2024-01-19 — Nothing Ventured…

Well, today… Feels like a waste and potentially a big loss.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

I set off relatively early this morning to pick up Miguel’s truck and trailer to go get a parts car for the Subaru that I bought last week.

I stopped off at AutoZone along the way and returned a bunch of cores and parts and whatnot. Then I headed over to Miguel’s shop to pick up the truck and trailer.

It was bitter cold outside, but gratefully the truck did start because Miguel had put the chemical in it that I had purchased last week to keep the fuel from gelling up.

It took a little while to get everything loaded up and ready to go, but eventually I got it I’ll loaded up and headed north. This car was near Springfield Missouri, about a 2-hour drive.

When I got there, I found that the car was a little more wrecked than the pictures had shown, but I wasn’t there for the body anyway. But in addition to the body not looking as good as I thought it would, the engine wouldn’t stay running..

I don’t know where my head was, but for some reason the only thing I did was check the oil. He had taken a video of it running, so I didn’t think much of it. But as I was driving home after buying it, my brain started working again, and it dawned on me to the engine might just be shot. There were no check engine lights on while it was running. If you revved it up, it sounded fine, but it couldn’t idle to save its life. It tried to idle around like 400 RPMs, and it just couldn’t.

It wasn’t until I got it all the way home that I even thought about checking the coolant.

Not my smartest day.

If that weren’t enough, as I was trying to unload it from the trailer, with the rear end as bad as it was from the accident that it was in, I ended up coming off the ramps and nearly dropping the car off the back of the trailer without ramps.

Gratefully, my brain kicked in enough to go get my floor jack and jack up the side of the ramp that was dangling down. With that in place, I was able to use the jack as an extension for the rear of the trailer and finish rolling the car off the trailer.

It was a little dicey there for a hot minute. 😅

While I was driving that car home, I managed to talk down another guy with another Subaru, this one being another one in Tulsa, from 2200 down to 1200. He had had new heads put on the car, but there was still some kind of a head gasket leak or something because it was still sending bubbles through the cooling system into the overflow.

At $1,200, and a decent body on the car, it was a no-brainer. Pull the engine, slap some new head gaskets on it, even replace the motor if necessary, and then flip it.

So I drove all the way out to Tulsa, two and a half hours one way, and what did I find? The car that supposedly had been running just fine actually hadn’t been started since last March, and they hadn’t actually put coolant in it. They filled it full of water, and having been completely full of water, the radiator, the coolant hoses, and all the water inside the engine and all the other parts was a block of ice.

Which basically means that engine has a good chance of just being plain junk. Not to mention the radiator and the heater core, etc etc.

Super frustrating.

Two different people being dishonest about the car knowing that I’m driving 2 and 1/2 hours one way to get there.

I have another car I want to get, this one as a personal car, but it’s a 9 hour drive one way.

9 hours…

Do I risk it?

Since I was already in Tulsa, Miguel had me go look at a trailer that he was interested in. So I went and looked at that, and one of the tires had super odd where on it, and the only thing that either Miguel or I could think of that might cause wear like that was a bent axle, so today was basically over three, except I was stupid and bought the first car.

10 hours, or so, of driving, probably around $150 in fuel, and quite possibly only a headache to show for it that will cost me money.

Live and learn.

Nothing ventured nothing gained.

(sigh)

It’s actually 1012 p.m. Right now, and I’m somewhere in Oklahoma dictating this journal entry with another hour plus of driving left to do before I even get home, and that’s if I head straight home. My work van is at Miguel’s shop, so I’m not sure what to do right now.

I had been thinking I was going to drive all the way down to Mississippi to buy this other car, and I was going to leave in the morning, So it would have made sense to leave my work van at Miguel’s shop and drive his truck and trailer to my house so that I could just leave and go straight to Mississippi.

But now… Do I risk it?

😕

Decisions decisions.

Lift the world.

~ stephen