When shaking the rust off, don't shake too hard

So as I had mentioned in my last blog post, I have another story to tell about that 1988 Chevy I bought from my grandfather when I was 16. For those of you who may not have read my last post, when I was 16 I bought a 1988 Chevy S-10 from my grandpa thinking that it held all of life’s answers or something.

Source | S10forum.com

 It was a great vehicle for a first car. Standard 5 speed transmission coupled with Chevy small block I-4 engine and a simple bench seat. 

To sum that up, it was great from my perspective because it was clean, good on gas, and made me feel like a “man” because I drove a manual. It made my parents happy because it was low cost to insure, only sat 3 (really only 2 as the stick shift would hit anyone brave enough to sit in the middle), and didn’t go very fast so I was seemingly less likely to get into trouble with it.

Then disaster struck, a relative’s car died and after some pretty intense negotiations, I agreed to help them out by sharing my mom’s car and “loaning” them my truck until they could get another car. I was thinking maybe a week, month tops.

Fast forward a few years, I did finally get my truck back. Only trouble was the condition of the truck when I got it back. It had seen over 100,000 miles while on “loan”. Even bigger problem was that rust had eaten away so much of the body that the poor white Chevy looked like smoked Swiss cheese. Driving like a Flintstone was almost an option as the floor was rusting through too.

Source | zombdrive.com

I had purchased a brand new Ford Ranger well before getting my Chevy back, so to get it back in that shape was especially disheartening. There was nothing I could do with it, the clutch was shot, the body was gone, the transmission was rough, and worst of all I couldn’t afford to insure it let alone repair it.

After accumulating a couple eye sore citations from the city I had to sell the truck for the metal value. Sad state of affairs, as I had paid my grandpa $3k which was a discount and in the end what was left of the truck was $500 worth of steel minus the $200 I had to pay to the city for the eye sore.

I currently have dreams of buying a brand new F-150, so I keep asking myself, what if that truck had been made of military grade aluminum like the new F-150?

And I’m left thinking, well then I probably would have never gotten it back at all…