This was unexpected...

Well I was woken by the Fire Department Wednesday morning to show me this..

Talk about a surprise ... it was quite surreal when I approached my transportation of 14 years to find her in this shape.

I had picked up my daughter from a school function the night before and parked it about 9:30pm. We had a deployment at work that I was able to do remotely via VPN so I worked till about 3AM and went to bed. Decided I would go into the office after noon, but just before 11 there was a knock at the door. I looked out the front window to see a Firetruck parked on the corner. I couldn't see my truck from this vantage point, so I opened the door. A fireman was just coming back around the corner, and asked me if I owned a pickup. I said yes, and asked him if he need me to move it or something. He said.. no .. It burned.

It took me a second to register and I must have said something like "huh.. Wha?" about the time I came around the corner of the house to see it.

My wife took my daughter to school before 8AM (in her car) and it was fine then.. so it had to have happened between 8 and 10:30ish. I asked the fireman how this could have happened, and he said that sometimes cars just catch on fire. Of course I am thinking WTF!

Did some research and apparently there is a problem with the cruise control brake pressure sensor switch. To the best of my knowledge I have never received a recall notice, but there is one issued. So if you have a 1993-2004 Ford truck, be sure to check if you vehicle is affected, or just take it in and have a dealership check it out! No matter what the age of the vehicle, as you can see it's worth having it looked at. I can't imagine the damage this could have caused had it been parked in a garage.

So I am a bit bummed out. I had full coverage insurance on it, but with only 80K miles on it, and in excellent condition, there is no way they will give me what it was worth to me to just drive. I hadn't planned on getting rid of it for a long time, even if I got a new car.

Holy..... Wow. Just looking at the pictures is surreal, I can't imagine being drug out to that. Sorry as hell to hear about it. I'll be interested to see how you come out with the insurance company.

Any chance of getting Ford involved since it had a known issue?

BLOODY HELL!

It's even worse finding out that the truck may have had a problem which meant this could have been prevented...

Not sure yet.. I did some looking around and there is a lawsuit, but only if it damaged property not just the truck alone. Also I found that you must approach them with an attorney. I am going to see how the insurance company handles it before I determine if its worth the costs of pursuing.

whoa!

hope you didn't have anything valuable in that truck (you know other then 13 years)

Nah.. just a few odds and ends, but really the interior of was not really too bad. Lots of smoke damage, and of course water. I wouldn't want to ride around in it now, but I was amazed it wasn't worse. I had to pry the glove box open because most of the dash is melted, but when I got it open.. nothing inside was burned. My original window sticker was in there along with some maintenance receipts and the manual. It was a bit smoky but just fine. Pretty crazy.. it must have burned super hot. The first question one of the fireman asked me was "Where is the hood, and why did you have it off?" I told him I didn't take the hood off, it was there when I parked it. He asked me if it was a fiberglass after market hood, and I just said.. "I was a bone stock 1997 Ford F150 XLT". By this time I was looking around on house roof tops and in tree's thinking maybe it blew off. Eventually we figured out there were some remnants of it in the corners of the opening. Apparently it melted into slag or just burned to ash.

Holy.

Freakin'.

Cow.





I hope you can get a replacement soon.



Well, we have an '09 ranger, so....





*edit: We had an '06 Aerostar 'til a couple years ago. The transaxle snapped clean in half, and it would have cost more to repair it than it was worth.

That is one nice camera you have!

Damn... ****ty deal man. That's not cool at all. *shakes fist at the universe*

Damn, sorry about that dude. The only good thing about this is that you and your family wasn't in the truck.