Gone At Any Price

Rodney, how much would you take for your green truck?

Whatever someone will offer for it.

I’m serious.

Yeah, so am I.

I no longer own a truck. I maybe should have never owned this truck. But, I should have gotten rid of the truck a long time ago.

I like cars, and for that matter, trucks. Over the past several years I’ve bought them, sold them, worked on them, traded them and given them away.

Mostly, I’ve worked on them. We recently got rid of a project car that I called IRONMN. It was an old Lexus. I rebuilt it with the help of my neighbor. It broke again. And I “worked” on it for about two years. I finally decided I would never get it running again. (I’m surprised I got it running the first time.) I donated it to the Kidney Kar people.

After it was gone, my neighbors breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently, an old car up on blocks in my driveway was not improving the look of the neighborhood.

My truck spent plenty of time up on blocks in my driveway. I rebuilt the rear differential. That took quite a while. I did other repairs as well. Eventually, I got the truck put together well enough to commute in it. I commuted back and forth to Salt Lake City for about six months. And then, like old cars do, it developed another problem.

I spent months trying to fix the problem of “it makes a CHUNKING noise when I turn.” After a lot of time and a fair amount of replacement parts, I finally narrowed it down to the Transfer Case. A used Transfer Case is about $300. A new one? $1500. And that was with a discount.

Figuring out what was wrong with my truck actually made me appreciate it a little more. The Transfer Case is what keeps the front wheels and the back wheels in sync on a four wheel drive vehicle. Mine wasn’t keeping them in sync. Not even when I was in two wheel drive.

I figured I could disconnect the front drive line and that way the Transfer Case wouldn’t attempt to keep them in sync. In a 1996 Dodge Dakota, the four wheel drive is engaged via a vacuum mechanism. I did some research trying to figure out exactly how to disengage the vacuum tubes.

I really meant to figure it out. And I would have eventually. Or, maybe I would have just disconnected the drive line. Either way, I had a plan. In the mean time, my truck sat in the driveway. Unlike IRONMN, the truck ran. It passed emmisions.

I’m not the only one that lives in my house. My lovely wife was tired of the truck sitting in our driveway. I quit commuting in it when the Transfer Case started acting up.

My neighbor knew that I, or at least someone in my family wanted to get rid of the truck. He had a friend looking for a project truck. I’m not even sure how much I sold it for. He hasn’t told me yet. My lovely wife simply wanted it gone at any price.

I now own a new car. Well, not exactly new. It’s older than my truck was with about 100,000 more miles.

It’s kind of a project car.

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.

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