Episode: 1839
Title: HPR1839: My "New" Used Pickup Truck
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1839/hpr1839.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 09:58:42

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This is HPR episode 1839 titled, My New Use Pickup Truck.
It is hosted by John Culp and is about 22 minutes long.
The summary is, I talk about my pickup truck and doing some repairs and stuff.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15 that's HPR15.
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Hey everybody, this is John Culp and Lafayette Louisiana and today I'm going to talk about
something new in my life, my pickup truck and for the longest time ever since my wife
and I've been married we have been a single vehicle family.
We've only had one car at any time and we've been able to do that because we bought a house
right next to the university where we both teach.
If you listen to my previous episode about headphones you'll know that it didn't take
me all that long to walk from home to my office and this makes it possible for us to have
only one car.
We don't even have a parking permit at the university so we couldn't park here if we wanted
to.
What we do is we take the kids to school, we go home and park the car and then we walk
to the office.
However, as the kids get older it seems like more and more we find ourselves in situations
where we need to be in two places at once.
This kid has an appointment over there, this other one has to be picked up from school
at the same time and we run into difficulties and recently over lunch for our anniversary
my wife kind of checked in and asked how's it going, you know, coming up on maybe a mid-life
crisis, do you want to get a motorcycle or have enough fare or something like that and
I said, well no, things are going fine, I don't want either of those things, although
I have been thinking it might be nice to have a little pickup truck and to my great
surprise she loved this idea, thought that it was probably about time for us to think
about getting a second vehicle anyway and really like the idea of a pickup truck so that
she can use it to do things like pick up gardening supplies or a load of mulch or things of
that sort or just to, you know, pick their awfully handy.
Now I did not want one of these giant pickup trucks that seems to be the standard over
here in America.
Most of the trucks you see on the road nowadays have four doors and great big beds and they're
jacked way up and I have big powerful engines and what I found was that it's very difficult
to find a small pickup truck.
I guess it's not difficult if you buy a new one but we were working within a budget constraint
here.
I wanted to pay cash for it and didn't really want to pay more than about $6,000 and so
that means I'm looking at pickups that are probably 10 years old or more with around
100,000 miles on them and depending on the brand you can find these things but there
just weren't that many to choose from.
I was going around to used car lots and looking online at cars.com in a radius of about,
I tried to stay within 25 miles because I don't really fancy driving a long way to look
at a truck and then having to bring it to my mechanic for him to check it out.
One thing I really wanted to do was to have my mechanic look at the thing at least cursorally
so that he could notice anything that I wouldn't necessarily see not being a car professional.
So I really need to find it locally.
There weren't a whole lot of options.
The Toyota Tacoma would have been my top choice but I found that to get a Toyota Tacoma
you're going to have to pay at least $10,000 for it to be in the condition that I want
and the right number of miles.
The ones that had about 100,000 miles and were about 10 years old were around $9,500,
$10,000 which is a little bit outside of our budget.
So I looked and looked and couldn't find anything.
I probably looked for two or three weeks and then finally one day I saw on Craigslist
that a guy was selling a Ford Ranger from 2004 that had 94,000 miles on it and he was
asking $4,500 and that seemed really perfect in every way.
So I went to look at it and I fell in love with the truck.
I mean it was really everything I wanted.
It was the right size.
The Ford Ranger is the smallest of the Ford trucks.
They don't even make the Ford Ranger anymore.
I think they stopped around 2011 or 2012 because they just didn't make enough money on them
I guess.
Everyone's buying the big trucks and what I wanted was the little one.
So anyway the Ford Ranger is a good model for this.
It seems reliable.
They sometimes end up with well over 200,000 miles on them which means that they will last
a long time if you take care of them.
The one issue with this truck was that it had been in a little accident where part of
the front molding got knocked off and there are a couple of things that look a little bit
out of whack.
But it was nothing that compromised the safety of the issue and my mechanic when he looked
at it said that it would still pass his safety inspection for the state of Louisiana.
And he did look all around it while the owner of the vehicle was there with me and said
that well you're going to need to replace the sway bar bushings and probably have to
get an alignment and the two of these things would cost a couple hundred bucks.
So the owner of the vehicle agreed to drop the price down to 4,300 and so I bought it.
I went to the bank, got the cash, gave it to the guy and we had to find one of those
notary publics to sign all the paperwork and I took ownership of this vehicle.
And so the next day this all happened finding the ad in the paper, the paper online and
closing on the deal all happened between about 11.30 in the morning and 5 o'clock at night.
So it was all done by about that time.
The next day I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles and got the registration all
taken care of and paid my taxes on it.
And so that was all sorted out.
So then I started cleaning, I did a cursory cleaning myself because I knew that I was going
to take it to the auto spa.
We have an auto spa here that does amazing work for what to me seems like a pretty reasonable
price.
Either the service we get done on our Honda CRV is about $30 and for that man they clean
everything.
And so that's how it looks inside and out is amazingly clean, like a new vehicle.
I paid slightly more for the truck since it was in worse condition and needed more attention.
I think I paid $45 and they clean that thing inside and out and it looked beautiful by
the time they done.
They didn't shampoo the seats or anything so there's still a little bit of stains on
the seats.
But otherwise the truck really was in amazing condition.
Drown of great, I had plenty of power, it's a V6 instead of a V4 like most of the Ford
Rangers because this is a Ranger Edge model.
A little bit more powerful engine, the suspension is jacked up a little bit but not crazy high.
So there were a couple of issues that I had to deal with after that.
So after I got it cleaned and back home I decided to start learning about the vehicle and
one of those things in that process was to figure out how to take the spare tire off and
how to jack up the vehicle and all of that kind of stuff.
I don't want to be learning these things in an actual emergency when I need to do it.
I want to already know how to do it.
And so I also thought I should probably inflate the spare tire up to specifications because
it probably had not had that done in a while.
The tires all around were actually much too low.
So I got that taken care of.
I learned how to lower the full-size spare tire from the bottom of the truck down to
the ground and take it off and I flipped it around because whoever had put it up their
last did it in such a way that the little schrader valve that you need to get at to inflate
the tire was pointing up toward the bottom of the vehicle so you couldn't access it without
taking the tire off.
So I took the tire off to just kind of learn how to do that, flipped it over and then put
it back in place with the schrader valve all the way pointing to the back of the truck
underneath so that I can lie down and hook a hose up there.
And you know one of those air pressure hoses and pump it up.
So that's all taken care of now.
I learned how to use the little bottle jack that comes with it for emergencies and that
everything worked fine.
One issue that came up, I might have even been the end of the very first day that I drove
this thing was that the check engine light came on and I don't know if you're anything
like me then you can feel when you when you see the check engine light come on you can
kind of feel your wallet getting lighter.
I don't know that I've ever had a check engine light situation that didn't cause me at
least $200 to have fixed whether it's a new oxygen sensor or whatever.
I've decided with this vehicle and this is where the interest of hackers might come
in to play a little bit more.
I've decided with this vehicle I'm going to try to do as much of the maintenance on this
as I can myself.
I've never really done much car maintenance myself before because we've only had one car
and when you only have one car you can't afford to mess things up because you could really
put the car out of commission you'd have to call tow trucks and then the spouse gets extremely
angry with you and this kind I did not want to do that so if anything got messed up in
the car at the you know in the repair processes I wanted it to be someone else's fault so
that I would not take the blame for it.
But with the truck we have another car still working all the time and it's much newer
so it's going to be reliable.
I thought I can afford to do some of these repairs myself and the Ford Ranger actually
has an engine compartment that's a little bit more spacious than our Honda and so you
can get at some of the parts easier and I also have a buddy here who works at the university
who is really really good with cars he has rebuilt engines and he goes on these rallies
in Colorado with these triumphant like triumphant owners will convene in this place and then
drive all around the mountains and they always carry buckets of spare parts and have to
do repairs on the side of the road anyway he told me that I could probably handle some
of these things and so he suggested that I take the car over to AutoZone which is a chain
of auto parts stores here in the United States and they would hook up their little handheld
computer to my car and tell me what engine code it was that was causing the check engine
light to come on so I drove it over there and the guy came out and hooked up his little
device and got the code on it and then went into the shop and plugged it in with the USB
cord to his computer there and he told me this is a throttle position sensor has gone bad
and that's why you're getting the check engine light and so I thought great I did a little
bit of research I thought I'd probably have to take it to the shop and have them do it
but then I started researching a little bit and found that the throttle position sensor
is actually right on the very top of the engine so it's super easy to access and I would
not have to take out any large components to get at it or anything like that so I thought
well you know what maybe I can do this myself so I looked around and I found throttle position
sensors on Amazon for about $35 and I ordered one but then I got another email back from
my colleague who said by the way before you replace this part because I told him it was a throttle
position sensor that they said was bad and he said before you replace the part you might try
just cleaning it and see if that does the job you just got to spray some electrical contact cleaner
on it and I had some of that and so I quickly canceled my order to Amazon and so I successfully
canceled it before they ever shipped it so I got my money back and all that stuff but then the
next morning I went out and took the throttle position sensor off the truck sprayed contact cleaner
in there and waited for it to dry hooked it back in hooked the battery back up and what next time I
started up the truck the check engine light was off and it has not come on since then so I fixed
it without even buying the new part I just cleaned it and it's all fixed I can't remember a time
ever when I fixed the check engine light for zero dollars so you can imagine how exciting that
was for me another issue with the truck was that the tailgate handle was broken a lot of these cars
have these plastic tailgates that after you use them a number of times they start getting weakened
and just break off this actually happened with an older vehicle we had before a Toyota Sienna
the handle broke on that and I found on eBay a metal replacement handle for it the the factory
handle is plastic but you can get third-party manufactured parts that are better sometimes and
this one was metal and on the Sienna I replaced it and it worked great after that so I assume
that I'd be able to find the same thing for the truck and I did I think it cost me $18 for the
new handle that's made of metal instead of plastic and it was actually much easier to install on
the truck because I didn't have to remove any plastic molding from the inside of the door
I did have to go to the hardware store and buy some new machine screws because the previous owner
of the truck since the handle was broken he had removed this little access panel that would give you
access to the little rods that control the levers on either end of the door and the access panels
just lying in the truck bed and he threw away all the screws that were used to hold it in but when
I was cleaning the truck I found one of the screws and I took it to the hardware store for them to
match it and I bought seven more so that I could put the panel back on there so that was very easy
to fix and it works great I'm very very happy about that one now the sway bar this the sway
bar is a part I never even heard of before my mechanic told me that I would have to replace
the bushings in it but it was a funny thing I kept driving the truck around every time I went over
a bump I would hear this chink chink chink chink chink like it sounded like somebody had thrown
a handful of chains somewhere inside an empty part of the frame and every time I went over a
bump it was just like just jingling and jangling everywhere and what I discovered after researching
the sway bar link ends and bushings and stuff was that when I when I looked under the truck to see
the parts that I had been looking at in videos I saw the reason why I was getting this jangling sound
it was because all of the bushings let's see on the left side of the no the right side of the truck
all of the bushings were gone and so you just had metal parts that were just jangling together
every time you went over a bump and on the left side one out of the four bushings had disintegrated
and disappeared and so that one was also jangling so I ordered some new sway bar link ends
or end links I don't know but anyway they're these pieces that connect a little stabilizing bar
to the front suspension to help keep the vehicle from tipping sideways when you go around turns
and those were pretty easy to install I did not even have to jack the vehicle up
and so I want as soon as I installed the new end links and went over a bump it was glorious
silence no more jingling and jangling let's see another thing I did was to
get spare keys for the truck thankfully the previous owner still had both original keys
and this means that if you have both keys you can actually program a new key without having to
pay somebody a whole lot of money for it you can do it yourself
these transponder key this vehicle is new enough where the key has a chip in it and if you don't
have a key with a chip that's programmed right you won't be able to start the vehicle you can
open it but you can't start it and so I ordered a couple of blanks on eBay for $12 a piece
because I think the dealer will charge something like 80 or $100 to give you a new key
or a replacement key or a backup key like this but I found blanks on eBay for $12 each and I
took them to the locksmith and had them cut the keys for me to fit the doors and then I took those
blanks home and did the key position two-step kind of thing that what you have to do is take
you have to have both of your original working keys you plug them in to the ignition and then turn
it to the on position hold it for about a second turn it back off pull it out take the second working
key and do the same thing again pull it out and then take the one you want to program and stick it
in and then do the same thing again and once you've done that it's programmed and we'll start the car
and so I did that with both of those and so I now have two working backup keys for only $15 a piece
rather than I don't know 80 or $100 a piece what else the the next thing to do on it is address the
breaks that the breaks work but they're noisy I get this high-pitched squealing and so I'm
going to replace the break pads and the break rotors and those are coming in the mail sometime
probably next week I have not bought any parts at the car part store because I find that
they're just way more expensive that way even something like break rotors that weighs something
like 20 or 25 pounds each it's cheaper for me to order them on Amazon and have them shipped to me
than it is to go to the car parts store and buy them I got each of the rotors for the front
for $36 with free shipping and I got really high-end break pads thermo quiet I think they're thermo
quiet break pads for about $35 also I know I ordered some new latex gloves to protect my hands and
some break cleaning fluid and stuff like that so I'm getting into this I'm gonna enjoy
working on the car myself with the greatest resources for this right now is YouTube
just about any repair you want to do on your vehicle you can find videos of somebody doing it
on YouTube so it's a wonderful thing for do it yourselfers now since it is a pickup truck
I also have taken advantage of the capacity of the bed to deliver some important loads for example
the electric toy car that my kids used to drive around the driveway it's a little jeep kind of
thing that'll fit two small kids and they can drive around under battery power well they're too
big for that and so one of my colleagues has a kid about the right age and so I loaded that
electric car up in the back of the truck strapped it down with my ratchet straps and delivered it
to their house for them so yeah I'm awfully happy about my truck it's funny I never really thought
I would be a pickup truck guy but I realized after I bought it that I'm almost exactly the same
age now as my father was when he got his first pickup truck which was also a Ford Ranger and that
was back in I want to say it was 1989 or 1990 something like that and so I probably will not go
down the same road he hasn't got bigger and bigger trucks but it's kind of fun to have one now
and awfully nice to be able to be in two places at once as a family anyway I might record follow-up
episodes especially after I tried to do the break repair but anyway I hope you enjoyed hearing
me talk about my new pickup truck talk to you all later bye
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