Locate an Auto Repair Shop in Soldotna, Alaska

Soldotna, AK Car Consumer Discussions

Merging: Old story but not ancient yet...

by xwesx on Mon Aug 01 17:50:23 PDT 2005

My wife and I went down to Soldotna for dipnetting last week. We stopped in Anchorage for a day to visit with my grandparents, then caravaned with them the rest of the way down. I don't know how many (if any) of you have driven the Seward Highway.... eh, I'll let that peeve go. Anyway, we wanted to make it to Soldotna by 0730 on Monday morning, so we left Anchorage at about 0400. At this time of the morning, there were very few cars on the highway (it is normally packed!). Going through the city of Anchorage, the highway resembles a typical lower-48 two-lane divided freeway, but then shrinks down to a typical 55 mph two lane road as it reaches Turnagain Arm. About two miles before we get to the bottleneck, we come up on a white Grand Am. It was going about 62 mph, SL was 65. We were driving about 67 - so were closing on it fairly fast. My grandparents passed it, and we pulled just shy of even. Then it sped up... not to match speeds with us, but just slightly slower... maybe 66 or 66.5. We are still gaining, but just barely. We have the cruise on and are in no hurry to pass, so we just let time do its job. Then, when we are about 100 yards from the bottle neck and have finally nosed ahead of this monkey by about three feet (our nose was three feet leading its nose), it suddenly blares on the horn, speeds up just a little, and weaves at us like it was going to sideswipe us (I was the passenger here, and it came within about 6 inches)! My wife freaks out just a little and hits the brakes, and it then whips in front of us and cuts us off.... like within 5 feet of our bumper (at ~65 mph, 5 feet isn't much!)..... pumping its brakes the whole way as if to emphasize that we were too close. Uh... yeah, we are, but that's because you just cut us off you dope! So, it is still mostly dark outside - twilighty, but dark enough that the ol eyes are well dialated. Oh, and now, several seconds later, we finally pass the bottleneck. I requested that my wife do it the courtesy of appreciating the intensity of our 2 million candlepower driving lights, but she was too bewildered and shook up to comply. I did convince her to pass it after it slowed down to 50 mph up the road a bit and thankfully it refrained from making any more of an arse out of itself. Within a couple of minutes it had passed out of sight, but the situation was unbelieveable. Of the ONE vehicle on the whole road at 0430, it was "the one." I expect that behavior out of Anchorage drivers at 1700, but sheesh..... Apparently old habits die hard. :P

I'm tellin' you, Subaru electrical systems are sub-par

by xwesx on Mon Aug 01 17:18:07 PDT 2005

Just a reminder: '96 OBW, 190K miles Okay, so I should probably be thankful that my car has been so reliable (meaning that I only have to do a major repair about once a year or less) thus far, but darn it all. While I am right in the midst of trying to fully diagnose a probable head gasket failure, my darned heater fan goes on the fritz. Now, I can live with junk head gaskets but winter is coming all too fast (today is August 1, so less than 60 days away!) and I cannot start the car up at -30F to find that the heater fan isn't working. At first I thought it was very straight forward: the fan is finished. When I turn the fan speed selector from 0 to 1-4, I can hear the relay engage somewhere within the dash. However, about 35% of the time the fan does nothing. Then (I initially thought it was random), the fan will turn on out of the blue and blow like normal, except that it has this speed-sensitive ticking sound similar to putting a card in the spokes of a bicycle. This all started on Wednesday afternoon while we were returning from a 1,200 mile dipnetting trip down to Soldotna. This morning my wife was supposed to have the car, so she goes out to start it while I am inside doing the "morning routine" with our little man. After a few minutes (remember, she was just starting the car!), I begin to wonder what is taking her so long. Eventually, she pops through the door and apologizes, but "the heater fan wasn't working and I had to get it going." I asked her what she did to get it going, and she responds "the same thing I did for the last couple of days." Oh! News to me..... so it turns out that if she engages the AC, the fan will blow without fail but that it will only keep blowing after AC is off about 10% of the tries. So, she keeps turning the AC on, then off, then on.... until the fan finally stays on while the AC is off. I tried that, and no luck - the fan came on when it randomly wanted to come on. It does work for her though - seemingly without fail. I guess she has the magic touch to which our buggy Subaru responds. Whew. Okay, any suggestions on what might be the root of the problem? I originally thought it would be a simple fan replacement, but with all the flippin' electrical gremlins in this car, I should have known by now that nothing is ever simple with Subaru electrical. Thanks, folks!

Ford Diesel Problems

by akfischer on Sat Dec 21 13:04:57 PST 2002

We purchased a used F-450 with the diesel from a ford dealership. The truck had 26,000 miles on it. We immediately noticed that the truck smoked excessively (our entire neighborhood was engulfed in white smoke)when it was started. We took it in to the dealership (Great Bear Ford in Soldotna, Alaska) and they changed the fuel filter. On their invoice they state, "still smokes but will burn out". We also told them that the truck is difficult to start when it is cold, and that the truck seems to consume large amounts of oil. Their response was "diesels do that". We started to keep track and we were using over a gallon of oil every 1,000 miles. The truck got to the point where it would not even start if it was 40 degrees or below. We took the truck back to Great Bear Ford four times and they kept charging us the $100 deductible, each time they would give an excuse like it was because of the air filter, or fuel filter. They would never address the actual problem. Finally we refused to pay another $100 deductible. After they repaired it and it was supposedly fixed, we could not even start it to get it of the lot! They have now decided that they can not figure out what the problem is so they have said that the engine needs to be replaced. They claim however that the problem which they can not even diagnose is the result of abuse! We only had the truck for 3,000 miles before we first took it in. It now has 53,000 miles. They did say that they would be happy to take it as a trade in, or we could pay $8,500 for the new engine. Does this sound like fraud to anyone other than me. If we trade it in (they will reduce the trade in value because it needs a new engine) I am willing to bet my life that they will have Ford pay for the engine replacement under the warranty and they will resell the truck with a new engine, making a hefty profit. We have contacted Ford and they state that their mechanics are trained well and they go by their recommendation when considering whether a truck has been abused. I ask, if the mechanic can not even identify the problem, how can he state it was caused by abuse. Ford, you just lost a life long supporter.

handgunhunter, others

by northpole1 on Mon Jan 10 17:20:04 PST 2000

handgunhunter: I called most of the dealers in Alaska...Seekins (Fairbanks & Soldotna), Nye, that doofus Cal Worthington. The best deal I got up here was about $1300 over invoice from Autobytel using Seekins in Soldotna. Everyone else was closer to MSRP. Regarding service departments... I've always been a firm believer in the service depts make the sales. The salesman or woman might make sure the i's are dotted and the t's crossed, but after that you live with the service dept. This really doesn't apply to my current situation now since the next closest Ford dealer to me is 350 miles away, but I'd recommend SD owners down in America check out prospective service depts before you ever let them touch your baby, warranty or not. Up here PSDs, especially the newer ones, start unassisted at -10 or so. The "aux idle controller" can be set for about any rpm. My friend's got his set at about 1300 rpms, and after he hits his command start, once the oil pressure is up, the truck idles up to the set rpm. Makes for faster warm ups and is better for the motor, I think, by limiting the low speed idling. Also we plug our beasts in, especially when it's stupid cold...like the -55 forecast for tomorrow.

Handling/Performance

by Brutus on Sat Oct 23 22:45:53 PDT 1999

I opted for the duallys after crunching some numbers. I had initially ordered a single rear wheel (SRW) F-350. The GVWR of the SRW was 9,900. The GVWR of the duallys is 11,200. The duallys can be a little intimidating for a week or two until you get use to them. After that, you don't even know they are back there. Parking is no more of a problem than a SRW in my opinion. Most of the time, the limiting factor with a pickup is the length of the truck, not the width. I back my truck into parking spaces wherever I am at. I got in the habit of doing that with my 92 F-250. If you get the duallys, you will need to order your camper with front dually swing out brackets or you won't be able to back under the camper. When I was taking the camper off once, I forgot to pull the brackets out. Fortunately, I remembered before I tried to drive out from under the camper, but I still felt stupid having to lower the truck back in to the bed so I could swing the brackets out. We live and learn. Like I like to say whenever I do something stupid, worse things have been done by better men. The new Superduties are heavy. My truck weighs 7,100 pounds. My camper has an advertised dry weight of 2,900 pounds. An manufacturer's advertised dry weight is the weight of the base model without options. My options added 1,000 pounds, so my camper weighs 3,900 pounds. Fill the 30 gallon water tank, the propane tanks, and add some gear and passengers and I tip the scales close to 12,000 pounds loaded for a trip. Although I am exceeding my GVWR by 600-800 pounds, the truck handles the load great. I bought the camper from a dealer in Canada and picked it up on my move back from Dallas to Anchorage in January. I had close to 2,000 miles of driving where the average temp was -25 and we hit a pretty good snow storm, so I really got to test out the handling. Because of the road conditions, I did most of my driving in 4wd with OD locked out. I was really impressed with the engine braking. The truck really holds speed on long grades with minimal use of the brakes. As I mentioned, I live in Anchorage....again. I work 4-10s in the summer, so every weekend was a three day weekend. I was out almost every weekend from Memorial Day to Labor Day. I'd leave Friday after work and come back on Monday evening. The trips ranged from 250-600 mile roundtrips. Mostly, I went to the Kenai Peninsula (Seward, Kenai, Soldotna, Homer), but occasionally went to Valdez and to some fishing spots on the Parks Hwy about 90 minutes out of town. Most Alaskan roads outside of Anchorage are two lane hwys. Since we have a lot of tourists and RVs in the summer, the trips usually require alot of passing for those of us who travel the roads weekly. Despite the heavy load, my truck has plenty of get up and go. My truck has the 99 version of the V-10 with 275 hp and 410 ft-lb of torque (compared to 310/425 for the 2000 model year), but I have no shortage of power. Some of that could be the 4.30 axle ratio. I drive almost exclusively in OD unless I hit an extended steep grade. If I'm behind someone doing 50, I have no problems getting around them and back into line quickly. My truck has some pretty good pickup from 50-75, even with the load. The 4.30s cost me some mpg. Running empty without the camper on, I get 11.5-12 on the hwy. That's about 2mpg less than the guys with the V-10 and 3.73. With the camper on, I get 8.5-9 with speeds of 60-65. I can get 9.5-10 at 55mpg.