After a few hours of searching listings, researching trucks and general parts availability and cost, making calls, laughing at some of the flotsam and jetsam, we started to lose hope. We thought it would be much easier to find a truck in reasonable condition on the cheap. There were a couple older listings that were promising, but by the time we got to them, they had been picked up by somebody or there was already a bidding war. Some of the things on Craigslist are downright hilarious . . . ever searched for a dump truck or a fire truck or maybe an ambulance. Odds are you will find one for sale.
We started calling people back, the ones who hadn't returned our calls yet, just because we didn't have anything else to do. One vehicle was gone, but the guy couldn't find his email from CL to take the listing down. The listing below hadn't been home but was getting ready to call Matt back when I called.
This truck met our requirements, cheap and reasonably clean oh yeah, running and still available. We headed over to the address which was conveniently close to my neighborhood, kicked the tires and took the truck out for a quick spin. Despite sitting for a few years, it started reasonably well and ran fairly smoothly. We kicked the tires some more and then got down to negotiating. We wanted a truck and the owner wanted it gone which made it pretty easy for everybody, cash talks and for $850, we drove away with a new, old truck.
It is a full sized piece of America, crazy to think about how much of it there is and how little it is worth in the grand scheme of things. What it lacks in value, it makes up in potential. Potential of not only what can be accomplished with such a vehicle, but also potential of what it might cost us to keep it running.
The good news is that it fits in the garage. That is potentially very good news in light of the fact that there may be some bad news. If the thing doesn't pass an emissions inspection, it can't be registered . . . without current tags, it can be ticketed while parked on the street.
This here truck will be a learning experience for me. I have never worked on vehicles, but Matt has. Right now, he's looking at the thing with the thing that when you move the lever and push the pedal, it does stuff.
Trucks like this are great for learning. They are very simple (only complicated by some stupid emissions junk put on after a recall) and there is plenty to just jump in and get to work.
There was at least one occasion when Matt complained about something being too far away while standing in the engine compartment. There are spaces that look like giant voids, especially compared to a modern car with everything they have jammed under the hood.
That there's a single barrel Holley carburetor . . . we have no idea if it was rebuilt correctly, but we did manage to disassemble and reassemble the linkage that was messed up, prohibiting the choke from operating properly.
We have no idea if this thing will pass emissions due to some equipment that doesn't appear to be functioning properly, stupid EGR valve . . . but at this point, the vehicle is insured and ready to head to the testing center to see what happens. If it passes, we'll have the next one year and eleven months to troubleshoot.
For now the only other functional issue is the occasional stalling the engine seems to want to do when coming from high RPMs to idle. To avoid this in the mean time, we set the idle a bit higher. I forgot the joys of a huge engine with manual transmission. You can pop start it in just about any gear without any trouble. The truck also doesn't have a horn which is actually very convenient because now I can get that horn that plays dixie that I have always wanted . . . yup, pickem up truck.
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