I had negotiated a price of what I thought was a great deal for a little civic hatchback which I intended to fix up as a project to give me something to do in what little free time I had. The civic was located in Sacramento, Ca.
Well after making arrangements, I had planned on leaving right after my shift at work, which just so happened to be a grave yard shift. In this trip, I was lucky enough to have my co-pilot available to join me for the road trip. So right after work, we loaded up the Bronco (which I like to call big red} with some snacks, some tools, and a jack. Then we headed to U-haul to pick up a car trailer which was reserved the previous day. By time all this fun had taken place we hit the road heading for Cali at approximately 9:30. I kept telling my co-pilot that I felt something bad about the trip and I didn’t know way it was, so we just continued on. The drive was fairly uneventful except for the occasional run in with truck drivers that should have showered more than the required once per life time limit. As I was driving through the various mountain passes, I started to feel the previous 18 hours of being awake. My co-pilot offered to take the wheel for a while so I could nap. This didn’t work out to well because they had never pulled a trailer and they had never driven the bronco before this day. My rest only lasted a few minutes before I found myself back behind the wheel for the remainder of the drive to Cali.
Everything was going fairly problem free, had the brake light come on a few times, but nothing major.
Then as we made it to Fresno, we stopped off to find some food, re-fuel and to use the bathroom. I even managed to win $50 off of one quarter in the slot machine at gas station we had stopped at. After a brief stop, we went out to continue on our journey. This is when the real problems started. As I attempted to drive big red, it would not move. At first I thought it might have been a problem with the trailer brakes so I unhooked the trailer and tried again. Nothing…….It was now a little after 4pm and we were stuck in Fresno.
I hooked the trailer back up and forced the truck to move. I was able to move the truck to a location in back of the gas station and contemplated my options. I called the guy I was planning to meet to inform him of the situation just in case I needed him to send out some help. Luckily for our sake, I decided to load up my tool box and my big jack because after a few checks I realized the rear brakes had seized. With little sleep and daylight began to dwindle, I tore apart the rear drum brake and somehow managed to temporarily unseized it.
Now that the truck moved again we hopped in the truck to continue our journey to Sacramento. Once again, we had a fairly uneventful trip, I was getting tired and it was getting late. As we hit Sacramento, it was now about 8:30pm and the directions the guy gave us only got us lost. When we pulled off the highway to find the guys number, once again the brakes began to cause problems. Since I was so close to the destination and because I didn’t want to be stranded on the side of the road in some strange place in Sacramento, I forced the truck to keep going.
When we reached the destination, there was smoke coming out from underneath the rear wheel wells of the truck. I again pulled the tires off to see what I could do to resolve the problem and when I did, the brake rotors were literally glowing red. I think if we would have pushed it anymore, the truck would have caught on fire.
Anyways, so with this problem and the lack of sleep I attempted to complete a transaction on the civic we had driven so far to find. I asked all the important questions, do you have a title? Has it been in any accidents? Does it have a catalytic converter? Does it have a complete interior? Does everything work in the car? To all these questions I got the answer, yes. He even proceeded to tell me that the car was 95% finished and only needed 3 plugs connected in order to get the car to run correctly. With this, and with my brain not working to the best of its ability, I closed the deal. I should have figured something was up when we had to push the car onto the trailer and he made the comment that he had to lock the car up and then for some reason he climbed out the back hatch. For my defense, it was very dark outside and I was really more concerned about making it back to Utah without dying. After leaving his house, we stopped off at a gas station to get some mountain dew and a flashlight. We also used that car cover we had to cover up the car for the trip.
Anyway we loaded up the car and headed toward Reno where we had made a reservation prior to the trip. It was a long trip through the winding canyons pulling a car, on some of the crappiest roads I have ever seen in my life. We did eventually end up in Reno around 1:30am. We pulled the truck into the parking garage; made sure everything was locked up and headed to the room. When I reached the room, I had been awake over 36hours strait. I fell asleep the second my head hit the pillow, and then 2 seconds later the alarm went off for us to get ready to leave. It had been in actuality 7 hours, but I have never slept so sound in my life and had it seem like I had never slept in the first place.
However since we were up, we decided to wander around the hotel for a little bit before we headed for home. When we go to the truck and car I noticed my key wouldn’t unlock the door and it appeared that someone had tampered with the truck. I do not know if someone did try to break in to the truck but it sure seemed like it. Once we were able to open the truck, we began our trip home. We also made a trip to the local auto parts store to find replacement brake parts, but I decided to just save them in case we had problems further down the road.
The remainder of the trip again was pretty uneventful, and we finally made it to my house at about 11:00pm. This is when we started to realized there were more things wrong with the car then we were told. However due to the time, we unloaded the car, took the trailer back to U-haul and dropped it off. The car then sat for 3 days due to my need to sleep and work. When I was finally able to find the time to look over the car, that is when I realized the car had almost no interior and had more problems then I want to list. The engine didn’t start, the clutch didn’t work, that was bad enough until I called to find out about getting a new Utah title and them letting me know I couldn’t get a new title without a California title. So I called California DMV only to find out that they would not issue a title because the car had been identified as a “gross polluter” and I would need to take the car to California to get an inspection on emissions and safety. No matter how many times I told them the car was not in California, they just didn’t care. Every time I called the DMV, they gave me another story on what I needed to do to get the vehicle’s title. What a hassle. To cut a long story a little short, I was able to finally get a title through the state of UT by claiming the vehicle as an abandoned vehicle. It was a long process but it was still easier then dealing with the guy that sold me the car and the state of California.
From that time, I have spent way too much time trying to get the car in a condition to sell. Three engines, multiple hours of striping and replacing the complete interior later the car was to a state that I was able to sell it. This sale took place on Friday and I am more than happy to see that thing gone. I was able to sell it for more then I paid for it, but I don’t think I would have ever been able to recover the amount of time I wasted on that car. This was a very long story, but I actually left out a ton of the details to keep it this long. The moral of the story, if you’re going to buy a car, make sure you don’t do it without sleeping first.
Here are a few pics of the rebuild process. I could have put them in order but I didn’t want to.
Finally finished (well as finished as I am doing)
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