More on the POJ

After a many requests to see my POJ, Okay, well, actually only one request. Here it is. I like to call vehicles like this a 50/50 vehicle. Now, I’ve been around cars all my life, grew up working on them, rebuilding engines, body work, paint, the whole nine yards. I know when a car has the potential to look good and I know some cars will never look good without a lot of body work or a paint job. This is one of those vehicles that look reasonably good as long as you don’t really look at it. Where was I, Oh yeah, the 50/50 truck. A 50/50 vehicle looks good from 50 feet away (when you can’t really see the details) or at 50 miles per hour (when you can only get a quick look at it). This is my 50/50 truck. Don’t look at the bent up fender/door the hood is bent and pounded back to a reasonable shape. The rust over the rear tires isn’t all that bad, all the scratches and little dents on the bed and front fender aren’t too noticeable. In the end, a good buffing, cleaning the rims and a little chrome polish go a long way toward making a POJ something that can be used as an everyday driver. At least everything works. Well almost everything, I still need to change three light bulbs, fix the drivers side seat so I don’t sink to the floorboard, and replace the broken bolt on the drivers side mirror so I can actually bolt the mirror on to prevent it from shaking sliding around. It’s getting there.

My POJ

I recently picked up a truck from a friend, who has been having some financial difficulties, and I was trying to figure out what to do with it. My first thought was to fix it up and let my middle daughter drive it. That thought was quickly nixed because the truck doesn’t have air bags and I wanted something a little safer for her to drive during her first few years of vehicular mayhem. So, I thought, it would be great to have a second vehicle at work so when I ride to work I would still have a vehicle to do errands in at lunch time, or have the ability to pick up kids from school in an emergency, and it would be kind of nice to just have a second vehicle. The University has a nice safe underground parking lot that is patrolled by security 24x7 and I can just park the truck there and use it when I need it. Sounds like a great solution to my bike commuter woes, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. The plan is to drive it in on Monday (with the bike in the back) park it for the week and drive it home on Friday (with the bike in the back).

The truck is lovingly referred to as the POJ – that’s Piece of Junk, or as I less decorously refer to it as my POC – piece of crap. My son was around when it was named so it’s officially the POJ truck.

The truck itself is fairly solid now and is actually kind of fun to drive. It’s been getting about 23 mpg in the city, which is much better than my F150. Unfortunately, I have more money in it than I paid for it. Mind you, all the work has been done by me and my son, so the money is in new and used parts, no labor.

Here’s a list of things that I have done to it.
Replace the gas tank - The old tank leaked whenever it had more than a quarter of a tank.
Replace the fuel filler hose – It would leak more gas on to the ground that got into the tank
Major Tune up – It almost flunked emissions – the tune up really helped
Replace the turn signal switch ( brake lights, and turn signals wouldn’t work with the old switch)
Oil change - normal stuff
Transmission oil change – Wow, it was bad, surprised it even shifted
New Battery – it died, when I was driving it home, I had to push the darn truck into the Checkers parking lot, my son was not impressed.
Replace all 5 tires – bad rubber = bad stopping power and drivability.
Replaced about half the lug nuts so they would be the same size, just incase I did get a flat.
Replaced one of the windshield wiper arms – the old one was zip tied together!
Replaced all shock absorbers - only one was actually working – I was getting sea sick driving the truck because it was bouncing so much!
Put a working stereo in it, I need my jams.
Replaced the steering wheel - the old was totally trashed, how do you trash a steering wheel?
Had to find a spare tire carrier at the junk yard to replace the rusted contraption that was under the truck

Replaced the air filter box – I had to get one from someplace in Louisiana
Pounded out the door and fenders so the drivers side door would open
Put bolts in said fender so it wouldn’t fall off.
Aligned the hood so it would open and close
Replaced about 7 light bulbs, including both headlights (still have three to replace but they are non critical)
Buffed out the truck so I wouldn’t get oxidized paint on me whenever I brushed up against it
Cleaned up the trash form the inside of the Cab
Replaced the shifter knob, how do you shift without a shift knob?
Fixed the doors so they actually open from the inside – great design idea.
The minor fixes go on an on.

On the bright side though, it has good brakes!

There you have, it my solution to not having a vehicle at work when I commute by bike. Now I don’t have an excuse not to ride everyday this summer.

Slow Start

This season, like many others has really been off to a slow start, if it’s not one thing it’s another! Every year I say I’m going to get a great start on the season and almost every year something comes up.

This year I had a Hernia operation, and while the operation and recovery aren’t necessary that bad the pre-operation slowdown was horrible. It’s been exactly two months since the discovery of “Ernie” (as he has been affectingly nick named) and I’m just now getting back into the swing of things. Next week I’ll start on my normal training load.

This weekends easy bricks were pretty tough on me and the scar formally known as Ernie. I’ve had this persistent muscle pain/spasm in my side since the surgery and on the bike ride it decided to start acting up. Wow, that was rough. Guess I did a little too much too soon. Oh well what’s a triathlete to do?

Funny thing: Before the surgery the Doc said he wouldn’t put any restrictions on me after two weeks of the surgery. He said it wouldn’t do any good anyway, “triathletes are always pushing their bodies to the limit”. Funny guy, he’s a runner…