New Truck, Old Truck.
I’ve had Rosie truck in the shop three times now for the same issue: putting the transmission in gear suddenly feels like it’s shifting through goop. It’s almost like it’s sticky. The first time I took it in, they said it was just a matter of cleaning the linkage and some sensor. The second time I took it in, they told me the linkage was bent, so they straightened it, and cleaned everything again.
The third, and most recent time, they replaced bushings (and cleaned) and the transmission has been shifting well for about a month or so. It seems that every couple of months the shifting starts getting sluggish, and I’m hoping the bushings fixed it, as my garage (who are awesome btw; after the first visit, I haven’t been charged. I even tried to get them to take money this last time) has told me they’ve gone as far as they can and if the issue starts to happen again, that I need to take it to a specialty transmission shop.
One might wonder why I would put this much money into a 20-year old truck with 185,000 miles. Well, for one, it’s a Toyota. They last. And two, I simply love my truck.
But that didn’t stop the wife from asking if I wanted to go test drive a new Tacoma I found at a local dealership. While I love my truck, I had been preparing for the worst and had been looking at new ones in case the garage gave me bad news. We were heading out of town and would be driving right by the dealership in question. I said we could go look but it wouldn’t make sense to test drive, as we were also in the process of buying her a new car. Buying two new cars at once? Ridiculous! She said it couldn’t hurt to just take it for a test drive at least.
She was wrong. It did.
I test drove the new 2026 Tacoma and man, was that a nice truck. All the bells and whistles. Beautiful Heritage Blue color. Nice ride. And man, I wanted that truck.
But of course, it wouldn’t have made sense to buy two new cars at the same time. As the wife commutes daily, while I work from home, it simply didn’t make sense for me to have a new truck while Rosie truck seems to be working. For the moment. So we bought the wife a new hybrid SUV.
I would like to put some money into Rosie truck though. She suffered mightly during a hail storm two years ago and due to some mis-communication between the wife and I (And I simply not knowing), we never submitted a claim. And along with the dents, the paint is fading and the clear coat has failed in several places.
I’d like to get the dents removed and the paint redone, but I’m sure that’s $15K-$20K. I haven’t received an estimate. In the back of my head, I’d like to do some of the body work myself, but I know that’s a lot of work. Doubly (triply?) so, given I don’t have any experience.
But everyone has to start at the beginning when learning, right?
It would help if I had a decent garage. And someone with the know how to hold my hand. I’m lacking in both. It might just make more sense to get that estimate.
And prepare for more money to fly out the window one way or the other.