This is how my Christmas went.
I bought one person something: The single mom at the end of the street sent me a text the other day, asking for me to keep an eye out for a couple of used tires for her backup vehicle (94 Ford Ranger, 285,000 miles) since her primary vehicle is nearing the end of its life.
"I can get new tires for $50 each", I said. "Sorry, but that's just too much". Ouch. She was apparently laid up for 2 months with a raging case of shingles. After the first month, her fiance left her. World class, bro. Lost her job and everything.
I hit up my next door neighbor for $50 (he was happy to help) and we bought her two tires. I had hoarded away a set of Centerline wheels, so I mounted all four tires on those instead of the hella butt ugly spray painted stock wheels.
And then on Christmas day, I spent around 11 hours fixing most of the other crap wrong with it. I fixed a coolant leak, a fuel leak, polished all of the yellow cloudiness off of the headlights, aligned the headlights so you can actually see at night(It was scary bad), turned the front rotors and threw on a new set of brake pads, repacked the front wheel bearings, fixed the ABS (light has been on the whole time she's had it. It had a break in the wiring harness). Changed the oil and filter. I had to take the bed of the truck off to fix the fuel leak.
It desperately needs a timing belt. She asked how much the parts cost. $30 for a belt and tensioner. She said it'd be around February before she could afford it. ****, that sucks. I mentioned this to the denizens of Thumpertalk.com's Town Square last night, and one of the guys there sent me the money to order a timing belt kit.
She is acting like she just won the lottery, and that makes me very happy.
My wife is happy that I'm helping her out. Mostly because I'd have just sexually harassed her for 11 hours, and apparently that gets old pretty quickly.
Edit: One of the Thumpertalk guys contacted me this morning via PM. We're gonna split the cost of a new radiator.
