I have a 1980 Ford F-100 Pickup Truck. The owner I bought it from last year didn’t know how many miles it had on it, the odometer only goes up to 100,000. It is so old; it’s only 7 years younger than me. My truck is a real clunker.
I can tell that it’s a clunker when I look at the bald tires. People say that you’re not supposed to see steel wire sticking out from the rubber of the tire. The tires are probably the original tires that came with the truck. When the truck drives down the road with the bald tires, the steel sticking out of the tires cut into the concrete and asphalt. Anyone can tell where I parked it last, based on the chunks of asphalt and rotting tire rubber left behind. The tires make it sway all over the place when I drive. Speaking of the sway in the front, I know that the front shocks are bad, because when I hit a bump, it takes the truck a mile to stop bouncing. My son says it’s like a carnival ride and he thinks we should take the neighbor kids for rides and charge them $5.00 a piece. My truck is more like a big bumper car going down the road. Not only does it sway side to side, it has no rear springs, so I feel every bump as it hits the pot holes.
Hitting the potholes is hard on my engine, because it leaks all over the place. This must cause my engine to drink as much oil as it does gas. It only gets 10 miles per gallon in gas as it is now! With the oil leaks, I can always tell where the truck was parked, because of the oil spots it leaves. They aren’t really spots, more like small ponds. The EPA and I are on a first name basis and Mobil Oil has given me a share in the company. That’s not the only problem under the hood.
I replaced the starter for the truck that looked like it was last used during the Korean War. There’s this thingamajig (that’s what my son says) called the solenoid. It’s attached by a couple of old stripped out wires to the engine starter, which cranks the engine. It works only when it wants to. Half the time I turn the engine over, it makes this dry coughing sound, like an emphysemic gasping for air. The other half of the time I turn the engine over, it gets stuck. When it’s stuck, you hear this grinding sound. That’s when the starter is still trying to crank the engine over even though the engine is already running. It sounds like a trio of cats trying to meow the “Star Spangled Banner”. My son who is very ingenious, came up with a solution “by accident”, when he hit the solenoid with a wrench. It stopped running and now that solution works every time.
If starting the engine isn’t bad enough, there are things under the hood that would leave a Nascar Pit Crewman sick to his stomach. My transmission slips a lot when I drive. When it goes from park to drive, I cross my fingers and pray that the truck moves so I won’t be stuck in the middle of State Street on a busy Friday afternoon. It leaks too. Not enough to create a small pond, just enough to be comparable to a big mud puddle. I think I’m the only person with a 5 gallon can of transmission fluid in the bed of my truck. What else could be wrong under the hood?
My engine belt is so old and worn, that it’s just strands away from breaking. The engine belt is still somehow connected to the alternator. I guess my alternator is important for something, because my mechanic buddy told me that it’s charging my battery, so that it can run all the electrical stuff.
I don’t really need electrical stuff anyway; I don’t have anything electrical. My wife reminds me of that every time she complains that the radio doesn’t work, but the headlights work, when they want to anyways. There’s a trick to getting them to work, that my mechanic buddy calls ‘doing a manual reset’. You turn on the light switch a couple of times, to get the lights to ‘think’ about coming on, then you gently apply a downward pressure “tap” onto the truck hood, with a 2 by 4 piece of wood, which I keep in the truck bed for such occasions. This only takes about 10 to 15 good whacks.
As if the headlights weren’t bad enough, one side of my tail lights won’t light up. My mechanic buddy compares the wiring problem to Christmas lights that won’t light up, when you go from one light to the next checking for bad bulbs. Instead of broken bulbs, you check for breaks in it. Instead of paying for a new wiring job that’s more expensive than the cost of the truck, I have learned to live with it, and the police tickets associated with it. There are some things that work in the truck. The heater and defroster work, but only in the summer, and the air conditioner work (you guessed it), only in the winter!
The winter must have been hard on my truck over the past 30 years. The body is in sorry shape. The door frames don’t shut all the way. My son has to slam the door at least 3 times to close it. Driving down US 131 with earmuffs on isn’t exactly my idea of cruising. My wife tells me my son is hard of hearing, who can blame him though? The inside of the doors are made of blue foam padding. It flakes off, so every time you open or close the door from the inside, you get blue paint inside your finger nails. People ask me all the time now if I paint my nails. I’m okay about it, but I feel sorry for my son when they ask him about it.
Not only are the doors bad, but also the mirrors attached to them. They are so loose, that they flop in the breeze, like dog’s ears, every time the truck goes down the road. I know of some cars in Africa that are starving for mirrors.
It’s probably good that my mirrors don’t work too well, that way I can’t see the truck bed. The kids in my apartment complex use it as their personal garbage dumpster. On my first day back to college, I came out to start my truck in the morning and discovered a refrigerator in the bed of the truck. I spent 3 hours dropping it off at the dump. Because the tailgate is permanently stuck, I never did figure out how the refrigerator got in there. Speaking of the bed, my son says that the rust holes in it are so big; he can stick his head through it. That allows us a good view of the twisted frame. It’s so twisted though, that sometimes when the mirrors really do work driving down the road, we can see the bed leaning out into another traffic lane. I’m tired of the Department of Transportation tickets for not having wide load signs.
I guess I’ll remember the red flags from now on. I guess the whole truck was a red flag not to buy it. Speaking of colors, I never got to mention the struggle I had with the paint job, which is (mostly) colored flat black. It now looks more like a Dalmatian. When I bought the paint, I had to buy it in the 10 gallon buckets, just to cover up the other light blue and white color paint, which was original, from 1980. The auto parts guy thought I was painting a warehouse. I told him, no, just an F100 fixer upper Ford Pickup Truck. He must have been empathetic because I got a bulk rate discount.
Maybe I will look closer before I get another “fixer upper, Sanford and Son” pickup truck. People have asked me why I didn’t try the Government’s “Cash for Clunkers” Program. I already have, and the Government turned me down because my truck was “too clunky” for cash.
