found on the Road Dead.’ Other than the failed coil that I was able to locate a replacement for at AutoZone and some lost time, we experienced no other exercises in futility.
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