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Greetings. First post. Gotta make it count.

This guy I know. He's owned an 2004 F-150 since April of last year. Purchased it for $3,200 with 92k miles--white, supercab, 4X4. Bought it because his family couldn't fit in his '98 Ranger...nevermind that the Ranger had 220,000 miles at the time. Not that the Ranger's mileage was of concern, as it seemed good to go for a few more years.

Then there were the other reasons--he and his wife had decided to go from four cars down to two. In January 2017, they owned an '87 Pontiac Fiero, an '89 Jeep Cherokee, the aforementioned '98 Ranger, and an '04 Lincoln LS. Each car filled a niche in their needs--the Jeep was great in the winter, the Lincoln was great at everything involving dry pavement, the Ranger was good for everything until the kids arrived, and the Fiero was good at casting a shadow on the same section of driveway for months at a time. She liked all of the vehicles, and he liked working on all of them. It was a good fit...except that it wasn't.

They live in an old house--one of those houses where there's a project in every room. Not an art project or a half-assembled model--no, the rooms themselves were the project. They purchased the house in 2007 for $12,000, and only overpaid by $11,999. Two and a half years later, they moved in, and they're still working on finishing the basement. And attic. And trim. And for many years, time that should have gone towards those projects was spent on an exuberantly excessive preventative maintenance program involving four cars. It was his hobby, and he could pass it off as being a good thing because an ounce of prevention is better than being broken down on the side of the road.

She was a large part of the reason for his enjoyment of working on cars--she came from a farm family that fixed literally everything themselves. It didn't matter who they killed--including each other--her family was going to get that tractor tire mounted on the rim, or that broken combine spindle replaced in the middle of a field. When he first met her family, he was taken back by their get-after-it attitude regarding all things mechanical. He had always had the aptitude, and her family showed him how to apply it without fear of failure. The thing was, all of the mechanical success came at the expense of peace--it was a family of abuse, imbalance, insanely misplaced priorities. Hatred. Rage. Pain.

In the end, this guy I know...he got pulled into an unwinnable abuse situation in said family, and approached it with the idea that peoples' minds can be changed through logic and persuasion. He approached it like it was winnable. What a fool...but his level of effort was second to none. He challenged, and he attempted to turn those challenges on himself in order to remove the plank from his own eye as an example. He lost weight. He rid himself of ill relationships. He started leading a group at his church. He tried to stop indulging in his vices in order to have time to spend on the things he'd neglected.

And he knew that his car habit was one such area. Whereas he and his wife owned four cars, his wife's family owns a number that probably totals somewhere around 40-50 vehicles. And while they didn't come close to keeping all of them running, they put an insane amount of work into keeping far too many vehicles running for two drivers. When you try to keep ten cars going, that's forty tires to keep inflated. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of the maintenance needs of the farm machinery. For her parents, it was a stress in their relationship to say the least. In the end, it's a miracle that her dad didn't put her mom in the hospital--her mom said so herself.

So this guy I know looked at his four cars, and you probably know where that went. 2017 started with four cars, and ended with three--the Fiero, Jeep, and Ranger were sold, and a a 2011 Volkswagen Routan (he calls it a "Caravan dressed in drag") and a 2004 F-150 took their places. In spring of 2018, they finally got the Lincoln sold, and were down to their goal of having two cars. Part of the effort was to reduce the amount of effort needed to maintain the vehicles, yes--but they were also convinced that they were setting an example for her family to see. Their family counselor explained that examples were usually a wasted effort, though, so they took the benefits of a simpler life and now have a basement that is two-thirds finished to show for it. There have been other benefits, to be sure--more time together as a family, less money spent on car parts, more parking spaces for guests.

But, this guy I know--he struggles with that car thing. It was his idea to force the "let's set an example and turn our lives upside down" stuff. He forced the F-150. He forced the Routan. And that's not to say that they aren't good vehicles that serve the needs of the family. He now views the vehicles with a bit of bitterness. They are better in many ways than the vehicles they replaced, but--in his mind--they are also a failed example. Or a wasted example. He likes belonging in the big boys club with his F-150--truth be told, the big boys have all moved on to driving 3/4 ton pickups--but he liked his Ranger. He liked the Lincoln. The Fiero was fun. And the Jeep...well, it has as many issues as it had benefits, but his wife drove a similar Jeep when they first met in college.

And the story behind the low price of the F-150 is part of why he feels stuck with it. It had a misfire when he bought it, hoping that it was a bad plug coil or something equally odd-but-small. Nope. It had bad cam phasers, a bent valve, a chewed up camshaft, broken timing chain guides, leaking chain tensioners, and an engine filled with needle bearings from one of the roller followers. It was a job to get it going again--it ran amazingly well on seven cylinders, btw!--but it should be clear that the F-150 was a gamble that blew up in his face pretty badly.

But the thing about that F-150...it was the first 2004+ F-150 that he'd driven. He'd been test-driving tenth-gen F-150's for months, and had been so excited to get the right one...until he got in the 2004 and it absolutely blew his mind. It rode smoother, had more power, was quieter, felt tighter...it was amazing. "Better in every way," were the words he used to describe it. But it's still one of the two vehicles he purchased in order to prove a point and set an example. Nevermind that it has rusted out rocker panels waiting to be repaired in 2019.

In his heart, he's always going to be into the older stuff. He recently found an immaculate supercab '03 F-150--no rust anywhere, leather...gorgeous and simple. But he's put so much work into his '04, and it's such an amazing vehicle. What does the future hold? Who knows. But to wrap up...it's good to be registered on this forum, and here's a photo of that '03!

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