Never forget that we will all probably fail to remember lessons learned.

That weathered flag on the rear window of my old 1999 GMC Safari van seems more symbolic to me now than it did when I pasted it on brand new a few days after September 11, 2001 ... "Never Forget."  It was a patriotic thing to do back then.  Nowadays?  It probably qualifies as a "hate crime."  Yep, 911 was nothing more than just a bunch of people who did something ...

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a decade before my time but I'll always remember the elementary school teachers and administrators speak of losing family members during the ensuing world war.

Never again?  Good luck with that ...

After 20-years of service, the 1999 GMC Safari Van has left my driveway for the final time.

A family-in-need from across town was desperate for a vehicle.  Via a neighboring family member they learned that I was going to let go of the GMC so they asked how much I wanted for it.  I told them it was theirs for the taking provided that we performed a clean-and-legal title transfer at the local Illinois SOS facility and that they pay for any / all of the requisite transfer fees, taxes, etc.  This morning the deal was done.  I don't recall ever seeing a happier bunch of people than I did today.

My grandfather warned all of his children and grandchildren that, "Cars keep people broke."  I do hope that everything works out for these folks ...

FINALLY, I went and bought a new car!

The last time I bought a new car was year 2005.  Lots and lots of research over several years went into this recent decision; lots and lots of quality all-wheel-drive SUVs are being made.  I narrowed my choices down to the Honda CRV, Chevy Equinox, Nissan Rogue, and the VW Tiguan.  Ultimately I decided on the 2019 VW Tiguan SEL Premium which came with a decent model-year-end price (I payed cash; something I have wanted to do on a new car purchase for over 50-years; another item off the bucket-list), 6-year / 72,000-mile warranty, invisibility cloaking, quantum levitation, sturmgewehr, flammenwerfer, and other sundry open-highway, urban, and suburban necessities to cover all reasons and all seasons.

With 190,000 miles on the 1999 GMC van and 140,000 miles on the 2005 Chevy Cobalt I simply could not put if off any longer; we needed something new and reliable.  We were deferring vacations and avoiding long road trips whenever possible simply because a breakdown far from home could turn things unpredictably ugly.  Even with the best maintained vehicles, old ones break down more often than do the new ones.  The old vehicles that we have no longer provide for our need of having a sense of long distance driving confidence; it's a personal-safety comfort-zone issue.

The 2005 Cobalt will remain here as a second-car at least for the near foreseeable.  I still have the 1999 GMC Safari AWD van; it is getting very close to being recycle-ready; any problem that occurs with it between now and next August will be the last.  Until then, I like having it around for hauling the gnarly landscape materials that I use around the yard and it is still the best Midwest snow-busting road-warrior that I have ever owned.  Besides, few things say "SCREW OFF YA IDEALISTIC SNOBS!" better than having a (licensed and legal) rusty, gas guzzling, relic shitmobile of a van parked in the driveway of what is far too often perceived to be a "nice, quiet" neighborhood --- but, in fact ... just down the road a way ... yeah ... just this side of the tracks from the Walmart and the acreage where the politicians will put their chimerical municipal-government-life-saving casino ...

 Welcome to the badlands.

Here in northern Illinois, today was even more beautiful than yesterday

Plenty of sunshine, temperatures in the mid 70s.  Wow.

Yesterday was a bit cooler than today, but still very nice.  I took the old 1999 GMC Safari Van over to the Salmon Stop and purchased my 2016 fishing license along with all of the appropriate stamps.  The Salmon Stop is just a little family business that has been at the same spot since I can remember; the little place is a huge part of my America; I am honored to do business with them.

The steel wheels on some old Chevy Astro Vans and GMC Safari Vans may be hiding dangerous rust-through damage

At a distance (with one of the abandoned lakefront OMC buildings as a backdrop) the wheels on this 16-year-old >178,000 miles (AKA "Clunker") GMC Safari Van look acceptable.

Close up, for the most part, they still look okay.

Now lets remove that durable, non-removable, chrome facia (it is mounted to the steel wheel with an industrial-grade adhesive) and see what is hidden from view.

 Yep, on all but one wheel, the steel is rusted clean through in some very critical structural areas.

Not all of the wheels on all of the Chevy Astro Vans and the GMC Safari Vans were made the same way and not all of them have had 16-winters of exposure to road salt, but these wheels certainly do look to be a high-speed-pothole away from causing a serious situation.

The tires on this van are 5-years-old but have less than 15,000-miles on them; there is plenty of tread left.  Because of some slow leaks, earlier this year I had the beads on all tires cleaned and sealed; I also had the valve stems replaced.  The point being is that a well known, highly respected tire outfit missed the fact that all of the wheels on this particular vehicle were unsafe at any speed.

Although the old tires were salvageable, I decided to order 4 new tires to go with the requisite 4 new wheels.

Yes, my old 1999 GMC AWD Safari Van is still in service

As of today, all of the repairs the old mule needed are complete.  I’ve been retired for 7-years now and each of those years I expected to be the last for the old clunker, but it still serves dutifully.  I put in a new battery (last changed in September 2008; this one is a NAPA, not a Sears), along with a new alternator (it had not failed completely but was having trouble keeping the battery charged under full load).  The heater / AC fan motor had been out of service for the past couple of winters and I finally was able to cut and tear the plastic cover out of the way in order to gain access to do the replacement.  Further, the original resister for the heater fan was also bad and the replacement was a different size than the original, so I had to cut a larger slot in the chamber housing in order do the installation.  Naturally, doing the cutting was “blind” because it is located where nobody can see.  Simply said, it was all a pain; the engineers did not design the GMC Safari Van to be easily repaired.

The odometer has passed the 174,000-mile point (it was around 143,000-miles when I retired), but I have only put a bit over 10,000 miles on the beast since November of 2010.  The price of gasoline keeps us using our 2005 Chevy Cobalt for most trips; the GMC is used only for hauling and foul winter weather.  Once I get the bulk of my brick, stone, and gravel finished on my landscape (hardscape), I can seriously plan to replace the old van with something a bit younger and sexier, but still able to manage vile Chicagoland winter weather.

CLICK HERE for all blog entries that mention the GMC van.

Dear Commonwealth Edison, your power-outage reporting system sucks.

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Storms with heavy rain and damaging winds rolled though again early yesterday evening, knocking out my power, but sparing most of my neighbors. Our little neighborhood has several electrical feeds and I’ll be darned if I will ever understand the engineering logic they used during design and construction. When outages are isolated, there is always a chance that the repair crews may not get the word from someone else, so I decided to make a phone call. Actually, I had to make SEVERAL phone calls because our utility company’s touch-tone reporting system FAILED. With a current bill in my hand, so I had ready access to my account number AND which of my telephone numbers they have on file for use in indentifying my address, their system kept reporting that my location could not identified. I tried again…, again…, and again. Finally, I got through to a real person and reported it the old-fashioned way… with my booming voice. Five hours later, they restored power.

The sump pumps kept our basement dry thanks again to my noisy little generator, which performed in the face of waves of driving rain. A prudent high priority project would be for me to replace both aging sump pumps BEFORE they fail, along with installing a sizable battery backup system. If Edison had not restored power when they did, I would have had no choice but to run the generator all night long, keeping many of my neighbors awake. The fridge and freezer will keep food cold and safe for hours without power, but after a soaking rain, it is essential that the sump pumps keep running. Running a generator, especially at night, requires that you guard it against theft. I was contemplating spending all night in my GMC van parked next to the generator when Edison finally restored power. Having enough AGM batteries and inverters to power essentials for six hours would be a good contingency, but at the moment I don’t have the money needed to put it all together.

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It sure would be nice if we quit calling each other stupid.

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Politics is an amazing poison, it causes madness; even people who have never voted will call someone else a fool for their party affiliation. Republicans are fools; Democrats are fools; Libertarians and fools, etc. Since I have an IQ somewhere on the left side of the bell curve, it hurts me dearly when smart people act dumb. Whether they come from rough or refined backgrounds, folks should not try to win friends and influence people with ad hominem attacks and embellished facts. Try showing respect.

Now, to the guys who occasionally parade around the intersection of Routes 137 and 21 in Libertyville, Illinois, over the past 2.5 years, waving the pictures of Obama sporting a Hitler moustache or wearing a turban, I have but one question; is that the best you can do? Yeah, I am the geezer driving the green GMC van who offered you a $10 donation if you could show me a voter’s registration card. It was a safe bet for me to make; I didn’t have $10 in my wallet any more than you had a voter’s card in yours.

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Winter snowstorm / extreme cold preparedness and survival

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After each emergency event, I review how we handled it and where we can make improvements. Tire chains for the GMC would have been a welcome asset; the last time I used them on a road vehicle was over 35-years ago. With any luck, at least in our area, the threat of major winter storms for this season should be gone in about 8-weeks (although we have had some freak major snow events in April). With what we currently have on the ground, if there is a quick snowmelt we could jump into some serious floods.

If you are looking to better prepare for the next winter weather event, FEMA has a very good guide HERE. No matter how well equipped, trained, and dedicated the first responders are in your area, you may well find that you are on your own for a period of time that taxes the limits of human endurance. Life is a great adventure.

Stay warm and safe.

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Northern Illinois Blizzard, February 2011

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Well, officially, this is listed as the third highest snowfall for Chicago, behind the 1967 and 1999 events. As far as impact, this one was closer to 1967. My GMC walked right through everything back in 1999; yesterday, if I had been on the road a half hour later than I was, the roads would have been too bad for the GMC to manage and I would have spent the night inside of it, huddled in my Carhartts.

The snow started a few hours earlier than predicted, with high winds and moisture off Lake Michigan. At 6:00 pm my daughter called and said she was worried about her mom (my ex-wife) driving home. We agreed it would be best if her mom left her car at work and waited for me to pick her up with the GMC. A trip that normally would have taken 45-minutes took me nearly 3-hours. Many roads were closed due to drifting, accidents, and stuck vehicles. After trying several alternate routes, I finally was able to drop off my ex-wife. Afterwards, the GMC successfully crawled through the 6-miles of snowdrifts and near zero-visibility back to my house. An hour later into the storm, the police radio was crackling non-stop with calls about stuck motorists, stuck police cars, stuck ambulances, stuck fire trucks, stuck tow trucks, and stuck snowplows. All roads were impassable. The police recruited snowmobilers to attempt rescues but they too became stuck in the drifts. It was a long, frustrating night for many dedicated first responders. The snow stopped falling around 9:00 am today and the groundhog saw his shadow around noon.

It took me almost 4-hours to clear my driveway this morning. I am a big fan of Toro brand snow blowers; an event like this one requires a tough machine. After doing my driveway, I helped three other neighbors with theirs. My daughter’s driveway is very long and it is closed with a 4-foot high drift running from front to back and spanning the full width. It is too formidable for me to muscle with a shovel and a snow blower; even if I wanted to try it, there was no place nearby for me to park today. My daughter and her mom are stranded until a contractor can get there with a heavy plow or an endloader.

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Snow is what we know.

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This predicted blizzard is nothing most of us have not been through before, many times over, including the record blizzard of 1967 that the local media uses as a benchmark.

I’ve gone over my checklists. In case of power failure, there is plenty of firewood, and fuel for the emergency generator. We are well stocked with food and water. The all-wheel-drive big green GMC has new tires, a full tank of fuel, and the ever-present bag of emergency supplies. I’ll be staying home unless driving is essential.

The snow blower has been tanked-up, tested, and is ready to go. Helping out others will take up most of my time.

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1999 GMC AWD Safari Van November 2010 service report

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This is more of a personal journal entry than it is a general-interest blog entry; I am finding that blogging is a very convenient way to keep track of things.

11/11/2010 odometer 163,785 miles
Lube, oil, and filter (yep, this old dinosaur has grease fittings)
AC compressor and clutch replaced (it may seem winter is a strange time to be doing this, but the windows fog up inside during cold weather without the AC compressor running during defrost)
Serpentine belt replaced
Radiator replaced (corrosion problem; leaking at the seams, a uniform oozing)
Front brake pads and rotors replaced
Rear brakes cleaned and adjusted
Ball joints
Idler arms (last replaced around 100,000 miles on the odometer)
Alignment
Transfer case fluid change
Front differential gear-lube change
Rear differential gear-lube change
Rear differential spider gears replaced

11/29/2010, odometer 164,363 miles
New front and rear tires

I think the old GMC Safari is (for the most part) ready for another winter. This trip to the certified GM shop solved one mystery. It has been two years (maybe three) since an intermittent noise started coming from the rear of the vehicle. It sounded a bit like rocks clanging inside a hubcap, sometimes sounding like tree branches wrapped around the drive shaft, sometimes a bit like broken brake components rattling around inside a brake drum, sometimes it growled like a bad wheel bearing. The noises would last only a short while and often would not reoccur until after thousand of miles of driving. Mechanics (at different shops) were at a loss to find the cause. During this visit, they said the rear brakes and wheel bearings were fine, could detect nothing wrong with the vehicle on the rack, and could not hear any problems during the test drive. Mileage wise, the van was due for front and rear differential lube change so I asked that they pull the rear differential inspection plate and peek inside. Voila, they found broken spider gears.

Most of the cost for this list of repairs is routine stuff, brakes, belts, gearbox lube, idler arms, etc. The unanswered question is how long and how far I want to push my luck with this old vehicle; the spreadsheet shows that keeping this one on the road is still more affordable than buying something new. How many miles will it go before there is something that is prohibitively expensive? This van, between the end of the transmission and the rear bumper, is a unibody vehicle with no external frame. While the body looks to be in excellent shape, once the rust takes hold (and northern Illinois winter road salt makes that inevitable), the structural strength will not be enough for continued heavy use. Other than the unibody, my guess is that little irritations will continue. Maybe the heater core will start leaking; corrosion could cause leaks in the AC system and perhaps the transmission oil cooler. The electrical system connectors have been corroding away; GM no longer sells many of them so replacements must be improvised. There is an intermittent problem with the heater/AC blower yet to solve; it could be a bad connection, a near-dead blower motor, a bad switch, a bad resister card, or all of the above. Little irritations I can tolerate and afford; the cost of a rebuilt transmission or engine would be hard to justify because I doubt that the unibody has more than four or five years left.

As it sits now, barring a catastrophic failure of body, engine, or transmission, my goal is to run the van until November of the year 2014 or when the odometer hits 200,000+ miles (whichever comes first) and then send it off to clunker heaven or find it a place somewhere on Jason’s Old Truck Ranch. I am not one of the super dedicated fans of the GMC Safari / Chevy Astro Van; it has been a useful utility vehicle for me but I have no desire to spend the money needed for a rotisserie restoration. There has to be a line in the sands of time after which I find a suitable (and affordable) replacement. Perhaps by the end of 2014, my heavy landscape projects here at home will be complete and I can go with something smaller, a bit less robust, with better gas mileage.

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Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go; I have to finish this patio…

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I lost track of how much material I hauled in my old all-wheel-drive 1999 GMC Safari Van for my yard projects this year. A glance at the tickets for last month alone shows 1200 lbs of boulders and 6000 lbs of gravel. I try to limit the weight per trip to no more than 1000 lbs, for the sake of my back and the longevity of the old van. As consideration for my neighbors, I only bring in enough material for two or three days work. Having stockpiles of bricks, boulders, sand, and gravel in the yard would be an eyesore.

Both the old van and I need a break. Next week the GMC goes in for a host of repairs including a coolant leak, tie-rod ends, front and rear brakes, drive belt, etc. After she gets out of the repair shop, I will then mosey her down the road and purchase new tires. Once she is again roadworthy, on every fair weather day that remain in this year, I will either be down at the landscape center loading up or back home putting it all in place.

I sure hate to keep putting money into a vehicle that I could not sell for half of what I will spend on these repairs but even with 163,000 miles on the odometer, the old GMC continues to be the perfect mule for what I need to do. After the repairs, I still will not trust it for long trips. However, for muscling material and equipment around locally, and for clawing through winter snow, I cannot readily find anything better.

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Entry for October 15, 2008

Rambling notes:

The GMC van passed emissions inspection yesterday morning. Next inspection is two years from now; by then the major-purchase fund may contain enough money to pay for a new vehicle.

Gasoline is $2.95 per gallon at a few of the Waukegan, Illinois gas stations. My opinion is that high fuel prices contributed as much to breaking our economy as anything else. Our government must NEVER again let a speculative oil bubble get out of control.

I am seeing some anecdotal signs of a touch of economic recovery. During the peak of the fuel price bubble, highways were eerily light on traffic except during rush hours. Even rush hours had noticeably lighter traffic than in earlier years. Now traffic-jams grab me before and after rush hours.

Mall parking lots are filling up quite well, surprisingly so. There are some real bargains out there and people are finding ways to pay for them. I don’t believe the holiday shopping numbers will be high, but my guess is the stores will sell more than the experts believe.

Loans are available, but expect to verify every detail on your application and expect to pay some hefty down payments. It is a return to the old-days; you cannot get a loan if it looks like you cannot repay it, silly concept that it is. Credit Unions are doing quite nicely, I highly recommend belonging to one, they are often more accommodating than are banks.

My humble opinion is that we are very near the bottom of the housing crash, although we may bump along that bottom for a while. I see no for-sale signs in my neighborhood and very few elsewhere. People that own homes are now unwilling to sell them at these deflated prices. Once the foreclosures clear from the market (with luck, many folks will get some help refinancing), I believe there will be a very slow, very gradual but sustained uptrend in the market.

I’m not excited about the recent big stock market rally, and I am not excited about the subsequent big market dive either.

Entry for October 08, 2008

Well, so much for hoping that the 1999 GMC Safari Van would make it another year or more without major repairs. The starter decided to drop dead. I have changed starters before, but it isn’t in the cards for me to do this one; the van was towed in for repairs.

We have all heard someone say that an old vehicle was “nickel and diming” them to death, that buying a new car was cheaper than fixing the old one. I have trouble making the numbers work for that statement. To move up into a world of no repairs, I would need to spend no less than $25,000 for a vehicle that would suit my needs. Assume that I got a $25,000 loan at 0% interest for five years. I would be paying $5,000 per year, and the most I can recall spending in one year to repair an old vehicle is $2,500, usually much less. If I had spent $2,500 each year on my old van it would be a low-riding channeled and chopped showpiece by now, with custom spider-web paint, spinning-hub wheels, fuzzy dingle-balls hanging from the rearview mirror, dash mounted Uzi, etc. I think most of the urgency people feel to replace an old vehicle isn’t the cost of the repairs, but the frequency and unpredictability of the breakdowns. Breakdowns are always stressful and inconvenient. Paying the premium for buying a new or newer vehicle does buy some peace of mind.

The most miles I ever put on any vehicle was over 250,000 miles on my 1990 Chevy S10 pickup truck. The body rotted away to the point it was no longer safe, and the engine was so badly worn out it used a quart of oil every week. Yeah, it was time to say goodbye to that one. I’ll stick with the old van for a little longer, even though I feel it has betrayed me.

Entry for September 13, 2008

My 1999 GMC Safari Van now has 150,000 miles on it, only 1,000 miles more than what it had when I last blogged about it on May 20 of this year. Gasoline prices above $4 per gallon kept use of the 16 MPG van to a minimum.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to start shaking the old van down to see what all it would need to see me through the snow and cold of this coming winter. On Tuesday of this week I had Sears put in a new DieHard battery since the existing one was several years old and acting kind of tired. On Friday I was back at Sears arguing with them to warrant the brand-new battery in full because it went dead on me and would not hold a charge. After much battery testing and acting-out by their staff, they finally put another new battery in the old van. Hopefully this new one will last more than the three days of the previous new one, and hopefully Sears someday will learn that the reason their stores have more employees than customers is because of their bad service. The last time I had a Sears do an oil change on the van they had nobody available that knew what grease fittings were for, and once I explained the concept they could not even load a grease gun to attempt to lube the fittings. Many other “quick oil change” franchises also will not grease older vehicles.

The engine in the old van flutters a bit when cold, and it has some other symptoms typical of a dirty fuel injection system. Even though Shell brand gasoline has cured most of the problems, I believe I will have a GM mechanic flush the injectors and clean the plates again. Even though I only have 9,000 miles on the last transfer-case fluid-change I may also have them do that since the full-time all-wheel-drive gets quite a workout and will start chattering again if I wait too long. GM mechanics know that older vehicles steering assemblies still need grease, so I will have them do a lube job and changed the engine oil and filter. With luck, maybe the GMC can chug through another winter without needing any major repairs. Will it make another 10,000 miles? I doubt it, but my “major purchase fund” does not yet have enough money in it to buy a replacement, so I may need to push the old van for as long as I can. Of course, it would help if I quit lusting for a new truck that is so lavishly decked out it costs as much as does a new Corvette.