Truck.

(Not ours, but it's pretty close)

Good news: We paid off the truck and no longer have a car payment.

Bad news: The week after we paid it off, it started to have problems.

Symptoms: If the engine was shifting to idle and it was warmed up, it would start shaking a lot and then the engine would shut down. It made loud clunking noises. Preston can now prevent it from turning off by shifting to neutral and rev'ing the engine a bit.

Diagnosis: We were told by our mechanic Spike, that the cam phasers were bad and that the engine was all clogged so the oil isn't pumping through all the way or something like that... I don't really know what's wrong because I know NOTHING about cam phasers except it was built by Ford to help increase fuel economy and power... Anyway, out mechanic told us to sell the truck asap. So Preston and I are taking it somewhere to get a 2nd opinion and then maybe fix it or maybe sell it, or both. We are still up in the air about the whole thing. It really just depends on what the next mechanic says.

Fix: Replace the cam phasers and clean out the engine, or buy a new engine. Sometimes the clogs are bad enough that it's not worth trying to clean.

Lesson Learned: Research shows that more research should have been done before buying this truck. This is NOT, by any means, and unusual problem. This happens with many of the 2004/2005 5.4L engines in the Explorer/F-150 at (on average) 111K miles. Our truck has just over 112K.