The New Rig

First off, I have not tried to put pictures in here yet so this might or might not work the first time around.

So yesterday (Wednesday) we finally found a vehicle. I think it is a good one and so does my husband. He test drove it in the city but I drove it home, then he drove the kid to Ju Jitsu this evening (Thursday--this won't be finished before it turns to Friday so…). He said he liked it better today than he did yesterday.

I am going to start out with what was not so great about it:

1. It has power windows. No matter what anyone else thinks about them, I do not like them, I just don't.

On  the other hand, out of all the vehicles we looked at, only one had crank windows and it otherwise did not fit our needs well.

2. It is white.

On the oter hand, so what. It is not a preferred color to me but it is not my least desired either; which is red. I do not know if it still holds true but it used to be that red was more likely to be pulled over. If the right vehicle otherwise was red, I still would have gotten it.

3. It is older than we were wanting/looking at. It is a 1997.

On the other hand, it has less mileage than all the 2000 and up we were looking at. We were lucky to see 2005s that had less than 150,000 miles, this 1997 had 118,000 miles.

4. It has air bags--driver and front passenger.

What a great feature I DO NOT WANT. Why? Air bags are such great safety features -- unless one is my size; then they are a safety hazard. They tell you if a kid is my size they should be in the back seat until they grow bigger. That ain't gonna happen and I can't drive from the back seat. Not to mention, at this point, no one but hubby is big enough to sit in the front; though Morg stands a good chance of growing big enough the passenger air bag won't do more harm than good--but she is not there yet.

Okay, so far that is it and of the four things I don't care for, one is completely offset and two of the other --oh well, not real biggies. Well, I still don't like power windows but the only real situation is the air bags and that would be a problem with all vehicles but quite old ones

So, now for the rest of it:

It is a 1997 Isuzu Trooper. I was in love with my last Trooper and it was well used and gave its all to us 'till the end. We put well over 350,000 miles on it ourselves.

It is a six cylinder, four-wheel drive, five-speed manual transmission with a limited-slip differential (commonly called posi-traction but that is a brand of sorts, like Jello vs. gelatin). The manual trans was as hard to find as crank windows and, yes, that was something we preferred. I am beginning to wonder if they are even being made anymore.

Here's a goodie, I am the second owner of this Trooper. It is very clean and the interior is beautiful. The seats are not in the slightest broken down. It is missing its back-seat ashtray??? The previous owners were non-smokers, the front one is there but never used(until me). It doesn't look like the back area, the cargo area, has been used even for groceries; it still has the OEM cargo net in there and it is in good shape.

The tires are in good shape.

It has a six month power-train warranty.

It has never been fitted for towing. This is cool because though the vehicle is perfectly capable of towing (we will need that) it has never been put to that stress before; just another clue of gentle use.

The kids, on the way home yesterday, acted like they went from an army cot to a king-size feather bed.

Hubby said this evening it needs shocks, I didn't notice that but we will see in the next few days. It needs a tow package put on. And one of the CV boots needs replaced as well as that CV joint looked at for possible damage. If it needs replaced, that is part of the power train and will be covered by the warranty. Drawback there is that we need to take it to the city or pay the $100 deductable on the warranty to have a local person do it. It was missing a screw holding a plastic cover on the lower part of the drivers seat. Himself fixed that in town this evening when he was there; he didn't have the right one here so he bought a pack at the parts store so we have a few in reserve now. The cargo light is not currently working; it is most likely a bulb and we just are both too pooped to care right now. And the vanity mirror on the passenger side is supposed to light up but doesn't,; also probably a bulb.

The stereo is a cassette deck, a little out of date but the radio plays great, the speakers play clear. It is barely believable this is mine.

These are the dealer photos:

He, he he. I was going to post this about 1:30 AM but it turns out the internet is not working. Its okay, I was surprised I was done by this time anyway. I'll try again at a reasonable time on Friday.