“Don’t ever give up. You gotta keep trying, and never give up.”
Ryan Sheckler
The old girl is my van a 1992 GMC Safari. She Should have gone to the big scrap heap a long time ago. I keep her running the best I can. I just don’t want to give up on her. I know very well what that is like. Besides, I don’t think I could afford anything else right now.
Me and the 49 a few years ago in the fall
How she came into my life was because of my 1955 Chevy truck project. I could barely walk just a few days from spinal surgery I decided that I needed an old truck again. I missed my 49 pickup. She had to be sold. Click on the pics to read more.
I traded a bunch of Harley parts and stuff that had been gathering dust in my shop, after a few phone calls the previous owner and I made a deal. A friend of mine offered to drive me out there to pick up the old truck and brought her home to my place, on his dime BTW. The government and insurance companies were doing everything they could to make sure I starved to death back then.
After getting the truck home, I started doing research on what I wanted to do with the truck, I discovered something called hydro boost brakes. Brakes that ran off the power steering pump instead of engine vacuum. If you don’t understand that, don’t worry it isn’t important to this story.
As I did my research I found that 1992 Safari/Astro used the said braking system. I remembered that an online date, that later became a friend (she married someone else:( ) Anyways she had one sitting in the yard A hundred kilometres away. I asked if I could take the braking unit out. She said no problem if I took the whole van.
Another adventure that required another friend, many jump-starts and a ton of fuel, I got her home. She was gobbling a a shit ton of fuel about a litre every kilometre. I went on to fix that. It took 5 days of laying on a very sore back, but I solved that problem, and actually got the mileage up to 30 MPG.
Of course, there were many other problems along the way, only one door worked properly, the passenger door. The side door had to be strapped down to keep from opening while driving. Wiring never really worked no radio and various other problems. Besides that, she ran well until a few days ago. I could not get her to start.
Today I poured a little gas straight into the engine, and she is running again. I suspect a dirty fuel filter which I had a friend bring out for me today. Tomorrow I will crawl under the van and try to install that.
I did manage to get new rear tires. I got the tire dealer to move the old rears up to the front and checked to see if they fit. I even looked my self to see if they rubbed. It all looked good. Of course, it wasn’t, the tires rub, and I would have to cut away sheet metal or buy more tires. I did ask them to check the back brakes. Yup you guessed it they are shot.
I did my research and checked all local sources and the least expensive option is to buy all the parts from Amazon, but I can’t order them until the end of the month and then comes the wait for the parts to come in.
That will give me time to repair the tires on the donor truck in my shop, so I can drag it out and then I can bring the van inside to do the work. I am guessing it will take me a couple of weeks to get all that done, and a couple of weeks to have all the parts arrive. I should mention I never have done rear brakes before, but there is utube.
I am hoping I can get all that done before the snow comes, plus get the wind generator installed and up. Service the chainsaw get all the axes sharpened, oh and hope that they can find the cause of the fatigue and dizziness I am having.
So that is my old van she is getting tired and aged like me. I don’t want to give her up yet, and I hope God feels the same about me. I don’t want to give up either.
Take care and be safe
God take care of Eddie, sorry to see you go were an inspiration. I just read Eddie money died from esophageal cancer.
Scares me a little got a sore throat won’t go away.
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