Teleidoscope

Tue, Jul 17, 2007

Truck is Home

Posted at 7:48 pm MDT to Technology

It was two weeks ago exactly that my truck overheated in downtown Denver. Even allowing for inflation, I think these repairs cost more than I paid for the first car I ever owned.

The dealership repaired everything they could find that could possibly need repairing, including some pending recall work. The engine sounds better than it has in ages. I think the front end felt better too: I really wonder if the mechanic that worked on it in April got it right.

Now I waiting to see what my gas milage looks like. For the first few years I owned the truck, the gas milage was pretty consistent. Then it dropped by about 10%, and stayed at the new level consistently. With all the bits and pieces that have been replaced in the engine compartment, it would be nice if the milage went back up to the old level.

This truck is the fifth vehicle I have owned in my life.

The first one was a used Ford Maverick I bought in 1977. It was green and sunfaded, and when I tried to paint over some rust spots I was unable to match the color, so it had a sort of camo look. It had no trunk space to speak of.

The Maverick overheated once when I was driving home from an SCA event in Providence, Rhode Island (I lived in Danbury Connecticut it the time). Fortunately, I was only a few miles from Aunt Irma and Uncle Tom's, so my friend Diane Thome and I spent the rest of the night there. In the morning a friend of Tom's got the car working again -- it was just a thermostat -- even though it was Sunday morning. I think Irma and Tom were still in the house across the street from the mill building in those days.

My second vehicle, purchased in 1982, I think, was a blue Ford Escort hatchback. That was a nice little car, and I drove it back and forth dozens of times between my condo and the house on the ridge here when I was moving. I moved everything in that little car except a few of the largest, heaviest objects like my Mom's piano, the waterbed and dresser and sofabed, and the safe.

Then November came, and I learned that if I wanted to get home in the winter time, here on the mesa, I would need something with a little more heft. I traded it in on a used Subaru station wagon (note how the available storage space is increasing from one vehicle to the next).

That Subaru was a lemon, but I drove it for 7 years because I couldn't really afford a new vehicle. I even drove it for a couple of years after an accident that pretty thoroughly wrecked the front end: the insurance company didn't admit that it should have been totalled. But I did like the four-wheel drive.

In 1992 I finally traded the Subaru in for my first pickup: a 4 wheel drive Dodge Ram50, which was really a Mitsubishi truck with Dodge on the tailgate. (It turned out that a new 4WD pickup was much less expensive than any kind of new 4wd station wagon.)

I liked that truck enough that I replaced it with my current Dakota (which was the follow-on model from Dodge) in December 2000 when I decided it was time for a newer vehicle.

I wish Mitsubishi still sold trucks in the US.

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