Here's what yesterday looked like for me:
1:00pm Drive to Hardware Store & buy $52 worth of Chain & a huge anchor.
2:00pm Just as I chain up the frame to the tree in my front yard I get a phonecall... thinking it's the G/F I pick up and it's the kid who has been bugging me about the truck every day for the past 7/8 days. He says: "Hi Silvester it's (Matt) I borrowed $1000 from my aunt and I'd like to come down and put it down as a deposit on the Blazer."
I tell him the price has changed and arrange a time when he can look at the truck and we can go from there.
2:05 - 4:15pm About 30 snaps of the chain, 10 broken chain links and several pounds of the hammer later the truck is ALMOST right again. Of course by "straightened" I mean back to the shape it was in when I picked up this 369,000 mile workhorse, which is to say, not very. At one point the neighbor heard the racket and came over to say that he could lend me a chainsaw if the tree is in my way. I laughed knowing he was only half serious and showed him the video of the truck eating dirt and he said the end product was impressive. You could hardly tell how bad the truck was tweeked before.
6:00pm We went to take a look at a house for sale in Groton, MA. $209,000 for what was originally just a summer cottage.
7:30pm Matt* (not his real name) shows up wiht his dad and they both test drive the truck. Amazingly they make no mention that the truck still turns right much better than left. Left hand turning radius is like 50 feet but right hand is like 12 feet.
After explaining everything the truck will need just to be roadworthy and inspectionable he still hands me over the $1000 and is thrilled to sign the paperwork and take the title. He would ahve given me $1300 if I had asked for it. I could have told him the truck had no brakes and he would have bought it... wha a nut.
8:30pm I follow him and his dad to his house in Lowell, to run interferance behind him so he will not get get pulled over since the $hitpile is not registered. "Worth the risk" he says.... I'm no longer 17 so I know better. The Ticket, police tow fee, Insurance Surcharge & Impoud fee makes it NOT worth the risk to me but whatever. We got it to his house safely and in one piece, although with intermitant tail lights and the hood flying open 3 times.
Now here's the day in photos.
This shot does not show the fact that the front axle is not only shifted back about a foot but also to the left about 6". Ouch.
Redneck Frame Puller
Here it sits at it's new home in Lowell.... good luck buddy, try not to kill your new owner.