I’m going to take y’all on an Odyssey like one you probably have never been on previously.

This story is about me. I know it’s totally unexpected for me to be on here talking about myself, but this quest to get my pickup fixed and running warrants bragging about my own abilities.

Back on November 16, of the year 2023, my GMC Sierra got to where it was on its last leg. It had an engine warning light that had been coming on regularly. So I didn’t have to stare at it shining brightly, I bought a gizmo that allowed me to turn it off. I kept doing that over an extended period of time.

It finally got to a point where it wouldn’t stay off. I had carried that truck out to a shop and had them put new spark plugs and other components in it at one point but it didn’t really help anything. The shop told me the issues were much deeper than that, but I insisted that I wanted to do it my way.

Anyway a few days later with the light staying on, I decided I was going to have to do something else. My little diagnostic tool said the number 3 cylinder was the root of all my problems.

I called one of these “Come to your house and fix your car guys”. Pretty quick thereafter with him getting here he hooked his computer up and told me I had a bad lifter on my number 3. So we arrived at a price and then a few days later he returned and started tearing into my engine to put new lifters in it.

This fellow is very busy, and I understood that going in. He was going to do my project but he needed to take care of other customers as well. He worked on it a little while at a time over several days. He wrapped it up and fired off that engine and it continued to spit and miss, much as it had originally. So he pulled it back apart, over a few days time. You know in between other obligations.

Then he said something like “Boss here’s the deal. I ran a camera now that hole (pointing where he ran the camera) and it shows you have a cracked cylinder”.

Well it didn’t take much deducing to figure out I was going to need to put a whole engine in that truck. For whatever reason, my continuing to turn off this warning light had done severe damage. I owned up that perhaps I hadn’t done the most prudent thing.

Well then time the calendar turned to 2024 and a couple of months passed. My mechanic friend figured up what all that was going to cost to put a new engine in it and it came out to be far and away more than I was willing to spend.

So I returned to my Smithwick roots and went in the search for a good used motor to go in that bad boy. As luck would have it, a new-used engine showed up. The price was somewhat decent and the engine was purported to be fairly low mileage. It was delivered to me.

Be then we were getting close to mid year, 2024. Oh, and I had already given up on ever driving that GMC Sierra again so I traded for another truck to drive. I hadn’t been afoot, as I had an Audi Automobile to get around in. But now the Audi was beginning to have its own issues, with a warning light coming on. So instead of turning it off, I cut a nice rounded piece of black electrical tape and stuck over the light and that cured that problem.

The replacement engine showed up and the task of pulling the old engine out and sticking the new-used one in started. I was beginning to get antsy about getting that truck going. When I wouldn’t see hide nor hair out of this mechanic for a few days, I’d text him to see what the next move was going to be. Sure enough, “Boss I’m gonna be there in the morning to wrap it up”. He’d come and work on it a few minutes and then something would take him away, until I’d text him again.

Y’all know I’m into AI and getting it to help me write poems and songs, so I wrote him some of each. We wrote him a country ballad about my broke down truck. Then over time another love song about my truck.

Realizing this young man may not relate to my old fogy kind of music, I finally wrote him a rap song. It got him back over here but he told me “Man, I ain’t into Rap Music”.

I said good, get this pickup going or I’m gonna keep sending you Rap Songs.

A few days ago I texted him and told him that if he’d get on this project that weekend and finish it up, we could come in under a year on this repair. Well he kicked it in the rear and got going. He missed that mark one more time, but on November 18th he was able to fire it off and it ran like a top.

Only problem all the electrical on the right side of the truck was dead so I still couldn’t start driving it.

He returned yesterday, November 23 and got that problem iron out, so now I can get in that old black truck and head out down the road this morning.

But I just noticed that my registration sticker is out. It expired back in January 2024.

I’m going to wing it and head out to pick up a grocery order at HEB in it, even if it hair lips the Governor.

I’m tempted to wait until after the first of the year to get the new registration on it. You know if I do that I won’t need to take it for an inspection sticker, because that all changes in 2025.

I’m told that GM engineered a weakness in these vehicles when they came up with them shutting back to four cylinders when you’re idling or at low speed, then going back to eight cylinders when driving down the road. So there are a lot of these trucks that have had this issue. All this in the name of saving our planet.

I truly have showed lots of patience.