The Old Truck is Dead, Long Live the New Truck...

I believe you can jinx the car you drive. 

One time I had a 1987 Suburban. It was the first car me and Cathy bought together and we bought it so we had something to transport four kids in. It was about as plain as a car could be, did not have rear air because we believed the children had to suffer to survive and it cost $17,000 which was a princely sum in those days. 

After driving it nearly 200,000 miles and lots of kid hauling, fishing and camping trips we began entertaining thoughts of getting the dents taken out and maybe a funky paint job of some kind and just continuing on down the road even further when a guy pulled out in front of us in a great crash that made us the recipients of the miracle that we were not killed. We weren't jinxed but those plans to refurbish the car sure were.   

Just a few weeks ago a friend was telling me of his 22 year old truck. I don't recall the make, probably one of the big three but he had spent thousands on truck repair and maintenance and he thought that was better than thousands on a new truck. My truck was 11 years old. It seemed to be fine and I thought, "Yeah, I'll do that." Jinxed again. 

So a couple of days ago Cathy has a wreck and she tells the story of how relieved the young policeman was when he arrived and she claimed fault. Apparently no one admits this on the wreck scenes. Luckily other than a couple of scrapes and bruises on Cathy, the other person was not injured and their car was not too bad. Ours however was very bad. 

So as they say if money can cure your problems you do not have problems. We shopped around a bit locally and settled on this 2020 Ford from the used lot at the Chevy place. It was not the first deal we tried to make and we had to walk away with our money in our hands at another local place but Jorge was our salesman at JM Chevy, he did a good job and the truck, drive out and three year extended warranty came in under to price of what I paid for my house back in 1983. I'll call it a win.        

Cleaning out the old truck I found the old window sticker with the price I paid for the old truck and that helped me feel better about spending money I had not intended to. This price was not terrible much more and it is a nicer truck. 

Since this was a used truck on the test drive I took it by my mechanic at John's Auto. John has worked on my cars for almost 34 years. He pronounced the truck mechanically perfect but his caution was that on the Ford Eco Boost motors he would not buy one without getting the extended warranty. He said the turbo will go out but you don't know when. As he described the signs of Eco Boost failure I realized even though my old truck had just hauled the travel trailer all around on an 11 day trip, the boat on hundreds of fishing trips and a couple of recent heavy firewood loads and seemed to be running fine there were some signs that indicated this failure was coming and with it a repair bill that John described as "thousands of dollars." So maybe we received another miracle though I know some will say, "at least it was not an electric car that needed fixing."

I'm not really extend warranty guy but I followed John's advice and got it. Jorge the salesman made the deal good enough that with the drive out and the warranty the price was what other dealers had as sticker price on similar trucks. It does cover oil changes for three years and with that service nudging up in the neighborhood of $100 I think I'll be ok.        

Just for the record here's the old truck. It made it 158,000 odd miles. If you search the blog there might be other wreck cars pictured here and there. I would also like to make a shout out to Solo Wrecker service. They will treat you right so like them on facebook and put the number in your phone. Never know when you will jinx yourself.