The Inevitable Purchase

November 24/2009

This was a good day; namely because I finally came to own one of my vehicular heroes (the other; a 1951 Willys Pickup, I already owned, but that's a different blog that probably wont be written for a while).

a light dusting of snow had fallen the night before, and cemented itself to the Jeep. The new snow on top of the hard packed unplowed alley surface made for a treacherously slippery laneway; perfect for a test drive. My dad and I went to pick it up, since we were going to split it 50/50. We took it for a test spin and gave the 4 wheel drive a workout, no sweat. This is the first V8 I have ever owned, and I was pretty staggered at how different it feels from my family's Cherokee (XJ). Long story short, a mess of legal jargon happend at the lisencing office which played out inmy favour. the vehicle was new enough to be in the blue book, but not enough exchanges had happened for there to be a listed value. i was defaulted to pay gst on the purchase price, which didnt amount to much. what a bonus, I was saving money already. With that done, he tossed me the keys and said "good luck." I was on my way, with the family car following in case of the inevitable quitting.

SitRep (situation report) on the G-Wag: i made it to the end of the street and fueled up. How do i say it lightly... um, ouch; it took a fairly hefty bite out of Alberta's tar sands in one filling, which left my bank account a bit emptier, but I didnt care. It was at this point that i attempted to merge into busy Toronto traffic. the Big V8 would just sputter and choke when i put my foot down, rendering my accelerations to that of an electric G-whiz (google it). This meant that merging could only be done when there was absolutely nobody on the horizon, which took what seemed to be several epochs.

Finally on the road, everything seemed status quo, i had figured that the acelerator pump was seized, since it only sputtered when i punched it; cruising was fine. Having forgotten to check the tranny fluid when I left, I wondered why the tranny hunted between 2nd and 3rd a lot around 50-60 km/h.

As far as my memory serves me, those were the only 2 minor hiccups that I encountered, but the G-Wag made it home no problem (somewhere in the zone of 60 km).