I took the truck in for it’s 50,000 mile service last week.  Actual mileage was 49,600.  According to their checks, everything was just fine.  My three year old battery showed as still having 73% of it’s life left — or rather, 475 cranking amps of it’s new rating of 650.  Everything should have been fine.

Saturday afternoon, hubby noticed it was a little sluggish when he moved it from the driveway to the front of the house.  When I got in later in the afternoon to make extra room in front of the house for the guy who was coming to buy my motorcycle trailer, it clicked a couple of times, the gauges fluttered, and it died.

We put the battery charger on it for several hours, and it started.  We moved it back to the driveway for the night (Alamo Heights doesn’t allow overnight on street parking).  We knew we’d have to take it to get checked on Monday, and we charged the battery all day on Sunday.  Sunday evening, it said it was fully charged (but the window didn’t show a nice green, so we figured it was bad).  But why was it discharging?  That and the clicking sounds is what made us think the alternator might be bad.

Monday morning, I got in to take it to the dealer for it’s checkup, and nothing.  Lincoln has free roadside assistance for 6 years and 70,000 miles, so I called their toll free number and scheduled a tow.  Then I called my service writer to let him know it was on its way.

The truck arrived right on time and loaded the truck.  This truck has stranded me twice — both times in my driveway.  I think it just likes to ride on tow trucks.

My factory warranty is good for 4 years or 50,000 miles (that’s where the Lincoln Mark LT is better than a Ford F-150 — if I’d bought an F150, I’d have been out of the factory warranty).  I knew the alternator would be covered if I needed one, but I thought the replacement battery would be pro-rated.  Wrong.  The battery was covered.  100%.  And that’s all that was wrong.  The battery needed replacement.

So, I have a new battery just when I could have been expecting it to need replacement.  I purchased the extended warranty, because I plan to keep the truck a few more years, but that wouldn’t have covered the battery.

I’m just glad it went bad when it did.  I’m sure the Rockdale Ford dealer would have covered the warranty work, too, but I like dealing with my selling dealer — North Park Lincoln-Mercury.  We followed the tow truck into the dealership, and my salesman was hanging out on the porch, enjoying the morning coolness with his fellow salesmen, and you should have seen the look on his face when the tow truck came rumbling in.

Hubby and I went off to run some errands (buy grass plugs for the back yard and make sure we were current in the DBIDS system out at Randolph AFB).  When we finished, I had him drop me off.  The dealership janitor saw me and said, “Didn’t I just see you here last week?”  I said, “Yes, but I think my truck is having an affair with someone in the service department.”

I think I’m all set to drive back to Central Texas tomorrow for a few weeks.