Old vehicle shopping fun

Shopping on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and other on-line markets is interesting.

There’s the large number of people who sell their items then never take them off the site. Then they get snippy when people keep asking about them. Duh.

Of course there’s a fair amount of misrepresentation like photos being years out of date. Sometimes it’s not even the same vehicle but stock photos of the same model.

Then there are a lot of people who don’t even know exactly what they have. I’ve seen that a lot when looking at sailboats. For example a lot of time the sailor in the family passes on and nobody else knows anything about boats.

Well, the last few days it was cars, trucks and SUVs actually. I know I’m shopping at the bottom of the market so the offerings all have issues. Basically I’m looking for a tow vehicle that can haul a couple thousand pounds of boat and trailer without self-destructing. I’m willing to overlook a lot of cosmetic stuff, willing to do some repairs, but really don’t want to buy total junk.

Lately my quest for something good has run the gamut. One guy had sold the truck that interested me but hadn’t taken it off the Internet yet. However, he was super polite about it and just sold it so that’s fine.

One guy was super sketchy. He said he sold it but could it get back if I was still interested. Say what? That was just one of many red flags I got when talking to the guy.

Friday there was a nice couple who had an older Jeep Cherokee for sale. It looked and sounded pretty good. The price was right. However, they said there was some frame rust and they didn’t know how bad it was. I knew that going in so I was prepared. I brought a tarp to put down on the muddy ground and took a lot of photos with my phone.

Then I showed the photos to two different welders who worked on cars. Neither of them wanted to touch it. Both basically said that once they got in there the job could quickly get out of hand. Road salt takes a toll on cars and trucks up here. I politely thanked the people for showing the Jeep to me but passed on that my welders didn’t want to touch it. That was fine.

The good thing is that I’m not in a hurry. The lake is still frozen solid and the boat and trailer are still buried in snow. The pile’s gone down, but there’s plenty more to go. My daughter is willing to launch it with her truck later on. We could at least sail on our little lake. We would like to haul the boat to other places in New England this coming summer, which is why we want our own tow vehicle.

In other news, my toe is recovering much faster than what the foot doctor led me to believe. It already feels much better than before the procedure. Often the toe is infected when it has a badly in-grown nail. I’m thinking that the heavy duty antibiotics I was on for my leg wiped out any trace of that. Maybe that’s why it’s healing so quickly.

Live goes on.

-Sixbears