At Least It Wasn’t the Motor

I’ve started two posts so far about the van; one before and one since I picked it up.  I’ll try to be terse and factual enough to sneak it in on a third try.

It ended up costing $1846.  And change, but when I handed him $1900 he asked if I wanted the balance credited to the truck, so he put $54 to that, rounding it.

I left the truck for oil change, inspection, and having tires swapped around.  They can’t find anything wrong with it, because we simply can’t afford it.  I had put off getting this no more than $100 thing done all this time because I was afraid they’d find something else, so I wanted several times the expected cost to be freely available.  Thus the irony of the van needing:

Transmission
Transmission kit
Ball joints
Axle
2 studs and nuts
Hose
Oil change

While the truck was not particularly safe and legal for want of spending a paltry sum.

Anyway, the thing had been overheating and not showing it on the guage.  That would explain the sometimes antifreeze smell.  We were at risk of losing the motor, and I assume overheating didn’t help the transmission.  There was a bad hose and something not right dating back to whoever worked on it under the prior owner.

What the guy at the shop was really disturbed by though was the broken studs on one of the front wheels, courtesy of whoever worked on it before.  We have two shiny new studs and bolts.

Hopefully this is it for quite a while.  We expect this sort of thing from a used car (though the one new car I ever owned was also one of the most costly in repairs), but we’re due for a break now.

The van was not what you’d call loud before.  I found it remarkable how quiet it was when I drove it away.  I bet it stops sucking gas, which was one of the symptoms I noticed the last few times we used it before it died.  By sucking gas I mean I could drive several miles and watch the guage move, as if it was lucky to be getting 10 MPG.

I can’t help comparing it to the other van I owned, smaller and a model year older, with fewer than half the miles.  That one was $2500 plus an immediate $1400 to make it safe and usable.  This one was $550 plus an immediate $850.  Now we’re up to $3250 on this, versus $3900 on that.  Subsequently I spent another few thousand; somewhere north of $6000 total.  To match, this one needs to take us another, say 30k or 35k miles without costing us more than another $3000.

So much for terse.  I need to run to the store for the stuff we’re out of after the siege.

Posted by on 06/18 at 02:12 PM

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