End of an Era, For Real

It really helps to have friends with tools. My friend Ryan is a mechanic, and he has a mobile mechanic service. Over several days, he stopped by to try to fix the blue van. He finally got it to start by hot wiring it, and drove it over to his friend who was a wiring expert. When a mechanic is talking about wiring being bad, or possibly the starter, you see dollar signs flash before your eyes.

But Mo, the wiring expert, said that Ryan had already fixed it by replacing the relay, and there was just a wire that needed to be tightened. So he tightened it, charged me nothing, and Ryan called to say it was fixed. Yea!

The best part was, he only charged me $135: two hours of labor, and $15 for parts. Ryan told me to get rid of it fast, before something else broke. So I texted the family that wanted it, and they came to get it. I was so happy to get that van out of my hands and into theirs!

The money from the van sale went towards getting Peter to NY. I was hoping to use the money to get Peter's car fixed, but oh well. There's not much left.

Funny thing is: Ryan and Gabe had been telling me to not pump the gas to start the van because it was fuel injected. I told them that's the only way to start it. Turns out, after Ryan replaced the relay to that fuel pump, you can now start it just by turning the key. It was amazing. You turn the key and it jumps to life! I've never seen anything like that before. So the van was actually in better condition when I gave it to the new owners (who by the way are very excited to have it!).

It was kind of sad to see it go, but happy too. Their kids and my kids were crawling all over it. My kids were trying to "rescue" things like the bag with owners manuals, the fire extinguisher, and the spare tire. I kept trying to tell them that those things stay with the vehicle. My kids were all of the sudden very sentimentally attached to a van they had only ridden in a few times, and the buyers' kids were ecstatic. The oldest especially, was happy to get his own seat and not be squished between car seats any more. So there were a lot of happy people. I'm just glad it was easy to fix and went to a good home that will love it and care for it. I'm not as attached to vehicles as Dad is, but I'm still glad that there was a happy ending for it.

P.S. I did "rescue" the license plates and delivered them into Dad's hands the next day.