prancingbull.com

Adding to the fun things that have been happening to me lately are truck problems. I have a 1994 Ford Ranger that I have driven for the past seven years or so. Now that I live in the city, having a 2WD pickup truck doesn’t really make a lot of sense for me. The truck is really underpowered and has a lot of things that need to be fixed.

Here is the list of things that I know are wrong with it:

• Needs new tires
• Replace windshield (cracked in two places)
• Replace rear drum brakes
• Get new shocks all the way around
• Replace clutch

There are probably a few other things wrong with it that I don’t know about, but this is the list of the big ticket items that it needs. I figure I can get some cheap-o tires for $200, windshield replaced for $600?? (not too sure what these go for). Drum brakes are $500 easily. I think my quote a few years back for new shocks and install at Les Schwab was around $400-$500. A new clutch with install should set me back another $800.

All in all we are looking at about $2600 assuming that my guesstimates are somewhat close. That is a decent amount of money to put into a truck that isn’t worth a whole lot more. I guess the only good thing it has going for it right now is that it only has 110,000 miles on it, which is very low for a 1994 vehicle. That’s only 7,800 miles per year. I guess I should feel good since I haven’t had to replace any of these items since getting the truck at 56,000 miles in 2001.

So here is the fun stuff that I was going to get in to. When I got off the bus at the park and ride this afternoon I walked back to where my truck was parked. As I walked towards it I decided to look at my tires for some reason or another. Maybe something caught my eye. I can’t really remember right now. Anyway, I noticed what looked like a hole or a missing chunk out of my front right tire. It wasn’t huge, but noticeable. As I started to look a bit closer at the tire I noticed a screw jammed into my tire. It was in as far as it could go. The interesting thing if you want to call it that was that there was a washer on the screw as well. I’m not sure if someone did this or if I just happened to run it over. I tried to pull it out hoping that maybe it was a short screw. As I started to pull up on it I heard air seeping out. I decided to just leave it in and hope for the best, especially considering that it had been in there for who knows how long and it was still holding air. I think that my project for this weekend will be that I get new tires for the truck. It definitely needs them.