had a tiny bit of good news, potentially quite a bit of good news, today, via learning just how sorry some folks can be.
On Saturday, when I found the car knocking pretty intently when I tried to crank it in the morning, my utter dread of this moment arriving led me to assume the worst. The car would only run for a few seconds and it sounded like mechanical death.
The wife prevailed upon her nephew and brother-in-law (the Brother in law who once had a chance to recommend me for a job and said he would never do anything for "Tammy") to come round and render an opinion.
The listened, and told me they were sure it had thrown a rod. That's death in a car this old. Might as well sell it for salvage they opined.
later that evening one of them sent word that they would go together and give me $250 for it. Just for scrap.
Fast forward to today: I do some digging on-line and find out that the going salvage rate is $14 per 100 pounds and the car is listed at a tad over 3400 which worked out to about $475 - minus whatever it cost me to get it there and adjusted for a few things like taking the battery off and so forth. so much for a fair price from the kin - but wait, it gets better.
A bit later and i'm headed for the supermarket on foot. My neighbor a few doors down happens down the road in his pickup-truck-converted-to-makeshift-wrecker (a real redneck mobile!) which I'd forgotten about him buying and i flagged him down with the intent of asking what he'd charge to pull the dead car to the salvage place (trying to maximize me net return on it).
After a bit of conversation he says he wants to look at the car and of course he does and he tells me a couple of things I already knew but my dread and despair had caused me to forget - cars with a thrown rod can't be cranked and run, however weakly, and usually you can't measure the oil (mostly because it's all somewhere it's not supposed to be, often on the ground).
He's sure there's nothing worse that a timing belt broke on it (still a very expensive repair in the shop, but worth the cost). He's good and his dad is better and after they talked it over they agreed there were about 4 or 5 possibilities, with the timing belt being the most expensive, and said it would have to have computer diagnostic to tell which one. A couple of the options have to do with fuel flow and the car has had problems with that for over a year (another long story)
ANYWAY, the upshot is he can fix it, for considerably less than the shop can, whichever the problem. it will wipe me out to do so, but it's better than losing the car altogether,and getting less for it than it costs to replace it with even the cheapest clunker.
But along the way I learned that dear sweet kin-folk, who YES have enough knowledge to know they were lying to me, and YES know perfectly well how desperate our finances are, were nevertheless willing to beat me out of my last simi-valuable possession in order to make a few hundred dollars profit off my ignorance.
This is the world I live in folks.
