One thing that you would notice at the Improvisation center Homefront is that we are into cars. Whether its old cars or even regular newer cars that are for basic utility but have certain features that make them unique or attractive in some form, we do fuck with cars. Well while I primarily mess with "old school" cars, the ole lady is pretty much relegated to modern shit. Not so much because she couldn't drive something that is old school but has the features of a modern car but because its just easier at the moment to just put her in a regular car. Of course my philosophy when it comes to buying a regular car is #1: Pick something you really like. #2: Have a list of criteria a car needs to meet before you pull the trigger. #3: Don't buy a car when you need one. First off, #1. We've all bought cars at the spur of the moment because we needed one for any number of reasons. When that happens, we end up with something that we usually regret getting shortly after. You have to pick something that every time you look at it, it makes you smile because its just what you was looking for. #2, you want to have some criteria in mind for the chosen car to meet before you get it. If the prospects don't meet these criteria then you don't buy that car. Doesn't make sense buying a car that isn't going to give you what you want. #3, if you can buy a car when you don't need one, you will be in a more sound mind to not make rash decisions that cause you to buy something you don't want. That brings us to the new addition to the fleet. Since the ole lady has been using the Tracker to do her food delivery hustle, that poor truck has had many miles put on it and its falling into a state of disrepair that will require it to have to be put down for a prolonged amount of time to do the work. It's not quite there yet which is why I decided to start hunting down another vehicle now so we can get that one in the works to hit the street so she can be able to seamlessly move over to that one in order for me to do the work I need to do to the Tracker and have it back up to a state of readiness that will allow it to continue to serve our needs and wants for the foreseeable future. My criteria for a car this time are that it has to be a 4 cyl, no V6 or V8's, when it comes to FWD cars, V6 and V8 setups are more of a pain to work on. Also a 4 cyl will save on fuel, which is my next thing, the car's gotta get somewhere north of 25 mpg on the fuel economy. Next thing is the car can't have beau coup miles. No 200k+ mile cars make the cut. Lastly I wanted something in a hatchback, since like the Tracker, the hatchback coupled with the ability to put the rear seats down, allows the car to be used almost like a truck where you can carry cargo that may stick out of the rear of the car or is otherwise bulky. A secondary bullet point is that it has to be a 2 door, not a requirement but a preference. I hit up facebook marketplace to start the hunt. I found a Kia 4dr hatchback/station wagon that was a 4 cyl, had a good price on it. I figured if I had to I would just take a cash advance out on one of our spare credit cards to get this car and we'd be able to get it paid down pretty fast. Of course by the time we got around to this past Thursday, the car was gone, so back to the hunt. I then found a Hyundai accent 2dr hatchback, 4 cyl, excellent fuel economy, low 100k miles. I contacted the owner, got some info on it, everything sounded good. Since the car was over 2hrs away from us, rather than drive the car back I just rent a 3/4 truck and drag our trailer with to fetch cars like this. There's a few things I wanna do to any car I get before I really put them on the road so hauling them back allows for me to do this without pressing the car into service before I can really go through it. Anyhoo, on Friday morning I contact the owner to check to see if all is still on for the day, it was. We go rent the truck, contact her again, nothing. This bitch didn't even respond. At this point I had the ole lady searching more cars that I had on my saved list for backups while we picked up our trailer. Kept trying to contact the bitch, no luck. We started heading to New Orleans since there were some cars we wanted to check out there. Still kept trying to contact the bitch, no response. At this point I inquired about a car I saw that said it was local to us, about 45 min from the house (which for us isn't really that far). The car had superficial body damage on the right front fender and the front of the door but the guy had a replacement fender and door that came with the car. When I talked to the guy about the car, everything sounded good about it and I was definitely interested in checking it out. Only problem was the car wasn't in the city where the ad said, it was WAY over in the other city where the Hyundai was located, about 2 hrs from our house. The only solace I took from this was the idea that our location at the time of the inquiry was about an hour from the guy so I set up a time to meet him and we went to that city and found a local eatery and had a good BBQ meat salad and BBQ pizza. From there we went to meet the guy. Since everything was in the dark we had to use flashlights but even then what we seen was very satisfactory. The car's a 2007 Scion (Toyota) TC, 4 cyl, 2dr hatchback with 114k miles. After looking over everything, we found that the heat and AC worked, it has a sunroof, stereo works, seats go down, spare tire compartment has these cubbies that go on either side of the tire to hold different shit and a cover goes over that to cover it all up so we can safely contain spare fluids, tools, etc. and not have them visible. Seats/interior are nice and comfortable. The damage was limited to the outer sheet metal, no structural damage. One of the tires needed to be replaced but the rim was still good, the car was on the spare/donut. It ran good and smooth, had decent pickup, didn't run hot, didn't appear to be leaking shit and smoking, all was good. Obviously we grabbed this fucker. We got the spare body parts and loaded everything up and made the drive back to the house. After returning the truck the rest of the work began. One thing that I later discovered that made me even happier was the fact that this variant of 4 cyl engine actually uses a timing chain versus a belt, which means I didn't have to worry about replacing that as I typically do since I don't know what the maintenance was like beforehand. Timing chains rarely go out so that was a definite plus. Even though the battery had a shitload of corrosion on the top, there was another battery in the back that we need to see if its any good, otherwise Walmart has us covered. The hatchback shocks need replacing, no biggie. Of course I'll do shit like change the oil and air filter, inspect the suspension, tires, all that. I immediately started pulling off the fender to replace it. I had to be careful since the front bumper and other objects have clips that attach to the fender to secure them and I don't want to damage anything plastic that will either be hard to replace or will render a large part unusable due to the damage where a retaining clip goes. After a short amount of time I managed to get the fender off all the way. This was gonna be necessary anyway in order for me to get to the door hinge bolts later on. The next go around (since its been raining for 2 days straight) was to go behind a panel and disconnect the wire harness for the door and fish those cables through the body than prop up the door while I pulled the bolts. After removing the door I enlisted the ole lady's help to put the new door on. Even though the new door is a different color, its still dark enough not to contrast too much with the car's black finish (another plus! I like black cars!) After getting the door on and confirming that it lined up with the body, I tested to make sure the electrical shit worked and closed up shop since it was time to get ready to go to the regular job. At least now the new door is in and I can go ahead and put the fender on next and get the rest of the body buttoned back up so I can move on to the other shit that needs to be gone over before putting this car on the road. Soon.....
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