Mini Van Madness

Like most every middle class family my family needs two cars. My DP drives nearly 20 minutes to work every day and our family home is also 20 minutes from the nearest incorporated town. With one vehicle my son and I are stranded at home. Before we moved, we got a long perfectly with one vehicle. I rode my bike into town. Now ,we simply live too far out with too many speeding drivers on the road for me to ride my bike safely.
So about 3 weeks ago we started the heavy search for a vehicle that was somewhere around 10 years old, with less than 150K miles, and had three rows of seating. At this point in our lives, fuel economy will have to wait. We settled on getting a mini van. It would be big enough to haul all of our camping gear and the kids could ride without touching each other.
Its been more than a week since we found our diamond in the rough. We scored a great deal on a 1999 ford Windstar SEL. I wasn't too overjoyed in the sense I knew we'd have problems we were buying it from a private seller. No big deal we were several hundred dollars under our budget, and nothing short of major engine repair or a new transmission would break the bank.
The madness with our new mini van didn't start until after we got it home. First we realize that one of the sliding doors will not unlock. At first this was frustrating. However, my first and only minivan had only one door and some how I survived a year with the single door. Now then some other things happened like the alarm going off one morning. My DP and I wasn't aware of the system or how it could possibly be armed. My DP shuts it off, but calls me later to ask if the lights were on in the van. I opened and closed the doors with out any problems. Later, that same day the I caused the alarm to go off, and this time the battery died.
The madness continued the day that my DP and I were in the yard working. I decided to clean the van. It needed some detailing and vacuuming done to the inside. In the 30 minutes I had the doors open the battery died again.
I have a Radian80 Child Passenger Restraint. The significance is that it can be very difficult to install in some vehicle. So far I have found vehicle made by Ford to be the most difficult and I happen to own a Ford Windstar. SO knowing the difficulty before me I took my van and the seat to a Safekids carseat check this past Saturday. I get there and first have a Tech try and tell me my son is too big. (Can someone tell me how someone can go through standardized training but is completely clueless about High weight Harnesses?) I had to get out the Manual, and I asked specifically for a more qualified tech that I knew would be there. She and I both agreed that the install was going to be extremely difficult. The local Policeman thought that the whole thing was funny, because it was evident I know a little something about Child restraints and especially the one my son uses on a regular basis. The seat wasn't the big issue, the BIG ISSUE was my car was leaking a great deal of water onto the ground. When I first pulled into to get my seat checked I could smell the odor of hot Anti-Freeze. So not only did I have the worry of getting the seat installed properly somewhere in my car, I also had the mechanical problems of the vehicle. The police and techs were great though. The techs helped me get my seat into the car. The policemen tried as best they could to see where my vehicle was leaking from and also caused the alarm to go off AGAIN!!! I also couldn't get the tailgate to pop, but I have since learned the tailgate is just heavy and requires a big tug. So the car seat is installed in the middle of the very back of the van. I was disappointed when the head tech recommended I just use a booster. I quickly told her my DS is not mature enough to sit correctly every single time, and with the harness I know he's properly secure the entire time we're in the car.
The car on the other hand, I had to move and park it in front of a big box store. I did the only reasonable thing there was to do in this situation, go shopping. I bought a few supplies for my DS's learning environment, and we looked at Halloween decor, and I bought two gallons of water. I also looked a car seats and thought long and hard about buying another one, so that it would fit in the one of the captains chairs in the middle row of the van. Alas I skipped that idea. I left the store, put water in the van and went home. The first fill up of the Radiator only took a gallon of water. So the leak was bad but not so bad that I had to use all of the water I had purchased. I drove the 15 minutes to the next town and bought some auto stuff for another car, added more water and continued home. Much to my surprise the leak at the point wasn't so bad that my vehicle ran hot.
Of course once I got home I had to drive the van again to go get some replacement parts for our other vehicle. Yet, before I could do this I killed the battery Again, while doing some detail work. While I was at the auto parts store I had the battery and alternator checked, and again it was fine. Now a crazy thing happened while the hood was up on the van. The employee of the auto parts store that was testing my electrical system, thought he'd take a look at the leak. Now he found the actual leak and assured me the part we were looking at was the water pump. So what do I do, I order a water pump. Later however, my DP tells me that is not the water pump, but instead is the power steering pump. Now if I had been thinking I would have looked at the diagram of the pulley system that is under the hood. From this diagram I would have known the leak was coming from the power steering pump and would have saved myself the purchase and return of a water pump.
To ice the cake that is my "new" mini van we have to move the Child passenger restraint back to our old car while we put the van in the shop for a complete over haul and tune-up. Did I mention that although the seat is installed in the van, it didn't go in with ease, and require two people. So all of the difficulty and frustration I experienced at the Car seat check, and the worry I went through driving the van back home while it was leaking was all for NOTHING! I now know how to install the seat in the back of the van, but who knows if I will be do it.

That's really all, we'll see what happens after we put a few hundred into simple repairs and an owners manual.