I can't believe I finally caught up! Been chipping away at it yesterday and this morning.
Wifey knows if she wants my attention, she'll call my name in a strong dialect and wait for eye to eye contact.
I drove to Austin on 290 there, and back through New Sweden. Plenty of cornfields, but many are being turned into subdivisions to house people moving in from Ca.
Don, thanks for looking. I have bought a vehicle. But first, the story leading up to it. My '03 Impala (that has been lightly used for the last 3 years) got me home to Giddings last Wednesday, but I stopped at the store to get a prescription, and it wouldn't start up again. I expect the fuel pump. Almost 333,000 miles on the original fuel pump. I've ordered a new one. Local price about $110. Rockauto about $50 with shipping. I left the car there overnight, and in the morning a buddy helped me tow it home with a strap. It is waiting in the barn for the pump to arrive. After removing the dash to repair the passlock system the other day, it made it clear to me, I don't want an older vehicle with low miles. The plastic is all cracked up as soon as you try to remove it, and the rubber on the vehicle is old and bad...
The price of used cars is horrible right now. There are people getting into the game of flipping/speculating on used cars. Many don't have dealers licenses. Most of these people have names that you can't hardly pronounce. They'll buy a car, and try to turn it without registering it in their name, to avoid the taxes and it adds "an owner" to the history. Then there are dealers who buy salvaged/wrecked cars and make crappy repairs, and then flip them. Some don't come out and tell you the title is a salvage title, unless you ask. So, I developed a "feel" for pouring over hundreds of used car ads on facebook marketplace. If it seemed too good to be true, it is usually a car with an issue.
Mind you, I'm trying to find a car for close to the $4470 the insurance company has given me for my old high mileage Altima. Most everything half decent is up around $10K to $12K or more. (Decent in my little league that is.) I got online early Thursday morning and started looking. Early bird gets the worm, hopefully. I found a hail damaged 2015 Malibu LTZ with only 77,000 miles for $6000. I messaged him, he said he had owned it for 2 years, and that he bought it like that. The pictures online weren't of all that high quality and angles to see the extent of the damage. I did some research for the prices of a hood and trunk. Not too bad. So the wifey and I went to look. We met him at 2, near The Oasis restaurant on Lake Travis. The car looks like it was used for a rock chunking target practice. But I took the wifey and son for a test drive. It drove perfect and quiet, tracked true, motor purred...when we got back, I started talking to owner about what it would take to get it about 80-90% repaired. He said he had a hispanic guy offer to do it for $1500. He showed me the number of people on Facebook, offering to come buy it immediately. He put them on hold, because he knew we were driving there from Giddings (about hour and a half drive). After a bit of time, I guess he felt compassion for us, and said he'd take $5000. I said a prayer, and said I'd take it. My friend who helped me tow home my Impala offered to ride over Friday to go pick it up and look it over once more. I warned him about how bad the hail damage is. I can't imagine how big the hail stones must have been to put in some of the dents they did. Hood and trunk will be easy. It is the roof panel that will cost a bit of labor. I looked online at some videos done by adhesive companies to remove and replace the hood panel. You have to remove both front and rear glass, drill out the spot welds, and then a lot of prying and cursing under breath on a well clamped down tongue. I need to find a similar car in a junkyard to try and get parts from.
So I have nicknamed the thing: Crumpelt Steelskin for now.
