other dog

Yeah, it's bad. Frame is cracked too.

I was just looking for patch panels. You can get the floor panels, door panels, fenders, but I didn't see any for the front where the cab mounts are. I'll know more when I go look tomorrow, I hope it's a repairable situation.

Well, the guy at the garage just called. He wanted me to come over and look at the truck before he went any further, so I knew it had to be bad. They close at 5, so i'll go in the morning. But he said he found more rust, around the body and cab mounts. So I said I guess i'll have to put cab mounts on it, i've done it before. But he said no, there's nothing there- except more rust. I didn't see it, he didn't see it until he got to working on it. So now I feel horrible- again. Thought I was onto something here, but now I don't know. I hope it's repairable, without trying to find another cab for it, which may be unpossible. I might have just thrown away a pile of money.

If they fix everything I'm looking at about $600 in parts and about $800 labor. I was going to "slap a patch" on the floorboards myself and put self tapping sheet metal screws in it, if I could find anywhere solid enough to screw them into. That would probably work, but then I decided to go ahead and do it right, or more righter anyway, so I ordered the repair panels for both sides. I'll take it across 460 to the FLM shop and get somebody to weld them in for me when I get them. Then I'll just take it back over to the garage and they'll put an inspection sticker on it.

I picked her up and put her in the cart, but Zina made me put her back.

...and I don't think the owner was trying to "put one over on me" at all, I think he's a straight up guy. Unlike the kid I bought the Dodge from, I think he saw me coming. I doubt that Dodge just started doing that, I think he knew it, but he never mentioned it, and that's why he wanted to get rid of it. But Ford guy said he would put the new battery in, before I even asked him to, and he told me about the power steering leak and that he didn't use the rear gas tank because it leaked when you filled it all the way up. He had never even looked into what was leaking he said, he just never used it. So here's a girl in a shopping cart - He just added fluid to the power steering periodically, just like I was intending to do. It wasn't like it was pouring fluid out, it was pretty much just a drip. I didn't know it wouldn't pass inspection like that. I didn't know the rusted floor wouldn't pass either, he had floor mats, or an old mud flap or something over it.

I hope it does me well, I always heard that they were good engines. I'm thinking that the way my luck goes though I'll put all these new parts on it and it'll drive like a new one and the engine will come apart on the way home. It's showing 34,000 miles but the odometer doesn't work, so I hope it's 134,000 instead of 2 or 334,000.

I was driving along a back road minding my own business a few weeks ago when I spotted a Ford F150 sitting in a yard with a "for sale" sign in the windshield. I've been wanting a pickup for a while, but I thought back to the last time I saw a pickup for sale by the road... It was a nice looking short bed 4wd Dodge, so I went back to take a closer look. Everybody has a short bed square body Chevrolet pickup, but nobody has a Dodge. So I ended up buying that Dodge, paid way too much for it, but I had big plans for it- I was going to get it painted, put some mud tires on it, it would be sharp, or so I thought. Actually all it ended up being was a money pit, never could get it running like it was supposed to. It ran great when it ran, but it would just die periodically, and you never knew when it was going to quit. Might run 2 weeks without a hitch, or it might start acting up before I got out of the driveway. So after spending a small fortune on it and replacing everything I could think of, and taking it to every garage and shop from Appomattox to Concord to Gladys and having them do everything they could think of, with the same results, I got tired of throwing money away on it and sold it- for a lot less than I paid for it. So when I saw this Ford I kept right on riding, never even slowed down. But as I was riding along in Rustburg one day I thought i'd go take a look at it, it was only a mile or so down to it after you turned by the store on the corner. I must have looked too long, because Zina from Gladys got out of the car and came over to look too. What had caught my attention was the price- $1,800. It was the first time i'd seen what appeared to be a reasonably priced pickup for a long time. The owner was there and he came over to start it for me, but it wouldn't start. The right front tire was low too- reminded me of the old Dodge! Anyway, he said he would put a new battery in it if I wanted to come back and drive it. He called the next day and said he put a brand new battery in it so I went back to Rustburg and took it for a test drive. It ran ok except it idled a bit fast, but it had about a quarter turn of play in the steering wheel. I got Zina from Gladys to turn the wheel while I looked under the front end and the center drag link was obviously loose, it had a lot of play in it. And the tires were all low, that right front only had 20 lbs. in it. And a U-joint was "ticking" when you would go from 1st. to reverse, and I found the rear joint was bad when I would hit it with my hands. So here's an actual photo of me and Pammeler Anderson that was taken the last time I was in sunny Florida, to relieve the boredom of a long post. But the truck had nice looking tires on it, so I bought it. The guy I bought it from said he only used it for hunting, he probably didn't even notice the play in the steering. I took it straight to a garage in Concord and told them to go over it with a fine tooth comb, and evidently they did. It needs all these items- I was just going to patch the rust holes in the floorboard, but I went ahead and ordered patch panels yesterday. It has the 300 6 cylinder in it and a 4 speed, and even after the parts and work I still have less in it than I paid for that POS Dodge.

I noticed that they said Colin Powell died from complications due to covid. The man was 84 years old, and he also had multiple myeloma. Multiple myeloma is what my wife died from in 2005. It's a cancer of the blood, it gets in the bone marrow, it's in the lukemia family, it pretty much destroys the immune system, and there is no cure. Yet he died from complications due to covid.

I would have taken pictures of half-nekkid wimmens, but there were none to be seen- not one.

Here you go Vlad, in case you didn't see on "Pictures of the Week". That post kind of got hi-jacked.

yes, I talked to him. He was zipping around on his golf cart all weekend!

I put all the pictures from the Tri-State ATHS Show in Clearbrook on Flickr, finally, so here's the link- Just click on the picture.

I finally made it back home, we left Winchester and drove straight to "sunny Florida" (the late great Hatcity). We got home yesterday, but had to go to a funeral in Appomattox yesterday, so I'm just now looking at the truck show pictures from Winchester. More to come.

So here's the latest on the BMT Facebook page- And then this🤣

I was just on the BMT Facebook page and saw this- This is the asshat that's going to be removing "inactive members". I'm sure it's legit, since it was on Facebook, so bye everybody.

Nice looking Brockway.

Fuzzy Buzzard and Farmer52 Sorry, I took these with my phone and I don't know how to resize them.

I saw this at the Tri-State Antique Truck Show today. Not a lot of trucks there yet, most will be rolling in tomorrow. I'll have more pictures later.

This is a pretty good little show in Colfax, N.C, which is right off of I-40 between Greensboro and Winston Salem. It's about the last show of the year around these parts. Always a good time, last year we forgot about it- we were getting ready to go and realized the date was a week previous, so we missed it. The year before that Zina from Gladys got bit by a dog, the year before that we bought some good wine at the farmer's market there. And there's always lots of good trucks there!

We're going to the truck show in Winchester this weekend, so I can finally post pictures of something besides girls in cars and planes and boats and trains.

...or Clearbrook,Va. actually, but I always just say Winchester because nobody's heard of Clearbrook anyway, and it's only about a quarter of an inch north of Winchester...on the map. Anybody else going? We're driving up Thursday, so we'll be there Friday, and probably again Saturday morning because there's always some late arrivals that don't get there until Saturday.

Looks like a good show with good weather and a good turn out. Little too far for me to travel, but I hope he did well.