Let me go back to 2020. January of 2020 to be exact. My truck that I had for the occasional use was my old 1989 Dakota. It needed some work. In short, it had become a little unreliable. I thought that I should look for a used truck that I could drive while I worked on fixing some things on the Dakota. I was looking online and I found it. A 1998 Dodge 2500 Club Cab. It had a 5.9 liter V-8 and a 5-speed manual transmission and four wheel drive. It only had 120,000 miles on it. It was perfect. My wife looked over my shoulder as I sat at the computer. "What cha lookin' at?" she said.

"It's a truck." I replied.

"How much?" my better half asked.

"They're asking $4500" I said.

"Give me the guy's phone number." The next thing I knew, my wife is talking to this guy in eastern Washington. Yeah the guy was getting a lot of calls about the truck. So far nobody wanted to commit.

"Would you take $4000 for it?" my wife is asking.

I pipe up in the background, "I have cash." All of a sudden the guy is very interested. It's already 1PM. "We don't really want to drive over Snoqualmie Pass." I add. The guy hears me. It turns out that he can deliver it. I look at the wife. She looks at me.

"It's perfect." she says. Did I mention that I love this woman.

I say "Tell the guy that I am going to the bank to draw the money out." I go get in the car. It's a 30 minute drive to get to the credit union. Arrangements are made to meet at the Dennys off of the Arlington Exit of I-5. We are buying a 22 year old truck sight unseen. What could possibly go wrong?

... to be continued.

 

Where was I? Oh yeah, Dennys parking lot. It's 10PM in the middle of January of 2020. In January, 10PM qualifies as The Dead of Night. It is very dark. The wife and I are sitting in her 1997 Concord. We are looking up at the sky which is presently filled with a multitude of very large and fluffy snowflakes. Snow in January you ask. Well that's not unusual. After all, we are about 70 miles from the border. To British Columbia. Well around here it is. We are about ten miles from Puget sound. The elevation is maybe 100 feet above sea level. Some winters we don't see any snow. We have some tonight.

"Here they come." My wife says with excitement. Did I mention that my wife likes to buy used cars? Well she does. You see, my wife is from Ohio. Ohio is a great state for cars. A white Dodge truck comes pulling into the parking lot followed by a medium sedan. There was already two inches of snow on the ground. We get out and say hello. I am looking at the truck that we agreed to buy sight unseen. The body is straight. Sure there are a couple of very small dings in the driver's door, but everything else looked great. This thing is perfect. Well for a twenty two year old truck that is. We go into the Dennys and get a table. It takes less than ten minutes to finish the deal. We walk out of the restaurant with a title, a bill of sale and two sets of keys. Oh, and a considerably lighter wallet.

My wife assures me that she can drive our new truck home. I get in the car. She is to follow me home. I get to the edge of the road and wait for the truck to move. It sits there. And sits there. And sits there some more. I drive back over to where she is parked and get out. I open the door of the truck.

"My feet can't reach the pedals."

"Well push the seat forward." I push the seat all the way forward.

My wife looks at me. She is five foot five inches tall. She has driven two different Dodge Dakotas with stick shifts. "My feet still can't reach the pedals." We change vehicles. I drive the Dodge Ram home and she follows me. What could possibly go Wrong?

... to be continued.

 

Ah yes, the short person problem with pedals. I'm 6 foot. So is the GF. My sister is 5 foot, when she stretches. I had a '73 Plymouth Duster back in the 70's. My sister had to scoot forward to push the clutch down far enough to start the car. Invariable, after she drove it, she wouldn't push the seat back and I had trouble getting in the car period.

Fast forward to today. Myself and the GF are the same heights. However, she is all leg. I'm all torso. If she drives my car, she can barely see over the steering wheel and her legs cramp until she moves the seat back. If I drive her car, I can't reach the pedals and the mirror is looking into the back seat.

I'll bet your wife has Welsh ancestry like me.

 

We had the snow the night that we got our "new" truck. I was really glad that we had not gone over the Cascade Mountains. It turns out that the guy who sold us the truck had just beat the snow coming over Snoqualmie Pass. The guy's in-laws just happened to live a few miles from the Dennys where we met. We found out that this '98 Ram had been purchased new by the city of Arlington Washington and been used as a maintenance truck. It was nice to know some of the truck's history and that we were the second owners. My wife was a little disappointed that she couldn't reach the pedals. No, my wife isn't Welsh. My mother-in-law was half Spanish (from Spain) and half Chiricahua Apache. My father-in-law was mostly German-American and part Cherokee Indian. She is just blessed with short legs.

The next morning it had turned out clear and bright. I could get a good look at everything. The body was reasonably straight. A couple of very small door dings and the rear wheel wells looked lick somebody had used some kind of ratchet strap and the edge of the wheel wells had a dent on each side. The 360 V-8 looked clean. Everything had worked when I drove it home. A nice bonus was that it had Dana 60 front and rear axles. The transmission was a NV4500. Well the dash was cracked, but the seller had included a glue-on dash cover. This thing was perfect. I just wanted a nice reliable truck that I would be able to drive occasionally...I drove the truck to town to the grocery store and the post office. Everything seemed to work. Well there was one thing. I went in the house and when I looked outside, I noticed flashing lights. I went to check this out. Somebody had drilled a hole in the knee bolster of the driver's side dash and mounted a toggle switch. I followed the wiring and found that there was a strobe generator mounted under the truck on the frame. The rear light housings had holes drilled in them and each one hade a strobe bulb shoved into the housing. The front light housings had all been replaced. I didn't want to bump that dam switch with my knee and have people think that I was a cop, so I removed everything (wiring from the fuse box, switch, strobe generator and all of the related wiring).

We got busy over the weekend and the truck sat for a few days. The next Saturday I went to go drive the truck again and it wouldn't start. I turned the key and nothing happened. Why me?

It took a little time, but I quickly found that the Neutral start safety switch at the clutch linkage was bad. I could Jumper the switch and the truck would start right up. Unfortunately there was a small amount of fluid coming from the master cylinder for the clutch. Well that wasn't so bad. So there was a small electrical issue. No surprise on a 22 year old truck. Time to make a shopping list:

1- Clutch hydraulic release system.
2- Neutral start switch.
3- A pair of rear light housings (because I didn't want a bunch of water to get up inside them from the holes for the strobe bulbs).

OK. Nothing major to start out with. What could possibly go wrong?

 

I am always very careful about asking that question, as I usually get an answer to it, and I don't particularly like it.

 

Well, 5'5 isn't really all that short. Most of my family is about that height. I wondered where I got 6 foot from. My great grandmother was 4'9. My great grandfather was 6'5. I have a picture of them together. We had it restored for my mother before she passed away. At her funeral, I was looking at it and something caught my eye. I pointed out to my sister that sitting, my grandfathers head was even with my grandmothers head standing.

Your wife's legs can't be TOO short. After all, they reach the ground don't they?

I'll bet you find lots of little custom touches the maintenance people did to your truck to make their jobs easier. It's like the bracket I had on my lift truck that I moved each time our lease changed to new equipment. It held a 3 foot length of wood I used to release bracket catches and keep my fingers away from metal pinch points.

 

We had finally got our "new" truck (a 1998 Dodge 2500). It was 2020. One day in September I knew that I had to go to Seattle for my job. "Why don't I drive the Ram?", I tell myself. So I do (drive the Ram, that is). No problems. It runs like a champ. "How could those idiots at the city let this thing go?" Oh well, their loss is my gain. I decide that I can just use it for a daily driver for a while. The second and third day there were no issues. Then came Thursday. We live out in the country in Northern Snohomish County, Washington. It is about seven miles to get to I-5. I take off and go about four miles until I get to a three way stop. I push the clutch pedal down and it doesn't dis-engage. Well at least there is no traffic this morning. I am trying to think of a good place to pull over. I was going down a hill and there is a Lutheran Church at the bottom. I make it into the parking lot and turn off the ignition. It takes me about 30 miles to get to work. I knew that I couldn't drive it like that. I pop the hood and there isn't anything wrong with the clutch master cylinder. I get under the truck and can't see anything wrong with the slave cylinder. Well fudge. There must be something inside the bell housing. I decide to try and drive it back home. I put it in second gear and push the clutch pedal in. I turn the key. The engine takes off and so does the truck. I manage to slowly make it home. I call in to work with car trouble.

I decide that I have a blown clutch. We already have some money tied up in this thing. Why not fix it. What could possibly go wrong?

... to be continued.

 

I bought my Indy ram sight unseen, The seller was great to answer any questions and send detailed pics of anything i had concerns about. After i received the truck it was better than i expected! There was a under seat sub and an amp to power it that the seller never mentioned. I consider myself extremity lucky because this rarely ever happens. Your truck has 120K so you should have considered it will probably need some maintenance. I think after you get past that you will have a decent truck. You may want to look at the brake line running along the frame(next to the gas tank) to the rear axle they like to rust and burst when trying to come to a stop. Mine did this twice because i didn't replace the whole line. You may want to consider changing the fuel pump also. Since it was owned by the state it probably has more hours on the pump than the mileage would indicate. Just something to consider. I replaced mine around 185K and the commutator on the armature was almost worn completely threw so it didn't have to much time left.

 

Your truck was probably rotated out of service at a certain age. When I was a volunteer police officer, we would go down to the county garage to pick up new vehicles. There would be a line of cars that had been retired from service. I'd look for administrative vehicles (Chief, detectives) as they are just as heavy duty but don't get hammered all day.

I bought a retired winch truck once. It had 42,000 miles. I got the service records with it. It had 3,000 miles on the engine. It was in the truck for 8 years. It was also the third engine in the truck. A lot of the hours on the engine are idling at times.Old fire trucks for instance might only have 20,000 miles but will have spent hours at a time idling to pump water.

 

This had been the fall of 2020. At this point, I realized that I officially had a "Project" on my hands. Sometimes life gets in the way. Other matters cropped up to take up my time and energy. I also don't have a great indoor place to work on this under a roof. Before I knew it, the weather had turned bad and I was reluctant to tackle a major tear down outside in the winter. Fast forward to April of 2021.

My wife had called her mechanic to ask if they could work on our '98 Ram. They asked her if it was a four wheel drive. If I am remembering it right, they quoted het a price of about $1600 to put in a new clutch.

My wife has been known to pinch the odd penny or two. My mother was born on November 10, 1929 (less than two weeks after the stock market crashed and the Great Depression started). My father was born January 17, 1930 ( less than three months after the stock market crashed and the Great Depression started). I grew up in a household where it was unheard of to waste money. My wife's mechanic also told her that they couldn't get started for three weeks. It seems that one of their guys was on vacation and they were a little backed up. Paying almost two grand and having to wait for a month to get it back sounded like a load of baloney. I made an executive decision and told the wife that I would just put the clutch in myself.

I was working full time, but I would just find the time. Things were progressing slowly. I was almost ready to drop the transmission. nothing unexpected had happened to this point. The truck has a NV4500 transmission. This is a nice heavy duty piece of equipment. The outer case on these is made of iron. The transmission extension on this was made of aluminum. The drive lines and the transfer case were already out. The transmission mount sits on a frame cross member which I had removed. There were two bolts that went up through the transmission mount and into a tapped hole in the transmission extension. I put a wrench on the left bolt and it didn't want to move. For the love of Pete, hasn't any one heard of Anti-Seize? So I do the penetration oil soak thing and come back the next day. The left bolt still doesn't want to move. This makes me a little angry so I just pull a little harder on the wrench. Finally the darn thing breaks free and I get it out. I move over to the right side bolt. It is even worse. What would any red blooded male do? Get a cheater bar. I manage to loosen the bolt about an eighth of a turn an the next thing is a loud "Ping". Something goes sailing past my ear. It seems that whoever had installed this years before had stripped the thread tapped into the transmission extension. Now the whole corner of the case had broken off and landed on the ground about five feet away. Well fudge. When I got the transmission separated from the engine, I tipped the transmission forward on the transmission jack and all of the steel ***** from the release bearing came dribbling out onto the ground.

Finally the transmission is out, but I am wondering how I am going to put it all back together with the transmission case broken. What could possibly go wrong.

... to be continued.