It Started Like This….

Let me start this story like this….and it’s a long story…

Growing up in the mountains of Colorado, my family only had rear wheel drive cars..in fact my first car was a carny yellow Firebird. Quite a few of my friends had 4×4 trucks and would run up the 4 wheel drive roads where I shouldn’t have gone, but I grew up watching the Dukes of Hazard. Ya…I’ll let your imagine run with what I did to that poor car. Anyway, one of my close friends in HS was a year ahead of me in school and I had always envied his trucks.

Fast forward 15 years and my friend Mikey and my wife got together to conspire against me (more on this later). While I was home (in Denver) for a business trip, we ended up going camping over Labor Weekend. Notice the white trailer…ya that was our tent for two days. It wasn’t the most comfortable accommodations but it was dry, and for a last minute camping trip. It worked great. The red truck on the right is Mikey’s truck.

During the trip, I was checking out Mikey’s truck. Now I like the truck, but I could do with out the extra lights and the exhaust stacks. Just not my thing, but he’s a professional truck driver, and that’s what he’s in to. To each their own.

At the time, I was still going to the University of Phoenix working on my Bachelors, this detail becomes important in a moment. A couple of weeks later, Mikey calls me and asks me if I still want a crew cab truck. I said, ya that would be great….but I’m a poor college student that works at a school district, I don’t exactly have a money tree in the back yard. He responds with

“That wasn’t what I asked…”

I said, well in that case…yes, I still want a crew cab pick up. He says ok, I may have found one for you. Ok so now I’m interested…he says, “I’ll call you back in a couple of days”..

If you know me, then you know I can’t stand to have someone say that. I’m the type of person who has my Christmas presents figured out before I get to open them. It’s just my nature. Needless to say, I drive my wife nuts. A few days go by, and Mikey calls me back…tells me he has my truck, check your email. Now I get excited…thinking to myself Mikey is good at scavenging deals…but then I start wondering what it’s going to cost me. I’m also thinking, the wife is going to have my ass for buying a truck.

So I go and check my email…and this is the picture I get…

I notice a few things right off…

1. It’s missing a front axle….

2. It’s missing a transmission….

3. It’s missing a motor….

All of these missing items are generally important for a vehicle to run. I think ok, it can’t be all bad….the body is straight and the paint is good.

So what Mikey has given me is a 1988 F350 Crew Cab that used to be 4 wheel drive and had a 460 CI motor. I start thinking to myself, well I already have an 1989 f250 4 wheel drive that needs lots of body work and the motor has already been rebuilt. I could just swap the drive train over into the crew cab and scrap the body.The only catch was, the new crew cab was a 5 speed and the f250 is an automatic, one the things I really hate about the F250.

Now I have this truck, but it’s in Denver and I’m in Tulsa. My other truck is down, the transmission is shot in it. I still have a few weeks of school left..so I’m out of ideas on how to go get this new truck…

Little did I know that my wife and Mikey’s wife, Jaimi, were a scheming……