The Truck...

Totalling the motorcycle.  Joel's truck adventures.  Joel came home from work and said that he didn't want to call and freak me out but he'd been in a hit and run accident.  Someone had clipped the front tire and then didn't stop when he went down.  He had some road rash and a pretty good size bruise on his hip but other than that he was ok.  We talked about it and he was freaked out enough by the accident that he said it might be time to get rid of the motorcycle and buy an actual wheeled vehicle.  Being out of work would be expensive if he was in a major accident.  We thought about it and started looking for vehicles. 

We called our insurance and after talking about things and having the bike checked out, it would cost more to fix it than the bike was worth.  Most of the damage was consmetic, but that severely decreased the value of the vehicle.  So they totalled out the bike.  We were then able to use the funds from the bike to help pay for the next vehicle we would get.

Joel found a truck that he wanted to look at.  He looked at it and thought it was a great deal.  He was finally getting a truck!  It was a private party sale but from someone who said he had a dealers license.  He bought the truck and auction just a couple days ago.  I felt nervous about the truck, especially when we were heading over to look at it and pay for it.  Joel was a little nervous but wanted to go ahead with getting it.  He said he knew it would take a little bit to tune it. But it should be a good work truck. 

It only took about a week for Joel to realize that there were a few things wrong with the truck that the seller had masked.  The transmission was slipping and the truck was burning through a quart of oil and transmission fluid a week. 

We realized that we had purchased a lemon and that we would need to redo the engine and transmission... We didn't realize when we started just how much work the truck was going to need.  It's been sitting in the driveway for a month now.  Parts and pieces and oil everywhere. 

Lessons learned.  We thought we could do it and we didn't want to pay "THAT MUCH!" for someone else to do it.  Well, turns out, we couldn't do it ourselves.  Joel tried to pull the engine and it ended up taking 2.5 weeks vs just a Saturday like he thought.  Then trying to put it back together, we knew were were going to need help there too.  $$$

Barry Singelton, the EQP, helped us with the transmission.  The tranny was a mess beyond what anyone could have guessed.  Fortunately Barry basically completely redid the transmission for only parts.  Blessing.

We slowly found all the other parts we needed and hopefully the truck will get put back together by Christmas!  Merry Christmas Joel.  Here's your present for the next year!

Visit to Utah.  September.  dave and margaret.  sewing machine.  sickness.  Dana and cornbellies.  More sick kids, driving home. Parade of sheep in Cedar with Dawn and kids.