The 97 Dodge.
Indeed, I sometimes wish I'd found a truck just like I wanted, a one ton 4x4, back when I first bought my first new truck, in 1990, and kept it.
That wasn't realistic at the time. I did get, however, at that time a very nice, in my view, 6 cyl Ford F150 4x4. I loved it. I traded that away a few years later when my son was just a baby to get a F250 diesel 4x4, a great truck, that I loved. I still miss it. That one went in 2006, however, when a single cab truck would just not work anymore for a family of four. At the time, it had 165,000 miles on it and was just starting to have a few problems.
Its replacement was a 2007 Dodge D3500, a one tone 4x4 crew cab. I still have it. It now has 168,000 miles on it, which shows I guess that I drive about 160,000+ miles over a decade, quite a bit by the standards of some, and not so much by the standards of others.
Seven or so years ago the D3500 was supplemented here by the purchase of an even older vehicle, a 1997 Dodge 1500. My son was getting near driving age at the time and we needed something so we bought that. He's still driving it. It has 155,000 miles on it. And we added a 1997 Jeep some years ago. That's my daily driver. It had a lot of miles on it when I bought it and now it's at 165,000. And my daughter is driving a ten year old Jeep Liberty.
And then there's the 1962 Dodge. We'll forgo discussing that.
Only my wife's car is newish. She's not a fan of keeping the old ones.
Anyhow, I hate replacing vehicles which means that I likely keep them longer than I should.
In my heart of hearts, I just can't really grasp why a vehicle ought not to basically last forever. I know that's not realistic for something that's a collection of moving parts, but that's sort of how I view it. I figure that you get the vehicle you like, and then you keep it.
That's somewhat ironic, truly, for a person who has owned as many vehicles as I have. I should know better. My first vehicle was a 1958 M58A1, a surplus Army Jeep, that I bought at age 15 and had only a little into my legal driving years. It seemed old when I got it, and was in mixed condition, but in thinking back now I own vehicles that are older now than it was when I got it.
After that I had a 1974 Ford F100, then a 1974 Dodge D150, followed by the addition of the 62, which I still own, and a 1954 Chevrolet Deluxe Sedan. Then I added a 1974 Toyota four door Landcruiser. The Landcruiser died in 1990 and I bought the brand new Ford F150, and then the F250, and then the D3500. In the mix, at the time I owned the F150, was a 1946 Jeep CJ2A and a Mercury Comet which I inherited.
I've omitted the things that I've owned with my wife, as those vehicles were largely hers. If I add them in, there was the Nissan Pathfinder (a great 4x4), a Chevrolet Suburban and then a Tahoe.
Of everything listed, only the Pathfinder, the F150 and the D3500 were new when purchased. The Suburban and Tahoe were nearly new.
If it had been up to me, I would not have traded off the Pathfinder, which was a 1993 or 94. And then, if it had been up to me, we would not have traded the Suburban. I didn't like the Suburban, but I never grasped why we traded it for a vehicle that was similar to what we already had.
Of the vehicles listed, of course, most are now long gone. The Comet went to the person I bought the F250 from, along with the F150. The Chevy I sold when I inherited the Comet. The F250 I sold when I bought the D3500, and it was having rust and engine problems at the time. With high milage, the D3500 has done much better.
Which brings me to my current post.
The 97 1500 has always had a few problems with it, the biggest one being that it's been anemic. It's equipped with the 318 engine, or what I call the 318,and its just never had a lot of go. Recently it's been having a lot of problems and we endeavored to find a replacement.
We failed.
The reason we failed is that between my son and I we can't find anything that really fits the bill as well as it does and, moreover, which is affordable. I can't bring myself at age 56 to buy a vehicle that's as expensive as they currently are. They've just gotten enormously expensive. That's why my Jeep is a 97. When I decided I'd like to try a Jeep again, the new ones were way out of price range for what I was willing to pay, and most of the used ones were absurdly priced. The one we found was on a salvage title due to an accident early in its existence, and so it was affordable, the way I define that. And it's been a great 4x4 car.
The replacement for the 97 1500 would have to be a pickup truck and it'd have to be a standard, that latter requirement being one I apply myself to my own vehicles but attempted to dissuade, unsuccessfully, my son from. The only thing we found that looked like a good option, financially, was a fairly new, slightly lifted, F150, but it was an automatic and was therefore rejected by the intended user, even though he'd be using a vehicle (we'd own) that was much newer than anything I drive.
So we determined to fix the 1500.
That's been a really odd experience and I've come to realize that by and large most mechanics now approach old vehicles like this with the concept that you don't want to fully fix them, but rather just maintain them in acceptable condition until they're replaced by something newer. As a result, certain problems have just lingered for years.
One of those is the odd lack of real guts in the 97 Given as its a 318 I've just attributed it to that, but recently one mechanic said that he'd measured compression and that it was quite low in one cylinder, 70 lbs. That caused us to feel that it had to be replaced, but as we couldn't find anything to replace it with, we then thought of rebuilding or replacing the engine.
It used to be, back when engines gave up around 65,000 miles or so, that there were shops locally that routinely did that. But as one mechanic has explained to me, as engines now push 200,000, that's just not the case any longer. So the options consistently seemed to be to put in an ordered engine. My research on that dissuaded me from doing that however. I did find a local shop that will rebuild them, and does a lot of racing engines, so there is a local option.
But in the meantime as the old truck had a brake problem develop and a scary rattle show up, it went back to the shop and it was determined, by a different mechanic, that the front brakes needed to be worked on and an axle u-joint had gone bad. That was expensive, so as long as we were looking at rebuilds, I had the shop fix the loose steering as well. This truck has had loose steering for years. They were reluctant to do it, given that its an old truck, but in explaining that I really wanted them to do it, they did.
And they are of the opinion that the truck really doesn't have low compression but that a leaky air manifold gasket is responsible for the check engine light being on intermittently, so that's being replaced. If they are correct, and they are confident they are, that should be the old truck back into pretty fair shape.
Not that it's been cheap.
In the meantime, the tires on my D3500 are nearly completely shot and I need to replace them. More money.
I've really liked the D3500 but it has a few issues as well. One is that I've never found the clearance to be really adequate. I've thought about lifting it slightly with a leveling kit and having a larger set of tires, and perhaps wheels, put on the truck. Now, if I'm going to do that, I need to do that, or I'll be stuck with the current tire size for years. As its now old, only cost keeps me from experimenting with it, I suppose.
I also now have rust above a wheel well, and a crack in my box. Bare minimum I need to do something about the rust if I'm going to keep it.
Which I suppose I will. This is the last year for standard transmission Dodge trucks and I'm not keen on automatics. And the trucks I have looked at on the lot, and I have looked at some, are gigantically expensive.
I guess on that latter point I can convince myself, therefore, that I'm saving money. Sort of. If they last for years, I guess.
On it all, at age 56, I'm perhaps oddly of the mindset that anything I buy now, or repair now fully, I will have until I die . . . or electric vehicles make them obsolete. I may be unique that way locally, but I'm pretty convinced that we're in the final generation of combustion engine vehicles right now and in another decade electrics will be coming on really strong. Indeed, they already are, and only solving battery longevity and recharging rates is really keeping them back. Once that's solved, and it will be, they'll start replacing everything else. Or at least I'll be surprised if they don't. That's not advocating for anything, it's just guessing. If I'm wrong, well maybe in a decade I'll be back on the lots looking at the newest diesels.
I'll note that I haven't mentioned the Jeep much in this tale of semi mechanical woe. I really don't need to. It has problems now as well,including that the heater is stuck on and I haven't figured that out quite yet, but it's remarkably durable in every way. And Jeeps, it seems, you just keep rebuilding after they endure the last year's worth of automotive use.
So the perils of keeping and riving old vehicles. I've often wished that while I was in school I'd taken mechanics classes along with everything else and really knew how really dig into them. Having said that, one of my brothers in law did just that and he doesn't work on his own often. Indeed, he doesn't keep the old ones either but trades vehicles off when they are nearly new.
A few queries for the few readers.
Do you drive old ones, and if so why?
Turn your own bolts?
Any experience with lifting, at all, D3500s and changing wheel and tire sizes?
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*This draft post was started in 2016 and I never finished it. That shows both how I really do keep the old ones and, moreover, how old some draft posts are here. As there have been developments on the automotive front here, as noted in the post, I finally finished it off.
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