The Motor In The Mirror

We’ve all heard it. “You are what you drive.”

Well, I’m here to tell you it’s true but probably not in the way most people process that statement.

Even though I have two vehicles, a car and a truck (some would say the car is my gay side, the truck is my masculine side – I don’t know, I just drive them), it’s my truck that oddly mirrors my life. It’s not so much as how it looks or anything, it’s what it’s been through during my ownership of it.

When we first got my truck, we thought we had gotten a great deal on a great looking and running truck. Wrong. On the outside and inside, everything looked fine. The body and interior were great for a truck as old as it was and with as many miles as it had. It was the engine bay that was the disaster area. Basically, the heart and soul of the truck were in severe disrepair. This was me in junior high. I may have appeared to be okay on the outside and maybe even if you got to know me, but my mind was in torment. The engine in the truck, the original engine, would barely run. It was clogged with grease and gunk that had built up inside of it over the years. It didn’t like to start and when it finally did it had to idle for five minutes before anyone could drive it (or else it died on the spot). Plus, the extra two barrels on the carburetor never worked (so no awesome, sucking-the-entire-universe-into-engine roar when I floored it) and it was clear the engine was burning oil. The engine was just crap.

So the old 305 got the boot and a new crate 350 found its way into the truck. This is my high school years. I basically started a new life and began developing as an adult, opening up some, and really learning about life. With the new, slightly larger engine plus a new carb, intake manifold and a few other assorted things that needed replacing, the truck now hauled ass and let out an evil, grin-inducing scream when it did so. Gone was the rough idle of the old engine that shook the entire truck. The hard starts and long warm-up periods. The black smoke when (and if) it cranked. It was an entirely new animal. But, it didn’t go without its share of gremlins. There was a bad vibration around 50-60 mph that caused us to go through two flex plates, one torque converter, and countless hours laying on our backs under the truck bolting and unbolting the damn transmission from the engine (I hated doing that). It ended up being a shot transmission mount, an incredibly easy and cheap fix compared to all we had done. The intake manifold developed a small crack that let coolant sep out (JB Weld fixed that). The power steering system leaked (and continues to). We had problems getting the timing right (thank you Chevy for making it a pain in the ass to adjust the timing by putting the disturber at the back of the engine!). The carb’s A/F mixture never has been correct (it still runs rich – you’ll know it too if you walk by either exhaust pipe while it’s running). Problems aside, the truck gained a new lease on life and showed a personality it never had before. But, it still had a few small things that needed to be fixed.

The seat cover, which I presume to be the original, had large tears on the driver’s side. So we took the old cover off, fixed the seat cushion and frame (over 20 years of some fat ass sitting on it obviously does a lot of damage), and replaced the cover with a new, color-matching vinyl one. This is me now – further fine-tuning my life, opening up even more to myself & others, still learning about life & myself, meeting new people, and experiencing new things. The truck finally had an alignment done on it. The windshield had to be replaced after some giant object left the old one a little battered and bruised. Hood pin cables were added for convenience and to prevent losing the pins or someone stealing them. But the major thing that the truck needed was a new exhaust system. The old one was the single most restrictive thing on the truck. It was holding the engine back from running how it really could. It still had the 2-ton cast iron manifolds on it and a horribly thrown together 2-1-2 exhaust system that had holes all in it (and didn’t sound very good). So headers, several different pipes and two mufflers arrived at our house over the course of about a week via FedEx (one carrier couldn’t find our house despite the first carrier finding it with no problems and the multiple times we gave the other directions). The new true-dual exhaust system really opened the engine up. You can hear and feel the difference. (You’ll have to figure out what all this exhaust talk represents on your own – it’s pretty obvious. I just wish the problems and issues that come along with it had solutions you could order out of a catalog, too.)

The truck still isn’t completely fixed. It never will be. There will always be some new problem that pops up (usually at the most inconvenient time) or an old problem that seems like it can’t be fixed. That’s the reality of owning an old vehicle though. That’s the reality of life.

If you read way into that, good – that was the point. If not, you just suck.