While I attended the Precision Measurement Equipment course (calibration technician course) in Denver, Colorado, I went to school from 6:00 AM to 12:00 PM five days a week. Needless to say, I had a lot of free time on my hands, partially because I never really found it necessary to study. My wife found it necessary to coerce me into getting part-time jobs to keep me busy. I say she coerced me, but that sounds rather harsh. It’s more like she persuaded me in no uncertain terms. And believe me, folks, wives can be very persuasive. I got my first real part-time gig working at a Dillard’s department store right about the same time I agreed to fix the brakes on a car owned by one of my friends from school. It didn’t take very long for word to spread around school that I was a mechanic in my own right and was pretty handy at fixing cars. There was a fellow NCO who owned a custom Ford van conversion that he bought from the factory. When he saw the inside of my van. He asked me who was going to do the van conversion. I told him I was. I showed him what I had done to restore the old Rambler that I had bought for my wife. When he saw the Rambler, he further talked about my abilities as a mechanic. It wasn’t long before I had several fellow students at the calibration course asking me for help with problems on their vehicles. Most of the time, I was glad to give people a hand to fix small problems. However, people can take advantage of a situation and abuse it. Even if it’s a good thing. For example, there was one guy whose name was Joe Kleinman, who did exactly that. Let me tell you about old Joe. Joe was married and had two kids. His kids got along great with my daughter whenever they got together. They played very well together and became great friends. Joe had this old beat up Volkswagen Bust that had all sorts of maintenance problems. Did I say Volkswagen Bust? I’m sorry. I meant Volkswagen Bus. That Volkswagen Bus barely ran when he first got to the calibration school, and it stopped running all together sometime during the course. He was always catching a ride to work with somebody. He told me that he needed to get his Volkswagen Bust running before he graduated so that he could take it across the country. He was getting stationed somewhere on the East Coast as his next duty station. I can’t remember where that somewhere was, but it was like Fort Stewart, Georgia or someplace like that. I just know that it was to hell and gone away from Denver, Colorado. He asked me to come over and take a look at his van. So, being a nice guy, I did. After I looked at it, I gave them my honest assessment. I said, “Joe, I have good news and I have bad news.” He looked at me and replied, “Well, Wright, what’s the good news?” “Your tires are in pretty good shape.” “My tires?!? My tires?? That’s it?” “Okay. Let me give it to you straight. The best place for this van is a junkyard. There ain’t a car dealer in his right mind that will take this on trade for a new vehicle. Hell, there ain’t a car dealer that will take this van on trade for any kind of vehicle.” “What’s the bad news?” “That wasn’t bad enough? Okay. For starters, the engine is shot. The engine pistons have seized. That’s an aluminum block. So, it’s probably warped and possibly cracked. The brakes are toast. They need to be replaced. The clutch is gone. You rode that horse hard and put it to bed wet. You’re not supposed to leave your foot on the clutch when you’re not shifting. The clutch is gone. Besides the clutch, it needs a new throw out bearing. Between the brakes and the clutch, you’re looking at about $300 in parts. We can clean the carburetors, but the engine is not salvageable. I don’t know about the starter. I don’t even know if you can find an engine block in a junkyard. You can try. But that’s a lot of money to stick into this thing. Is it really worth it?” “What would you do?” “Well, it’s very simple. I don’t make the kind of cash that it would take to fix this thing. I don’t care how much I like it. I’ve never had a car that would’ve cost me more than it was worth to keep. And honestly, I have only really loved two of the previous cars that I have owned. I paid next to nothing for both of them. And it was tough to let them go. But when I needed to let them go, I cut them loose in a heartbeat because the price was right.” “But you haven’t answered my question. What would you do?” “I thought I did. I guess I didn’t say it plain enough. Sell the damn thing to a junkyard and buy a different car.” “I don’t want to get rid of it. But more importantly, my wife won’t let me get rid of it.” “Do you know how long it will take me to fix this if, and that’s a big if, you can find an engine? Just get rid of the piece of shit!” “Okay, I’ll bite. How long will it take to fix?” “It will take me a good two whole weekends to get this thing running so that it’s roadworthy enough to drive across country. How much are you expecting to pay for that work?” “Well, you sort of fixed everybody else’s cars for free. So, I figured you’d fix mine for free as well.” “Yeah. That’s what I thought. You expect me to do all of this for free. That’s a lot of damn work for free. Do you know how much a car garage would charge to do all of that damn work?” “Yeah. Way too damn much. But you’re going to do it for free.” “Damn. That’s messed up. See if you can find your engine. I still think you should get rid of this piece of shit and buy a new one.” Well, long story short, he didn’t sell the piece of crap, and he found an engine in a junkyard. He took off the starter and traded that starter in for a rebuilt starter at an auto parts store. We cleaned up the carburetors on the old engine and rebuilt them and installed them on the engine we were putting into his Volkswagen. We installed the new clutch assembly and throw out bearing when we put in the engine. It took me the whole first weekend of work to get the engine running, and the clutch installed and adjusted properly. On both Saturday and Sunday, I had to stop and take a break to take my wife and daughter for lunch. When we came back from lunch, I brought a cooler with sodas for my wife and daughter to drink on both days. Here was the problem, I was working for free fixing their car and they didn’t even have enough courtesy to offer us food to eat and beverages to drink. My wife was so upset she wouldn’t even consider going back to their house on the second weekend with me. As a result, I went over to Joe’s house by myself on the second weekend to work on the brakes and finish up on the Volkswagen Bus. Joe asked where my wife was when I showed up. I told him that she didn’t feel like coming over. I think he knew what the problem was, but he never said anything. When I finished fixing all of the problems I found with the Volkswagen, I told Joe that there might be other maintenance issues that I hadn’t found. I also said that he should take it on a 30 or 40-mile drive before he took it on a long road trip. Of course, he never did that. After he graduated and left Denver, we heard that his Volkswagen broke down somewhere around St. Louis, Missouri. One of the CV joint axle shafts had gone out. I had warned him that we hadn’t checked out those parts and that he should take his van on a road trip before he went on his cross-country trip. He did not take my advice, and he suffered the consequences when his Volkswagen went bust. Oh well. I didn’t lose a lot of sleep over that situation. After all, what kind of guarantee do you expect for free? You get what you pay for. He didn’t even give my wife and daughter something to drink while I was fixing his car for free, and he promptly drove off on a deserved exercise in futility in his Volkswagen Bust.
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