Unfortunately!

I let it sit for two days, as I've been driving my grandmother's car to get some time on it (99 Merc Sable, 35k miles). Went to start it yesterday afternoon, nothing at all. Battery completely dead.

Called the dealership, told them I could pull the battery out to have them test it. They advised me to call Ford Roadside Assistance and have them tow it from my house to the dealership (bout 6 miles). So I did, the truck showed up almost 40 minutes late. Went to the dealer, they had a rental for me. At least this time it's a Mazda, not some Dodge junk they gave me last time.

They told me it could be just the battery, which I have no issues with. But it could also be the alternator, which is the exact reason why I sold my '08 F150 back. That was on its third by 33,000 miles. Or something else we don't know about, they had to rollback it in to look at a dead truck.

This is trip number four for this truck to the dealership in five months. Needless to say, as much as I love the truck, I'm tired of having issues with it. Should it be something greater than the battery, I'm going to push for buyback. CT's lemon law states four reasonable attempts at repairing it, which this is what it would be...

 

Didn't you have it in for the transmission before? If so have you had any problems since the last flash? Hopefully it's just the battery, but I have left my interior lights on all night and came out and it started up just as it did every other day. I didn't even notice the lights were on until I got out at work and saw they weren't shutting off.

 

I haven't had any other issues, the TPMS light still was going off periodically but that's it. I still haven't heard from the dealer, I got a picture message from a rather sarcastic friend of mine who works at Carquest, he delivered a part and saw my truck outside still at around 9:45am. It's just after 11 now and still no call.

 

Well it sounds like they are in no hurry to fix your truck.

 

Just called them, apparently its in the shop, waiting on a call back...

 

Alright well I got it back tonight, it was just a shorted cell in the battery. Kinda sad that it was a life of five months... I'll keep this updated if theres an underlying problem that didn't come up on diagnosis. The service manager and I joked around about it, saying that the truck was "as dead as he's ever seen". I did state that I'm unhappy to a couple of people within the dealership that I know, both service and salesman, I'm assuming they figured out that if the next visit isn't for service it's for a new truck.

One note I should have posted earlier was that I went by that way at around 8am, which was about an hour after they open. They had moved the truck, got a picture message from a friend of mine and it was still in the same spot. It was also there when I picked it up tonight, same spot. Another side note is that this is it's third trip since 6/21.

 

Well that is good news, just a bad battery. At least it was something Ford had nothing to do with. They just buy battery's from the lowest bidder and install them.

 

I also had my battery replaced after less than 5 monthes. This was after the dealership telling me it was normal for the truck to go dead in the driveway in 10 days if not used , in cold weather. When they finally checked it the little green light was not green but red. New battery, no problems.

 

I can see normal after an extended period of time, but two days? Not even two full days, it sat from the evening the first night until mid day the second day. On the contrary to this, my grandmother's '99 Merc Sable sat over thirty days unused and still started right up last year, original battery and all.

Aside from this, my TPMS light that I've posted about on here came on again. Still unresolved. I'm pretty pissed at both the truck and dealer right now...