Screw/bolt fell out of steering coloumn
 

A small screw/bolt with torx head fell out of the steering(tilt) coloumn of my '00 E350 when I went to shift from Park to Drive. Now I can't shift into Park and the PRND21 doesn't register properly.

I took the bottom panel off and the panel off the bottom of the dash. I can't see where anything is missing; in fact can't see much of anything. Do any of you have a diagram of that section or should I just take it to the dealer?

thanks,
Fred

On the bottom of the column you'll see the shift lever where the shifter cable goes on. There are 2 Torx head bolts holding it on. It's quite likely that one of those fell out and the other one is loose.

I was heading a couple hundred miles out of town for the week; so I took it to the local dealer this morning. They charged me , with taxes, etc., $115 for an hour and a half labour. They didn't even put back the panels I took off.

I'm feeling a little sh*fted. And I don't mean shifted.

Plus now my command start and remote door locks don't work.

I'm not likely to be back there for awhile

So what did they do to fix it?
I would contact them and tell them about the Command Start and door locks not working now and get them to fix it.

Sounds like it could have been what you diagnosed. They put the screw back and said another one was loose.

I feel the 90 min labour was a little excessive, plus the 10% surcharge for shop supplies to put in the screw that I brought in with me.

I won't be back into town until next week and will discuss the "remote" problems then.

Know the feeling
 

Nymo,
I feel your pain. I brought my 99 F150 to the dealer in which I purchased 2 vehicles. You would figure the dealer would take care of everyone, not to mention someone that purchased not 1 but 2 vehicles with in 2 months of each other.

Anyway,
From my experience, the dealers will charge you what this magical "book" says it should take to do the work you need, regardless if it is a quick fix or if the tech takes longer. I had to get the #4 coil replaced on my F150. The dealer charged me 1.5 hours because that's what this labor book said. After hanging out on this forum, I realized how stupid it was to have the dealer replace the #4 coil as it seems pretty dang easy. When I had my truck in the shop I had the 60k service done. Long story short the dealer under-filled my tranny by 1 quart. When I called back to say that the fluid was low, they told me to bring in my truck and they would "diagnose" it. Diagnose=$100.

Needless to say, I bought the book on my truck and hang around the forum more often.

This seems like a good time to plug Club FTE :)
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