{"id":1621,"date":"2015-07-24T08:59:03","date_gmt":"2015-07-24T13:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/?p=1621"},"modified":"2015-07-27T16:12:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T21:12:21","slug":"if-this-truck-only-had-ac-power-steering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/if-this-truck-only-had-ac-power-steering\/","title":{"rendered":"If This Truck Only Had AC, Power Steering…"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It started as a vague notion of my Beautiful Mystery Companion\u2019s. \u201cI want an old beat-up farm truck,\u201d she said wistfully on more than one occasion. So I began keeping an eye out for something that would fit the bill.<\/p>\n

\"Our<\/a>She had very specific requirements. Nothing completely restored and shiny. A four-on-the-floor stick shift. I commenced to looking last summer. Once I did a u-turn on Hwy. 31 to snap a cell phone photo of a 1968 Ford partially restored and nearly flawless, but it was deemed too expensive. And shiny.<\/p>\n

Then I found a 1961 International Harvester on a side street in Longview. It definitely fit the \u201cbeat-up farm truck\u201d requirement. We began to get excited, though the price was more than we planned to pay. We called on a buddy who has restored many vehicles to come take a look.<\/p>\n

Our friend is an encyclopedia of knowledge when it comes to vintage vehicles. I, on the other hand, am a blank book. I retired from changing the oil in my vehicles in 1980, after draining the transmission instead of the oil pan from a 1978 Toyota Corolla while a poor graduate student in Austin. The transmission fell out in Taylor as we attempted to travel to Longview for a visit. I had idly wondered why\u00a0the dipstick seemed to be overflowing as I added four quarts to an already full pan. That is when I swore off doing anything more complicated than putting gasoline in vehicles and airing up the tires.<\/p>\n

Our free expert was not enthusiastic about the Harvester and started looking online. By the next night he had emailed a link to a 1965 Ford F-100 in Iowa for sale on eBay. The seller had included a video of the truck tooling down the road, with a musical soundtrack of Steve Earle singing \u201cYou\u2019re the Best Lover That I Ever Had.\u201d (Google the song. It is an instant classic.)<\/p>\n

The truck is bright red. The interior is nearly perfect. We were hooked, and I began bidding. My BMC and I would go in 50-50 on the truck.<\/p>\n

We have a history of going halves. Not long after we started dating more than seven years ago, we bought a Mini Cooper convertible together, also red. We shared that car for five years before deciding it was too expensive to maintain. A fellow from New York City bought it on eBay and had it shipped to him, where I presume he is tooling around the Big Apple in it.<\/p>\n

We won the bid for the truck for less than I expected and were ecstatic. I arranged for shipping and it arrived a few weeks later.<\/p>\n

Then matters became a bit complicated. Turns out the truck really needed an engine overhaul, and the old-fashioned drum brakes were pretty sketchy and needed to be upgraded to disc brakes. Our friend recommended a local fellow with a sterling reputation for this type of work but warned it might take a while. He was right. Two months later, the truck was road-worthy. As always, this cost more than expected since it needed a clutch as well. But the engine and all the fixin\u2019s are spotless, restored to its black-and-gold original appearance. And with a 352 V-8, 208 horsepower engine, it has more power than anything I have driven since my parents\u2019 land yacht Mercury Marquis.<\/p>\n

But here is what we discovered. My BMC is tiny but tough and has been driving a stick since she was a kid. But she has a hard time driving this truck, which has no power steering. In fact, I<\/em> have a hard time negotiating sharp turns and quickly learned to anticipate a corner. Further, there is no air-conditioning, so besides wrestling a giant steering wheel, running through the granny gears and a springy clutch, sweat pours off you this time of year.<\/p>\n

I drove the truck from Longview to Mount Pleasant to burn off the old gas in the tank, which was making it hesitate. It smoothed out after a few miles and has purred like a rather large kitten\u00a0since. But I was soaked in sweat by the time I got home that evening and my arms were sore from steering and shifting.<\/p>\n

So this beast doesn\u2019t fit us, lovely as she looks in the driveway. I am partial to power steering and air-conditioning. My BMC is hesitant to drive it because it takes so much muscle to maneuver. And she likes air-conditioning as well.<\/p>\n

When the weather cools a bit, Big Red is going up on the auction block. I am confident somebody will eagerly buy her, fulfilling a dream of owning an old truck with a perfectly restored engine. After that, we\u2019ll keep looking for that perfect beat-up truck \u2014 just one with AC and power steering.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Print this entryIt started as a vague notion of my Beautiful Mystery Companion\u2019s. \u201cI want an old beat-up farm truck,\u201d she said wistfully on more than one occasion. So I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[50,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-50","category-columns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1621"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1626,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions\/1626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}