I let me son drive us to the Back to the 50's show/swap meet up in St Paul. He's never driven in a major city before and he was pretty excited to try. He did fine, but without me there for directions I think he would have been lost. You know when you are going down a freeway in a major city and it will split, but there are also exits coming up. He was getting confused because he would pass one sign that said it was the same freeway in that lane, but also the lane for another freeway coming up, then again with that lane designated as another highway that would be exiting soon. Anyway, I thought it was good experience for a kid that has hardly driven outside our pop. 3500 town on the prairie.
At the swap meet we found a set of wheels and tires he liked. The wheels just need to be cleaned up a bit and new lug nuts because I don't think his current ones will work. The tires are like new and the complete set we got for $170. Plus now we don't have the cost of remounting, which around here runs about $15-20 per tire.
One area of the swap meet was for the car corral, and we walked through that. A little back story. We were not exactly thrilled with his impulsive buy into this truck. The main reason I agreed to let him go through with it was that it was super cheap, would give him some responsibility and the experience of having something that was going to need some attention to keep on the road. (the gas tank was unexpected, but oh well) He really didn't need his own ride yet.
So here we are walking through the used car section at the swap meet. One of the first to catch his eye was a 67 mustang coupe for $6000. Pretty nice shape with an inline 6. Not a bad car at all but way past his budget. A little further down was a very nice 72 Skylark. Brand new 350 engine, excellent original interior, paint was in pretty good shape, just a bit faded, very straight sheetmetal, new tires, wheels exactly like the ones on my C-10, a little rust behind the doors, but solid elsewhere, and the guy was asking $3850. I'm guessing it would sell somewhere between 3000-3500. My son really loved the car and I'm thinking this would be one he could afford (with my help) and he would want to keep forever.
Instead, I told him his realistic options. First he needs to keep working and save as much as he can. He needs to drive the wheels off his truck and get as much out of it as possible. Keep fixing the little things, clean it up, maintain it, but not to throw money at it because it's just not worth it. Maybe in a year or 2 he'll have enough saved up where he'll be able to come to a swap meet like this and buy his future money pit.
It really was a sweet ride though. To be perfectly honest, if I did not have my Jimmy project right now and if I had already sold off my 2wd blazer project parts pile, I might have driven this home myself. It's one of those cars that aint perfect but nice enough that you would want to drive it all the time and not have to worry about the paint. With some preservation in the rust areas you could slow it down and hold off one the body work and repaint for years and just enjoy the car until you can afford the rebuild.
Anyway, we talked about his sisters beater tempo and the fact that it was cheap to start with, cost us several hundred in repairs and maintenance, but the kids have all been driving it around for almost 3 years now with no car payments, liability insurance and its been pretty reliable. We're hoping for the same from his little S-10.
And as for S-10 repairs, one of the next things to do is find out where the freon is leaking because it lost its charge again and the radio has one working speaker out of 4. I practically begged him to buy a decent used radio at the swap meet. One guy had a couple dozen good used ones for $10 each and there were speakers all over the place cheap. Oh well, we'll do it the hard way.