My Truck Is Broken

Before I say anything about what I am going through with my truck right now, I want to say how much I like that truck. I love my truck. I love the freedom it gives to me. I love the reliability of it. I love the comfort and design of the cab and seats. I love the feeling of driving it, how it handles the road, how easy it is to drive.

I have a 2012 Ford F-150, one of the modern breed of vehicles with so many interconnected systems it takes multiple computer modules to make them all work together. It would appear that when I inadvertently ran the battery down on the weekend, it damaged the Accessory Protocol Interface Module, or APIM. This is the module which interconnects the SYNC system, the system which connects via Bluetooth to my phone, with the radio and entertainment system.

This means my radio doesn't work, nor does my hands free phone system. We are not sure why they don't work. With all these computer modules, it's hard to tell. In the old days, you connected your radio. If it didn't work, you checked the fuses. If they were fine, you tried a different radio to make sure. These days it's a lot more complicated.

To find out what component of the system has failed, the Ford folks need to do a systems analysis. This will take about an hour. At $175 per hour. That's a very highly paid technician. After the analysis, the folks at Marlborough Ford will be able to tell me, probably, whether the fault lies in some power connection system, the APIM, or the radio itself. There is a small possibility that the systems reset needed for the analysis may even resolve the problem, but nobody really knows for sure. After all, it's a computer.

I long for the simpler days, for the days when I could fix a car, analyze the electrical issues, rebuild parts on my own. Oh, who am I kidding. No I don't. I love my truck. I love the modern technology, the fuel efficiency, the ability to interconnect with my phone, the ease of driving. I just don't like the cost of it when things go wrong.