Pickup Shopping

     Shopping.

     Hard to imagine that for a major portion of the populace, shopping is the end-all and he  be-all.  I’d rather not, thank you, shop.

      Sometimes, it can’t be avoided.  I needed to buy a pickup.  I began glancing at the ads in Craigslist.  At first I concentrated on private sales.  There I found old junk and new high price stuff, but not much in smaller, lower mileage machines.

      I turned to dealers on Craigslist.  I found a 2003 Dodge Dakota with 120K miles.  It was in Greeley at a small lot known as Marty and Dan’s.  It looked OK to me with a few more miles than I would have liked, but close enough that I dropped  by for a look.  It had one drawback—a standard transmission.

     A week later, the Dakota was still there, so I took the Goodwife to take a look.  Within thirty feet, she saw a dent here, a scrape there that I had missed.  She opened the door and saw the gearshift rod.  It was a rather homely job of extending the lever with a chrome rod.  That finished it.  No deal here.

     As we walked towards our car, she spied the Ranger.  “Is that one for sale?” she asked Dan.

     “Yeah, just got that one in today,” Dan said.  “It’s a ’98, only has 47,000 miles on it.  Take a look.”  We did.  Thirty minutes later, we had committed to buy the Ranger.  We did take it on a drive first.

     Dan wanted to check out the pickup to see what needed to be done to it.  He hadn’t had a chance to clean it up.  We agreed to return in a week and finish the deal.

      A few hours later, it occurred to me that we hadn’t checked out the cruise control. Did it even have one?  I called Dan.  It didn’t.

     He had one, an after-market that would fit right on there.  It would add probably $200 to $300 to the price.  Well, okay, driving to Seattle without a cruise control could get tiresome, very tiresome.  I told the Goodwife it would probably cost $400, knowing that initial estimates are often low.

       A week later, when we went to take possession, Dan had a story to tell.  The after-market did not work out.  He went out to Anderson’s and got a used speed control.  He had to redo the steering wheel, where the controls reside.  He had to replace the brake master cylinder in addition to hooking the servo to the throttle body and wiring steering column, etc.  He said it took him a day to do.

     As Dan spoke, I could see he dollar meter running up.  Then he said, “I told you $150 to $200, so I’ll just split the difference with you--$175.”

      Wait a minute!  Am I in a used car dealer’s office?  That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.

      We finished the deal and I drove the “new” pickup home.  I drove the old Dodge to the farm.  Later, the Goodwife called to say she had put the pickup in Tom’s garage.  Tom is deployed to United Arabs Emirate for six months, and we are keeping an eye on his house for him.  She said it looked like a hailstorm, so she got the pickup out of harm’s way.

      When I went to get the Ranger out of Tom’s garage, I noted how similar Tom’s pickup and our pickup are, both gray Rangers.  His is quite a few years newer, however.  I wondered if anybody was watching, if they were thinking I was backing Tom’s pickup out for a drive. 

      I asked Tom, when he called, if any of the neighbors had reported to him that I was driving his pickup.  Tom laughed and said I was a pretty good thief, if I was driving his pickup.  The battery is disconnected, the keys hidden somewhere in the basement.  I caught him up on our purchase and use of his garage.

       I drove the Ford to the farm.  It was a warm May day.  The heater wouldn’t shut off.  When I tried to get some outside air flowing, it was hot air.  The regular AC couldn’t override the heater.  Maximum AC worked, so I made the trip in comfort.

       Then the check engine light came on, and a little later, the brake warning light.  I called Dan.  He said bring it in.  I did.  Some fluid in the brake reservoir took care of one light.  A quick engine analysis suggested improper tightening of the gas cap.  (I still haven’t figured out how to manage the gas cap correctly.)

      I had studied the heater problem, a faulty valve in the heater line.  My solution was to put in another valve, a manual one like on the old cars.  The old flathead V-8 Fords had a valve coming out of the intake manifold, with a flat blade handle, that you could shut off in the summer.  I don’t remember ever using that valve, as the heater controls always worked.  I thought it would be handy to have on this outfit, however.

     Dan nixed that idea.  I couldn’t find a suitable valve anyway.  He had me start the engine and run through the heater and AC controls.  “Valve works fine,” he said.  It’s in the controls.” Everything but Max AC turned the heater on.

      A trip to the auto parts store and then back to Anderson’s salvage, and the control was replaced, but it still didn’t work.  Knowing we were off to Seattle, Dan made a temporary fix.  All the colored lines, which I thought were electric wires, are really vacuum lines.  The heater-AC controls are all operated by vacuum.  Dan hooked the heater valve directly to the engine’s vacuum system.  If the engine is running, the heater valve is pulled shut by the vacuum.

      In the olden days, windshield wipers were run by vacuum.  The problem was, when the engine lugged down, as in going up a hill, the engine vacuum would be greatly reduced.  The windshield wipers would slow to a stop.  As you topped the hill and let up on the gas pedal, the windshield wipers would come to life and beat like crazy as if to make up for their abdication of duty on the way up the hill.

      That was the problem with the temporary fix to the heater control.  Going uphill, the engine vacuum reduced, the heater popped on.  I was prepared for this one.  I had stowed an assortment of twist ties and heavy rubber bands, the kind that hold the broccoli stems together, under the hood.  At a pit stop in Wyoming, I tried a rubber band to help hold the valve closed.  I had to supplement the rubber band with twist ties, but the heater doesn’t come on anymore.

      A bigger problem was the brake light came on again.  The fluid was down.  There was a leak in the reservoir.  It took a little more than a pint of brake fluid on our Seattle trip, topping it off every morning before takeoff.  Back to Dan. 

      We took a trip out to Anderson’s, where Dan is well known, in his electric hybrid car.  It took a few minutes to find the right vehicle with the right brake master cylinder, and  a few minutes less for Dan to have the cylinder out of the carcass.  Back we went, and in about ten minutes, the replacement brake cylinder was installed.

     Dan said he thought the heater solution might be a faulty actuator.  I told him I could probably handle that, having watched him take the radio cassette player out with a snap of plastic and four screws, exposing the temperature controls.  I took my leave, a little disappointed that I might never have the opportunity to visit with Dan again.  He is truly an interesting fellow.

      During my pre-Seattle visit, a Hispanic-looking guy wearing a GM shirt came in to visit with Dan about buying parts from them.  They knew each other and fell into a conversation about how the auto companies are charging a lot to give independent mechanic shops their data and the systems necessary for the independents to use their diagnostic tools on the company’s vehicles. 

     That led to other injustices in modern America’s attempt to stifle the mom and pop shops and put the corporations in charge of everything.  The subject got around to the 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S.  The GM guy obviously had a stake in that game.  He said he wasn’t Mexican, Central or South American.   He was Spanish-speaking German.   His grandparents migrated from Europe.  

     He further said he got treated like trash from all sides, from the white guys who assumed he was Mexican, and the Mexicans who knew he wasn’t Mexican.  Obviously, he had risen above all that to get to the position he now holds.

      Now Dan is in his sixties, an avid hiker, biker, physical-fitness guy, a good mechanic who drives an electric hybrid, who uses his vacation time to travel to foreign countries to hike and get to know  folks, partner in a used car lot with Marty, also in his sixties.  Dan took some time from working on my heater to explain his solution to the immigrant problem.

     Dan says every citizen, every guest worker, needs to have a chip card identifier, like a social security card.  Without that identifier card, a person cannot get a job or apply for any benefits.  The GM guy said the minute the cards are out, somebody will figure a way to counterfeit them. 

      Dan agreed, but countered with only ten, maybe fifteen percent  would cheat.  Our law enforcement folks would be able to deal with that ten or fifteen percent much more effectively than they can with the mess we have now.

      It was a very interesting conversation.  It was heartening to me to know there are still guys in the country like Dan and the GM guy who don’t mind working for a living and doing a quality job, too.

      The bottom line, if you need a quality used car, try Marty and Dan’s in Greeley.  In my experience, they break the stereotypical mold of used car salesmen.  You’ll get a fair deal. 

     In the end, my shopping trip turned up a nugget.