[28HopUp]

Over the holidays, a buddy of mine said that his wife's 1st cousin had a truck he wanted to get rid of. He lives about 5 miles from us, so Jack and I met up with him on Saturday. It is a 1993 F250 SuperCrew/long-bed with the 5.8L (351W), automatic tranny, and 2-wheel drive. The truck has 123K miles, and it is definitely a project. It won't idle right and the tranny doesn't downshift.

Jack wanted to find a winter beater he could wrench on, so he and the owner came to an agreement on price - $1.00! Jack followed me home, but we only got a mile away before the patched heater hose let go. We pulled into a neighborhood and let the truck cool off. The only tools we had were the few things the owner left inside the truck, which were a pair of pliers and a flathead screwdriver. We needed both to remove the hose clamps. I had a pocketknife on me, so I shortened the hose and Jack put it back together. The radiator still had some liquid in it ('looked like muddy Gatorade), and we got it home.

Jack and I have been working on it this week, and if the snow doesn't slam us tomorrow we plan to work on Saturday to fix the idle and determine what's up with the transmission. Hopefully he didn't pay too much!