So, now there is this old time-worn truck sitting in the street in front of my house and the neighbors are wondering if it belongs to my gardener (jk). I had to figure out a way to safely drive it into my garage so I spent the next several days inspecting brake related items (and everything else, this is a new toy after all!). I sprayed all the carb linkage to loosen things up and tweaked it a little and got it to start and run "good enough for now". It puked a lot of oil, mostly at the engine oil filter and rear of the transmission, so I kept a pan under it. The master cylinder was full but the fluid was real murky. I tried backing up and braking numerous times in hope that the adjusters might take up some slack, which they didn’t. Finally, I got underneath and tightened up the parking brake cable adjusting nut almost two inches and got some good ol’ mechanical stopping power. So into the garage it went for the next six weeks or so.
At this stage, I wanted to accomplish three things:
1. Get it registered and street legal.
2. Determine the condition of the brakes and repair as needed.
3. Determine the condition of other operational items.
1. Registration
Before I bought it, I had inspected the PO’s lien sale paperwork (and made a copy to refer to) and then spent a lot of time searching and reading regs on
www.dmv.ca.gov. Once I thought I had it all figured out, I called their technical compliance people to confirm. I had never bought a vehicle without a title so I was cautious. To get it registered I needed the original lien paperwork, a bill of sale, a weighmaster’s certificate stating the unladen wieght, VIN verification, insurance, and some money for DMV fees. I searched around for several days and finally found a licensed VIN verifier that came to my house to inspect it. He charged me $45 which was the lowest I found, one guy wanted $100 and most others were around $70. I called my insurance company and they added the truck for $39, good until my next regular renewal. Once I had everything in order, I made an appointment and went to visit the DMV. They took my huge folder of documents, okayed it, and said "That will be $274, please". I wrote them a check and they gave me brand new California license plates and a current sticker and I was on my way. They didnt say anything about the old Utah plates. That meant I could keep them and hang them up on the wall with my other miscellaneous plates and emblems and stuff.
As time went on and I cleaned the truck out, I found 96 cents in change (wow, a rebate!). So my total outlay from purchase through registration goes like this:
Purchase price...........$ 1,300.00
Towing..........................285.00
Weigh.............................10.00
VIN Inspection..................45.00
Insurance........................39.00
Registration....................274.00
Loose change found...........(0.96)
Found in seat foam (11/11).(0.07)
TOTAL......................$ 1,951.97
Seems pretty reasonable to start with. It’s all the stuff that comes later that will run this up! I’ve been keeping tab on my expenses related to this truck for my own amusement and benefit. I see a thread now and again where someone asks about costs so I hope this will be useful for some of them.
2. Brakes
I decided to first bleed the whole system and inspect all the lines before doing anything else. I’ll cover this more in subsequent posts.
3. Other operational
Mostly under-the-hood stuff. I started making a list of things I found that needed attention. The list got quite long very fast. I'll post some info on this, too, at a later date.
It's such a cool truck. I like to look at it a lot haha. What kind of fun is this ! ? ! ?