Ford found my truck. It finally arrived Friday, May 6, 2011. It was ordered on December 14, 2010. It was built some time in February. (I’m hoping I can find the actual build date somewhere in the paperwork.) The Ford store called me at 4:45 PM on Friday to say it had arrived a few hours earlier.
Built in February, it then took more than two months to get all the way from Dearborn, MI to northern AZ.
Compared to the 1977 Chevy Suburban and the 1980 BMW 320i I traded in, the F-150 is way techy. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me configuring everything from the driver’s seat position memory to the nav system and the Bluetooth interface for my and my wife’s phones. Just figuring out how everything works is going to take a while. I’m gong to miss the Beemer’s tight turning radius.
I look at it and all I can think is: “Man, there’s so much that can go wrong.” Power this, electronic that… and I’ll bet all of it is very, very expensive to fix.
Anyway, the long wait is finally over.
The dad-blasted manuals are all in grey text against a white background, like many web sites. Not easy for these old eyes to read. The really important stuff is grey against a grey background.
Oh, to have young eyes again!
There’s an owner’s manual, a tire warranty manual, a Navigation System manual… There’s even a separate manual that explains in agonizing detail that trucks and SUVs don’t handle like ordinary cars.