The Truck Saga Continues

I finally heard back from the garage where I left my leaky ol' truck. Turns out one leak was from a radiator hose. No big deal.

But the other leak was from a split seam in the radiator itself. Big deal.

I could have had the radiator welded (I've driven thousands of miles in the past with a radiator held together by JB Weld) but since I plan on keeping the truck for a few more years I just went ahead and sprung for a new one.

Since the truck was already going to be in the shop for a while, I told them to go ahead and do a thorough bumper-to-bumper inspection, like they would if I brought them a used car I was thinking of buying. Turns out that was a good idea. Overall, things were in good shape, with two exceptions.

One, the serpentine belt had a small crack. Since I do a lot of high speed driving (3 hour trips at 80 mph twice a week) through remote country, I was thrilled to find the problem now, as opposed to having it break while I was in BFE, where I found myself last week when I had the blowout.

Speaking of the blowout, the other problem the inspection uncovered was a damaged right rear suspension strut. It apparently was banged up when the tire blew and a chunk of rubber slammed into the strut.

While it was there I had the mechanic go ahead and clean and adjust the brakes, and flush the tranny and power steering systems. I'm nearing the 200,000 mile mark, which is a major maintenance point, so i figured I'd get a head start.

Bottom line - estimated cost of repair is around $1400. That's a big hunk of change, but spread out over a year it's a lot less than car payments, even taking into account the difference in gas mileage between a '95 model and a newer one. Besides, I just put a new radio in it when the original cassette deck finally quit working.

Now I need to figure out what to do with all those 20 and 30 year old mix tapes...