The Resurrection of Old Ugly - The List

After acquiring our 1978 Chevy C30 1 ton truck, I thought it would be a good idea to take stock of the thing by making a list of everything I could find that was wrong with it. So, here goes:

1. It's ugly.

2. It's old.

3. It's broken.

I think that about covers it, but just for my own sake, I guess I'll expand a little on the third one:

The clutch doesn't work right.

The driver and passenger front doors don't latch well.

There's a pretty serious leak dripping off the front of the transmission.

The hood is kinked.

The left front fender is bashed in.

Both dually fenders are broken.

The speedometer doesn't work.

Neither does the tach.

The brake lights don't come on, but the flashers work, and so do the turn signals, so its not the bulbs.

The front seat upholstery is worn out, and the carpeting is house floor carpet.

The right mirror is missing, and it was torn out of the door at some point, probably when someone took out the dually fender.

The right side tail pipe is about to fall off.

The trim is mostly bent up, and what isn't bent is missing.

A few of the marker lights are burned out.

It squeaks when you turn the wheel or hit the brake.

The motor vibrates pretty bad when you rev it up.

The fan noise is really loud.

That's about all I can tell for now. I guess I should look at the bright side; it does start and move under its own power - for now.

Goodbye ugly bike, hello ugly truck.

The other day we came across an ad on craigslist from someone looking to trade their dually, four door Chevy truck for a motorcycle that could make it from the the Northwest to Virginia. Shana and I had been looking for a towing truck for as long as either of us could remember, and as it just so happened, we had a running bike in the garage, so on a whim one night we wrote to the mystery address asking for pics and offering up the Honda VT500 Ascot Shana and I had received in exchange for her watching a vengeful vietnamese potbellied pig.

Long story short, a few days later, this giant, hideous, green Chevy C30 1 ton dually crew cab truck comes whoosing down our road and stops in front of our house.

The very first thing I noticed upon greeting our perspective acquisition was a horrible burning smell that recognized, but couldn't quite put my finger on. I ask the guy if he knows what the smell is, and of course he has no idea, but he assures me it's made that smell ever since he got it. Oh, great, it should be fine then.

We look it over... It's rough - very rough rough actually. The hood is bent in the middle as if it's meant to be opened accordion style. The battery has a knife switch wired in. The cab has household interior carpeting. The seat cushion has more holes than fabric. At some point someone managed to tear off the passenger side camper mirror and tear a hole in the right side fiberglass dually fender. I wonder what the other car looked like... The left side dually fender looks good from the front, but wait, no, someone must have backed into something with it because it had a big tear across the back.

None of these are problems though, we're assured, because the industrious fellow has reinforced the hood with bits of scrap wood, fixed the electrical problem that necessitated the knife switch by... realizing that the doors don't stay closed and checking every time he gets out of the truck to make sure that he pushes them back in and the interior light goes off, sanding through the paint on the best surface of the fiberglass fenders to make 'repairs,' and installing a CD player with the speakers on the floor beneath the driver's and passenger's feet - the music from which can distract you from the, shall we say, challenges of the driving experience.

But somehow, through a process that defies logic (and my better judgement), I fall in love. This truck, despite all its flaws, fits like the last border piece of a puzzle - where you know exactly how high and wide the puzzle will end up being even though you still have a mountain of pieces left to sort through. During the test drive, it doesn't matter that the clutch slips so bad the manual transmission feels for all the world like it has a torque converter (that's what the smell was, burning clutch) and that the engine spins hopelessly faster than the rest of the driveline in third gear, or that the engine vibrates horribly, or that the speedometer and tachometer don't work, or that I know I'll be luckly to get 10 miles per gallon... All this is tuned out because somehow, this truck fits into this vague notion I have of automotive bliss in a way that a sun faded, square headlighted, dirt tracker inspired 1983 Honda Ascot never had. By the time I get back from the test drive, I know we've got to have this truck.

Through ignorance, and impossible optimism, I had somehow imagined that I could fit this whole exchange into a half hour at the beginning of a very packed day. That didn't turn out to be the case, and I got back from the test drive to discover that I was late for a video shoot. I rushed the poor tradee through a crash course in Honda Ascotism. First, I asked how long he'd been endorsed. Oh, he hadn't quite gotten around to that just yet. Had he brought a helmet? Not as such... Had he ridden a motorcycle? Once... a few years ago. So... riding to Virginia on a bike he knew nothing about should be a piece of cake, right?

Not my problem. I showed him where the throttle, brakes, clutch and shifter were. ...and here's a pile of spare parts, like the foot pegs and the muffler. Oh, and you'll want to track down a replacement headlight because this one's cracked... and... let's see... it's illegal because it's too loud. Alright, see you later, have fun. With that I was off to go film an overgrown chain saw on tank tracks (Barreto track trencher). Shana was the paper work expert, so I left him (and his wife and two kids in a second car) in her capable hands...

Goodbye ugly bike. Hello ugly truck.