Thursday, July 19, 2018

Adventure Wagon S1E1: The Retrieval

Well, it's been just over a week, and what a span it's been.

As many of you know, I've been on the hunt for a new car for myself. Why? Well, my old car was lacking in a few areas. Firstly, it was a bit too expensive for me these days, and secondly it was just too small given where my life is going moving forward.

It was a long, and kind of insane weekend of looking for a used car in a place about 5 hours away from where I live. Why so far? Simple. There's nothing where I live, and everything listed for used was trash in my price range. The Front Range of Colorado was the prime area to dig up some weird wagon fun.

After a list of about 50 cars, many of them disappearing, being sold, or never hearing back from, and driving all over Eastern Colorado (from Greeley to Colorado Springs), the search finally ended.

So, the only solution was to find something larger and more easily adapted to a life of moving about the country. The answer to what that would be? As it turns out, a nearly 20 year Volvo wagon.

No, it wasn't the only thing that I was looking at. Also in the running were a few Subaru Outbacks, a BMW, and even an Audi was in the mix for a little. That said, the Volvo was where my heart kind of was for a ton of reasons and one of them being that I just love the sleek boxy style of the turbo bricks of old.

Since that picture, there's been a lot of work done to the Adventure Wagon as well...

A ton of cleaning, a new driver font inner tie rod, the rear driveshaft was pulled (more on this in a minute), new tires, new headlight bulbs, new wipers (front, rear, headlights), a small patch to the driver's seat, and some seafoaming fun.

Now, about that driveshaft. Turns out, as luck would have it, the rear driveshaft on this car can be pulled out and everything be 100% fine and okay. Which, admittedly, is a little weird. Either way, since that thing needed removed as it was bad; I'm glad it was an easy fix. I do have every intention of getting it repaired but not until after the road trip. So, for a little while, going to be FWD only. No biggie on that.

Overall, I spent a bit more than I had intended thanks to the repairs but we managed to get everything ready to go! There was a lot of confusion, and some worry, but so far I've driven it about 1,000 miles and it's been amazing...even wounded as it was when we first picked it up!

I could write a lot more here, and I likely will continue this story. However, time of the essence and I'm about to go on a massive roadtrip with the adventure wagon here. So, stay tuned for updates from the road regarding that!

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