lbpod, you got it all right, except for the straight screwdriver. Its proper use is to place it blade up in your back pocket and ventilate leather car seats (please note that this does absolutely nothing for marital harmony). Thanks for the laugh. I needed it after spending the entire day converting 10 billion oak leaves into a 3-inch coat over my entire body, and one bushel of compost material.

**Frankly IMO until a car company offers these behemoths with a hybrid engine offering close to 30 mpg , I don't think anything has changed at all . A big truck is a big truck** Ditto. I'm not so easilly impressed. Whoever invented the current engine management systems around 1980 that did away with the carburetor and precisely maintains the air fuel ratio through all conditions earns a phrase like 'changing it all'. Overhead cam has been around forever. More holes cast in the head for more valves ranks up there with drilling more holes or installing more lengths of metering rods in a carburetor to meter fuel, zzzzZZZZzzzzZZZZzzzz. The first company that comes up with the vehicle that has the same capacity as the 'push rod' engine, while getting significantly higher mpg, or better yet, doesn't use gas or diesel at all, will get my vote for 'the truck that's changing it all' title. I won't care who builds it first. Till then, we're just talking about more stuff as important as electric butt warming seats and headlights that come on and dim automatically, ect. Big deal.

We had a similar symptom on a Audi (aka oversize VW). We downloaded the error codes, and had a mechanic look them up in the service manaul. The error code said it was the "Ignition". Further reading suggested that there's a "Hall effect" sensor in the distributor - for all modern vehicles. This solid state device frequently becomes temperature sensitive when it gets old. It will quit working when the car is running. On some vehicles (VW/Audi, anyway) the engine keeps running, using a backup system of some sort, but then won't start if you stop it. I guess it's OK to drive yourself to an unsafe place, and then get stranded. On other cars, when the Hall Effect sensor quits, the engine stops. On our VW, I bought a rebuilt distributor for $125 (the sensor was not available separately) and spent ten minutes installing it. I've had the intermittent start problem also on a Chevrolet Chevette (1979) and it was also a Hall Effect sensor problem. In that case, the sensor was also not available separately; the rebuilt distributor was $600. But, before spending big bucks, definitely download the computer diagnostics. By Federal Law, this is something you can do on your own without any test equipment. Every car does it differently. In the case of the VW/Audi, you short together two wires (different location per vehicle), then turn on the ignition, without starting the car. After 4-10 seconds, remove the short circuit. Then watch the "check engine" light. It starts blinking, you count the blinks. I don't know the procedure for your Ford, but there must be one. If it's an electronic problem, this is the surest way to check into it. Ask the Ford dealer how to "get the diagnostic codes" for it. Again, by law, they are required to provide this information. When GM first put computers in cars in the 1970s, they attempted to "force" you into using the dealership for maintenance, and the Feds declared that to be illegal, which is why now it is possible, for all cars, to get the diagnostic codes without needing a piece of test equipment. In the case of our VW, I had to wait for the "no start" condition to appear, then run the diagnostics, because the system would not remember error codes after ignition shut-off. WCB

Normally the way you know the timing belt needs to be replaced is because it has broken and the engine won't run. (It also sounds abnormal and uneven when you try to start it because some cylinders have a valve open and have no compression, while others have both valves closed and have high compression.) While I know it can happen, I've never seen an engine running bad due to a timing belt problem, and it would not be among the things you'd first suspect with the problems you mentioned. On some cars it's easy to see the timing belt because it's just behind a plastic cover, and you can peek under the cover and see if it's in place and moving when you try to start the car. On others more disassembly would be required. Most timing belt replacements are done as preventive maintenance, so there is no need to inspect the belt prior to replacing it in these cases, since you're going to replace it anyhow just due to its age or the number of miles on it. I am not sure how or why they arrived at the timing belt as the cause of your problems. Possibly they inspected it due to the age or number of miles on the car, discovered that it was badly worn, and replaced it. But even if the belt was worn, it would not cause any running problems unless it had slipped on its pulley, and that does not happen too much because both the timing belt and the pulley it drives have teeth on them. It can happen, though, if the belt is extremely loose, and that could happen if the tensioner went bad. The tensioner could be one of the things they replaced when you mentioned before that they replaced the belt and some other pulleys.