Revamping Vehicles

Gosh, but I'm getting forgetful about a lot of stuff lately. Can't remember tonight now if I mentioned that daughter Mandy is using her brother's little S-10 pickup truck now.

Her car -the lovely (NOT) Jetta is on the fritz -has been for oh, at least a month of better now. (Supposedly, another vehicle is in the works but things change, vehicle-wise, around here sometimes it seems at the drop of a hat, so right now, I'm not entirely sure what the current status is of the Jetta.

But anyway, in order for Mandy to get to and from her part-time job -only about five miles from the house but still, that's a LONG walk -she has been using her brother's pick-up truck. Well, one of two pickup trucks he has, that is but this one is the newer of the two.

Saying that this truck is the newer of the two he has is a bit of a joke too as the S-10 is a mid-to-late 1990s vehicle whereas his other truck is a 1971 Chevy pickup. (He got the older truck a year ago in late July -flew out to Nevada to his Dad's and got this truck from him, then drove it back home to PA.

But anyway, the 1971 model is his "baby." Rebuilt, or restored -chose your word there I guess -by his dad and painted a bright, bright yellow, when Mandy had need of a vehicle to get to and from work, the black S-10 with the snazzy design (hand-painted on the doors by my artistic son -I'll have to take a pic of that someday and post it here -quite the unit, it is) Clate figured it would be easier for Mandy to handle what running around she needs to do that the yellow truck would be.

That's only partially true though as it seems both of these puppies are hard as all get out to steer. And the Black truck -he had one of those goofy knobs and the steering wheel and it bothered Mandy so much, she removed said knob herself.

Why? Well, in her opinion, trying to drive that pick-up with that knob on there made her feel, so she remarked to me, like she was driving something that had industrial hand wheels on it!

To which I said "Say what?" Yeah, I heard her right as she went on and on about the damned knob always getting in her way, making the steering wheel feel really huge and klunky and all in all, just too hard to deal with.

But to just remove the knob? I was pretty surprised that she would or could do that. But then, what the heck do I know from stuff like that anyway.

I'm just glad that it was something on this truck -the little s-10 -that she was using and that she did her own revamp on because if she had been trying to use the Yellow truck and had changed one iota of anything on it while borrowing that one from her brother, my daughter, little Mandy, might not still be with us today.

Yep! Clate does get pretty fussy about anyone touching, doing anything to his old yellow truck -unless it is him monkeying around.

What is it about guys and pickups and always having to be piddling around, changing things on them anyway?

Shortly after he got home with the Yellow truck, he had to do this jacking up of the frame, then lowering it or some such so that the truck would sit lower to the ground. Only problem there was that he got it so low that something on the front end was rubbing something else and he couldn't even drive it after messing around with that bit!

Now how much sense does that make anyway?

Why, I tell you! (No, I'm not gonna actually tell you anything there by saying that. That's just a line that a lady Clate used to work at when he was a cook/dishwasher at the local truckstop near here and she used to say that about anything she thought was just a bit off kilter you see.) And that is about how I feel about all these revampings that the son -and the son-in-law too -feel they have to do to most of the vehicles -things that don't really improve or change the runability of the vehicle but rather the appearance more than anything.

What's the point? That's what I think about there.

So yes -I tell you! Makes no sense whatsover in my opinion! Maybe they do those things just to confuse the living daylights out of me!