Lessons from the Saga of the Old Truck

General Discussion
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I have long been a proponent of the idea that it is better to own older vehicles, built before the avalanche of plastic and electronics rendered vehicles less robust and more difficult to repair. Who has not heard some yuppie crying about the cost of replacing a headlight on his expensive German car? Who wants to rely on the willingness of the Japanese to continue trading their exquisitely-manufactured spare parts for freshly-printed US fiat? No, the best transportation insurance for the inevitable Coming Collapse is an older domestic truck.

Came the day when my hypothesis was put to the test – my reliable 30-year old truck tried to take early retirement. The engine would crank but not fire. Every day is a school day, and thus began the next phase of my education.

Lesson 1 – Many upmarket auto repair shops will not touch an older vehicle – for reasons that would soon become apparent. Fortunately, I found a modest woman-owned, largely woman-staffed auto shop which was willing to take on my old truck.

Lesson 2 – Limited parts availability. The immediate problem was electrical, and replacement parts were not thick on the ground. While waiting for parts to be delivered, the lady owner ran the old truck through her standard 83-point checklist. It failed miserably. Recognizing that the parts issue would only get worse with time, I requested her to go through the truck with a fine tooth comb and do everything she could to bring it back to specifications.

Lesson 3 – Limited expertise. The engine became a particular problem, because most of today’s mechanics are used to plugging in an engine analyzer which tells them what to fix. Not so on an older vehicle. This required bringing in an old semi-retired mechanic – who promptly came down with Long Covid.

Lesson 4 – Anything which drags on for a while becomes a soap opera. I will spare you most of the tale of woe, except to mention that the critical issue became the fuel injection system. The lady owner exhausted the internet seeking replacement parts, ransacked scrap yards, and even tried 3D printing – all without success. Ultimately, we agreed that the only remaining way forward was to replace the old engine. The lady enlisted the services of a mechanic who specializes in the challenging task of replacing engines. On the day before he was scheduled to start work on my truck, his National Guard unit got activated.

Lesson 5 – Competence Counts! About this point, faced with major family & medical problems, the lady owner decided to sell her business. I took back my old truck and had it towed to a place which wiser heads had recommended – a back alley operation where two merry mechanics had fun in the workshop while the lady who ran the front office home-schooled (office-schooled?) her precocious children. Having checked out the vehicle, the merry mechanics poo-pooed the idea of replacing the engine. It took them one week to get their hands on the hard-to-find replacement part for the fuel injection system, and one day to install it. Finally, after many months, I once again have a running old truck!

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Looking back on the experience, what I should have done was have the truck thoroughly overhauled 10 years ago when it was a mere 20 years old and parts & expertise were probably more available. But 10 years ago, I had other things on my mind.

The experience also showed the value of getting advice to identify good providers before we actually need them.

And I am certainly guilty of having had to relearn the lesson of not putting too much trust in a pretty face and a pleasant manner. Every male learns that lesson at a young age, but it seems to be one of those lessons we have difficulty absorbing. Such is the burden of being born male.

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Sad to say, we’re all going to have to succumb to the siren song of modernity, like it or not. We bought a new ‘smart’ TV recently. It’s bigger and bolder than the old one, which we gave away to a younger relative. There are several things I hate about it and a couple of things I like but the bottom line is that this is what’s on offer now so suck it up, buttercup.

I’m dreading the prospect of buying a new car, which is going to happen sometime this year. As with the TV, it will certainly have numerous annoying ‘smart’ features. If fortune smiles upon me, it may also have one or two useful features.

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I can’t believe the younger relative accepted an ‘old’ TV. On the other hand, beggars can’t be choosers.

I was bummed when my plasma TV died in 2021. Had it for 10 years. Held on for dear life, past its expiration date. I was able to repair it in 2015. I called the same repairman in 2021 and he said it’s impossible to find replacement parts for plasma screens.

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Any vehicle built after the 1975 model year, and many built after the 1969 model year, are trouble.

Right now we are about 30 years past when OBD2 became the diagnostic standard. So anything built just before then may require diagnostic tools that current mechanics don’t have access to.

If the vehicle was built before 1969, you’re pretty much free to do what you want from an emissions point of view. If you keep it, original, you can teach yourself all you need to know about the carburetor and the distributor. Those are basically the only things that go wrong with vintage cars relative to modern cars. Or, you can just restomod it and Install a modern electronic, ignition and fuel injection

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I’m now driving a 2014 Suburban. I intend to drive it into the ground. (I’ll hit 250k miles in the next couple months.) Geek that I am, I’m comfortable with modern diagnostics, and have the light-duty tools for it. Keeps me from getting scammed, and keeps my regular shop on their toes. (I pre-diagnose to narrow things down.)

The mid-teens were just before the advent of big touchscreens: I don’t have one. I’m not the only one I know who hates them, so I hope they are a fad that will be gone by the time my truck dies.

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Funny enough, I keep a 30y old Honda around for a similar reason - which has just one problem: it would crank but not start in conditions of high humidity. My guess it that it’s an electrical issue, but I don’t have time (or want to pay for someone) to go and find the source. I’d like to hand the car off to someone who wants to develop their skills.

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Check crankshaft position sensor wiring connectors for corrosion or plating delamination. Clean and slightly bend or twist pins for better contact.

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Agreed, once it’s past the point of needing emissions testing, there’s a ton of parts available, especially for GMC & Ford.
Personally, I’m a huge fan of TBI fuel delivery systems, they’re nearly as efficient as port injection, and there’s plenty of small manufacturers providing these aftermarket.
Engine management (timing, A/F ratio, shifting electronic transmissions, etc.) are also available.
I look at all vehicles as platforms these days. Modern platforms suck in all the worst ways. The sweet spot was late 80’s to early 00’s IMO.

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They had just gotten computers to the point of recapturing some of the horsepower lost by the emissions requirements of the 1970s. So that made them driveable when new.

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In the mid oo’s through mid teens we started getting all sorts of absurdities to get vanishingly small when-new emissions and economy improvements even though the changes cost far more than any benefit and, upon predicted failure, would almost instantly more than undo the purported benefit:

low viscosity oils;
cylinder deactivation;
gasoline direct injection;
continuously variable transmissions.

Anything else?

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When I compare the driving experience in my old truck versus the modern vehicles I rent on trips, there is only one feature on the modern vehicle which seems to me to be a worthwhile improvement – audible back-up proximity sensors. Everything else is merely needless complexity – and often a distraction from safe driving.

All those modern extras remind me of a conversation in a different context about the specifications of a new piece of major equipment. An engineer pointed at the plans and said – every extra feature we put onto that machine is something that can break down … and probably will fail at the worst possible time.

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Once upon a time I climbed over and under my “toy” cars to tune them. Right after I got married we needed a second car, so I flew out to Sacramento on a Red Eye Express and bought a CHP cruiser at auction and drove it home. That monster lasted me about 6 years. Whenever I drove down the highway on the way to Peoria, everyone thought I was an. unmarked cruiser ( :grinning:). Worked on that puppy too until it needed machine shop work on the heads.

These days I’m too old, arthritic, and TTTT just plain lazy to do anything like that, Plus my oldest car is a ‘16 Vette and there’s no way I can do anything much without an engine analyzer. Guess that’s sort of the modern day equivalent of feeler gauges,

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I always wanted a used cop car, like Jake & Elwood had in The Blues Brothers: a Mt. Prospect police car. Cop motor, cop suspension, cop shocks, runs good on regular gas.

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It was a pretty amazing car. Plain brown wrapper (literally), with a 440 MOPAR engine, nice exhaust system, separate oil cooler, A/C cut-out when running fast, pursuit radials. And on the visor was a placard of calibrated speeds for the speedo (up to 150 MPH). But then drum brakes and bench seat! So it went fast, cornered well, but sucked at stopping and didn’t hold you well when cornering.

Story: I am driving home from drill in Peoria on Sunday afternoon, mid-summer. I am tired. I am wearing a flight suit. So, because I’m not really up for scanning for cops, I’m driving at 55, listening to music. I slowly become aware that I haven’t seen a car for miles. So I glance in the rear view - and there’s a double column of cars, maybe 15 aside deep, ALL pacing me at 55. They were all convinced I was a trooper. I decided to give them a break and went off at the next off-ramp - and it was like the start of the Indy. They were all well past the speed limit when I wasn’t even halfway up the ramp.

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