The Van Story

So at the beginning of the year last year, I was driving around town in an old 1988 Lincoln Town Car. It had some issues, not the least of which involved some kind of electrical that constant drained the battery and a power steering fluid leak that was just hopeless. So we decided to unload it ... um, trade it in on something else. I wanted to keep my status as "car payment free," so I put back $2000 to spend on a used vehicle.

It's hard to find a used vehicle for $2000. I figured whatever I got for this might have an issue or two, but I just needed it to run and not require a jump every morning. After some touring around, we ended up a local dealership where we were shown to a minivan that they were charging $4000 for. This was above my price range, but at the same time, we had been looking for a bit, and found that $2000 was definitely not going to get me anything worth driving.

They asked if my old car ran, and I said it did (failing to mention anything about it starting consistently since they didn't ask). In fact, for its final drive to the lot, we had to jump it. They said they'd give $500 for the old car unseen since it ran, making the van $3500 plus the fees and nonsense gave us a total of $3800. I handed over my $2K leaving us with a balance of $1800.

Well, they said that the amount was so low that it wasn't worth the trouble to finance it, so we settled on a gentlemen's agreement of $300 for 6 months. They took my credit card number, and they would just run the card on a certain day for the $300, and we call it good. That's a lot of math, and I do not apologize for it.

Anyway, it all went rather smoothly, and I thought I was good to go. For a couple weeks.

Then, it started having some transmission problems. I'm terrible with cars and stuff, and so when I went perusing for one, I had no idea what to look for or what the warning signs are for "run away as fast as possible." Rather, I'm the sucker born every minute who gets sucked in by the salesman to buy now. I took the van to a transmission person who took one look at the dipstick and declared that I was screwed and needed a new transmission. He described it in more detail than that, but that was the gist of it.

Boom. $1500.

Now, an interesting detail on this whole thing is that somewhere along the way, the car lot failed to put my credit card in their auto pay whatchamacallit, and relied, instead, on someone manually running the card through. That person disappeared, so after they missed two payments that I had budgeted, I called them up and asked about it. They said whoops, and ran the two payments.

Now, having just dropped $1500 for a transmission on a vehicle that I now only owed $1200 on, I decided that since they were supposed to run the payments automatically, I would simply ignore it going forward if they forgot subsequent payments. As a matter of, shall we say, cosmic coincidence, the final payment was scheduled for the expiration month of my credit card, so if they failed to take anything in a timely manner, the card would no longer work.

They never took another payment, so I chalk that up to them basically paying for the transmission. What I owe lingers in the back of my mind, and I'm not sure what will happen when the time comes to trade this van off, which I want to do fairly soon, since it has some other problems.

One of the earlier things I tried when the transmission started acting up was replacing the spark plugs. (it made sense based on the symptoms). Well, I jacked up one of the spark plug holes forcing me to have to rethread it and then put in a rethreading spring deal down there. It's all holding together, but I do not want to have to replace that spark plug. The A/C technically works, but it won't hold any freon due to a leak somewhere that will drain it in only a few days. The left blinker has a short to where the rear light won't flash. And there is something up with the ignition system. I have to turn the key to on, wait about 30 seconds, and then turn it over. If I try to jump the gun, it won't start, and I have to wait longer. I don't really get that.

Oh, and the radio sucks. It is radio only. No cassette, CD, or external audio jack. Basically, I'm stuck with airwaves.

So, I'm ready to get rid of this thing,but before I can do that, I'll need some scratch under me both to be able to afford another car payment as well as accounting for the possibility of that unpaid $1200. The moral of the story here is to make sure when you buy a used car to look under the hood and check everything. If your instincts tell you something is wrong, then walk away.