vehicular blues

tooling along in my truck, on the way to work at 230 am , south on 27....

I hear a distinctively odd zhoop noise and all of a sudden the headlights got about half as bright as they should be.....i thought oh shit the belt. well after nursing it to a friendly enough parking lot i discovered that the belt got thrown innocently enough, due to a melted bearing in a pulley. cost of replacing the pulley and some little shoulder bushing and a new bolt ran about 50 bucks. put the belt back on, topped the antifreeze off and noticed it trickling out of the radiator.

sonofabitch

so we made it most of the way home before most of the coolant had steamed its way out of there. the radiator was shot anyway after all.

so another call to the auto parts place and the radiator came in the next morning. some extra hose, the radiator and enough coolant and clamps to get the job done....$189

my job is still sketchy at best. I have a few promising leads though, just got to wait for them to get posted and all.

this all happens about a month after the rear end went out on said truck, cost of the rear end and axle u bolts.....$280

right about now I'd really like to go get another beater and stretch it for a few years but i have basically sunk half the purchase price of the truck into repairs. kinda silly to make a lateral move like this with a decent enough chunk of change into the current said beater. I am still on the fence about buying something when the time comes and the wife's van is paid off. this is where new makes some sense.

the truck has been a good ride for going on 4 years now. it's got almost 1/4 million miles and its understandable that things will start to fail on me. things fail more than they should on new stuff too. i have to ponder, do I want to drop a wad into a car payment or drop less of a wad into a used ride and think about repairs.

who the hell knows