Mothers day trip came full circle

Sausage450r

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My wife likes going to yuma for mothers day. We get a hotel room and kids swim and we’ll sometimes hit up senators wash. We left friday around 6pm. We stopped in el centro and ate at habit burger, then trucked along to yuma. Around gordons well i noticed my coolent temps were a little high, by winterhaven they were slowly climbing, then started racing up (factory gauge not moving) i start to pull over 4 miles west of yuma and her gauge suddenly jumps from good to redline. Eff, pull over and shut it off. Pop hood, crack in the top of her radiator. 

Spend 20 minutes trying to talk to someone from usaa for roadside assistance (i will be cancelling my roadside with usaa and getting AAA). Some friends get my kids and wife and i wait for 2hrs for a tow truck. During my wait i search and autozone in yuma shows my radiator in stock.

Tow truck driver calls and asks where im going, i tell him hotel parking lot and i will fix myself. He says they do auto repair and will pull radiator and get new one at 7am and save my weekend and charge me 100$ plus parts. I think thats too easy, and agree to let them do it. 9 am he calls says its ready! 

I get to tow yard and start the truck, and look under and radiator is leaking from the tranny cooler lines... oh crap forgot to use thread tape he says, hold on i’ll fit it. 20 min later the steady drip is just some wetness, maybe it will seal up when it warms up. So i drive 3 miles to hotel, look under truck and theres quite a bit of tranny fluid all over engine and suspension but only a minor drip from lines.  Wipe it all down, kids and wife get in and we drive 4 miles to walmart. Get out and look, its evident its just pissing tranny oil while driving. Call tow truck company no answer, google repair shops all closed but one, no answer.  Crap.

We go into walmart, i’ll get some thread tape and oil and tools and fix it.  I come around a corner not paying alot of attention as im googling and almost run into two guys. Apologize and ask if they know of a repair shop open saturdays. He asks whats up, i tell him and he says, bring it to my house i build cars for fun, i’ll fix it. RAD!  

We meet at his house just down the street, he takes off one cooler line and the adapter has no seal and is completely stripped, his son takes me to autozone a few miles away to try and get another, when we get there he calls and says he took the other off and its stripped too and when it came off coolant was pissing out too because the tow truck guy cracked it trying to tighten without a seal. Now i need two adapters and a radiator. Fortunately this autozone had the radiator, but no adapters. His son drove me around town for two hours to every place including ford to look for adapters. No luck, looks like we’re effed. We go back to the house, and well, i can try to get a tap and fix threads. In the mean time lets slam radiator in, open radiator, and it has all the adapters on it......nothing like the ones the towing company put on....wtf.

we determine the radiator the towing company put in must be used or something because if they bought the parts they said they did, there should not have been a problem. I call the tow company and dood immediately gets hot and defensive. I hang up and say eff it will deal with him later. 

I cannot articulate how blessed i was to literally bump into this wonderful family from yuma who completely dropped everything they were doing on a saturday to help people they had never met before. The wife entertained my wife, our kids played together and became best of friends. After he fixed my truck, they loaded up their truck and joined us at senators wash.

while driving there the tow truck guy started rambling to me in txts....basically admitting he knew it was effed up and still sent me and my family of young kid (3,7,8) across the hot desert to break down. What an effin  Mcpenis. Autozone refunded my money for the radiator i bought and called it a warranty no questions asked, so i didnt have to deal with mcpenis. Today our new yuma friends came to our hotel and hung out at the pool. We are going back i  a few weeks for his sons going away party...off to the army

this trip was an eye opener. Dont use A&A towing in yuma. Period he’d a crook

stop and help others. There are good people out there

I have a ton of paying it forward to do

tow truck convo. There is a couple phone calls, i asked why my new one came with new fittings same part number, why are there different fittings that are old and not ford and why is the radiator kinda beat up for “new”

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Crazy yet rad story.  Nothing worse than a helpless feeling of a breakdown. 

 
Sucks it all happened, but awesome people that did what they did....really awesome actually.

 
What a Jackazz!!!! I am glad you got to meet some new friends.........I would go all the way with that tow truck driver....... Do everything possible and hold him accountable. Imagine if you didnt know any better....Thats just crazy!!!!

:poule:

 
Well, the best i can figure is someones tow truck got a new radiator and i got a handmedown. He has a few 6.0 tow trucks. Im a competenant mechanic i should have just bought tools and done it myself. Lesson learned. I’d like to think he tried to help, then ran into trouble and made a bad decision to hide it rather than tell and fix it right, but i know a few of these guys and they are all hustlers.

@Poule43 the dood that helped me out had the most pristine all original big red! Said he bought it for 600$ a few months earlier! 

 
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