Hi from the hotel

NG,

Hellow again! Yea I know it's like slummin again...

Well we're in Long Island now. The wrecked Sonoma is gone, and we drove back to MD to buy a 95 Blazer to (nice shape - $7000). NY doesn't allow vehicle registration w/o residency (thus the MD purchase w/ temp plate from the dealer). Considering that a rental would have been $1K/wk for ~5 weeks, the $7K seems well spent.

Had quite a drive into LI w/ the 25' Penske towing the 87 S-10. The

87 is still here - parked at the hotel. Though I'm still thinking I will 'donate' it soon - may do a little to it if I can figure out why it runs poorly.

In a few weeks I'd like to buy something like a Z-71 Silverado Ext Cab

4x4. The Saturn is still with us too - my wife likes it and I will probably rebuild the engine whenever I get something else to drive while it's off the road.

Elliott PS: The 'email' address is now fake - this is via google.

Reply to
Elliott
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Good to here your getting closer to your final destination. I think buying the Blazer was a great idea in lieu of renting a vehicle. Have you started your new job yet? Or do you start at a later date.

Take care.

Brian

Reply to
NoSpam

Yo Elliot,

I found you a new project truck ;-)

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It's in your general neck of the woods now.

Brian

Reply to
NoSpam

Brian, Yea that would be good to put together with the 87 S-10 if I were living somewhere I could deal with it all. But... I'm still at a hotel. Yes I did start my new job - and I'm loving it here. LI is way better than DC from what I've seen. NG, The 95 Blazer is really nice too. But there's a story developing behind it... The dealer had it serviced in MD prior to us getting it and it was somehow overfilled with both oil and tranny fluid. They also used the old (non-Dex) antifreeze. On the way from DC through Baltimore it started blowing oil-smoke (all over my wife's car behind me)- and lessened as I slowed down and used overdrive rather than drive. At the 1st rest-stop I noticed it was primarily tranny fluid leaking from under it and that the levels were over-filled. Thus the rest of the way to LI, I kept it in OD and took it easy. Once here, I had it jiffy-lubed for $300. Thier initial job overfilled it again but they had a vacuum sucker to pull out some tranny fluid, and they drained some oil from it (good that I made sure they did it correctly). They changed the pcv too - the old one was totally oil-soaked. That seemed fine till yesterday when I went to upstate NY (binghamton) and on the way back is started setting the SES light on the long hills. Turn it off for a few seconds and the light is gone until the next hill (but was getting worse and worse). At a stop (after a while) a garage tried to read the OBD2 codes (it's a "95 obd1.999") - but their reader wouldn't connect to it

- neither would my autotap (later). They speculated the EGR valve. Later I noticed the vacume pipe to the PCV seemed a little poor and adjusted it to fit a little better - but this morning there was still some idle surging. The dealer I got it from intends to reimberse the jiffy-lube-job, and said to take it to a GM dealer for the code-reading. Since I'm hotel living and can't seem to get the codes out any other way, that's what I plan to do. Elliott

"NoSpam" wrote in message news:...

Reply to
Elliott

I'm always amazed at the prices you Northeasterner's have to pay for a truck. I looked at a clean 97 Tahoe loaded with leather interior and right at 100k miles for $7000. S-10's like you mentioned never go over 5 for a clean one. Most are in the 3-4000 range for a good example. 7 grand is a bit much for a 10 year old truck that cost about 10-11 off the floor.

Reply to
John Alt

NG, Wow dealers are expensive. Here's what I agreed to the GM dealer doing (in a pinch while hotel living and another 500mi planned for Saturday): TPS $150 (was $250 but I talked him down because he's doing the EGR too), EGR $400 (they said the old one had a blown diaphram - not cleanable) Tire Bal $65 Pinion seal (rear diff) $230 license plate light $18 key-fob remote $65

---- that'll cost ~$950 --- the dealer who sold it may reimberse some of it. They also quoted: Cap Rot wires $280 (that's smokin! - and unnecessary) Xfer & Diff service (Front, rear, and Xfer) $425 Caliper bushings $425 (or new reman calipers $664) Elliott

Reply to
Elliott

People 'round here seam to think if it's not 4x4 or FWD that it just explodes when it snows.

~KJ/TLGM

Reply to
KJ

Returning a troublesome truck because your dealer didn't do his job, priceless.

~KJ/TLGM

Reply to
KJ

Being a "non-resident" of NY, the only other option was/is to rent. That's about $1000/month depending on what I would choose for the vehicle. For the approx

8 weeks needed, that equals the inflated price I paid for this vehicle + repairs (that the dealer may still reimberse). Yea every dealer I've ever delt with has had very high prices, and the vehicles were no better than whatever I'd bought other times via the news paper. And I was just thinking the Cap Rot wires for $280 is a real example of another dealer's dishonesty - that vehicle doesn't have a rotor or a cap so either it's replacing parts unnecessarily or it's just wires at $280. Elliott
Reply to
Elliott

It's New York?

$50 for the sensor, .7 hours labor.

How does a digital EGR "blow" a diaphragm?

Close enough

Absurd. $10 tops for the seal, an hours labor.

Missing or just burnt out?

Okay, the toys cost a bit...

And quite expensive

Jesus, this is like three oil changes. Two words.... Suction gun.

Come on, I can buy reman calipers all day long for $30 a pop, figure and hour per axle to install and bleed.

Usually, prices like these elicit a "someones makin' a boat payment" comment. These guys must be paying off a yacht.

Reply to
Neil Nelson

You bought a 4 cylinder Blazer?

Reply to
Neil Nelson

oops - prior post, Rental car/SUV is rougly $1000/wk (I had written 1K/mo). Actually a MonteCarlo is ~$800 and a Blazer is ~$1200. A minivan maybe ~$1K. Elliott

Reply to
Elliott

And ol' Elliott is to goddamned stupid to realize he's being bent over................Vaseline will be another $100.

Doc

Reply to
"Doc"

"Elliott" wrote

Elliott, Elliott, Elliott.....isn't this a 95 Blazer we are talking about? With a 4.3 v-6 engine? I guess you don't actually look under the hood of the vehicles that you own, do you? Those "crooked" dealerships trying to sell you a cap and rotor, bastards!! Next they will try to sell you some new brake drums for the rear brakes, or round rims for your tires, or glass for your windows, or oil for your engine.

Ian

Reply to
shiden_Kai

Is that the dry price, or is vaseline included with that?

But neil gave me another good one.... hopefully I can use that to bend some other's over.....

~KJ/TLGM

Reply to
KJ

Nah, ya missed it up thread. He payed 7 grand for a 95 four banger. Does anyone have the heart to tell him in 95 the only engine option for a Blazer was a 4.3?

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I'm not sure about the accuracy of the info but I'm sure someone here does. Maybe he can use that info to bring that POS back to the dealer since it's obviously older and someone's played with the title/reg or pulled a fast one. Could be old Elliott read 95 instead of 85, too.

I'm still wondering though if your right and Elliott can't count to six (just playing with you, Elliott).

Reply to
John Alt

Thanks for the laughs guys... Yea I know the obserdity of what they quoted - and I only chose what it seemed to need and what seemed reasonable. Even the crazy price on the pinion seal can be 'reasonable' 2 days before a 600mi trip. That's how such companies get by - by finding people with unusual circumstances that need their 'genuine GM' service. And for me, as expensive as the prices I've paid are, it does solve the real problem of being a non-NY resident. A rental car would have cost the same (from 4/24 through

6/7) - and I would have had to give it back and had nothing for it. At least with this vehicle I do have one. And the insurance was only +$300 for adding comp/collision that the Sonoma didn't have. Neil, it's a 4.3L V6 - I don't see how anything I posted could have indicated anything different (you said 4, not me). And on the tires... It still seems to have a minor vibration over 70mph. I suspect there may be a little delamination in one of the tires (the NY dealer checked the Drive Shaft). Thus soon I may go back for a re-ballance and insist on a lamination validation or something like that for the price of $0 (kinda hard to resist going back with an 'issue' after they skipped the vasaline). Elliott
Reply to
Elliott
10 9 8 does solve the real problem of being a non-NY resident.
Reply to
TranSurgeon

Well, the V-6 doesn't have an EGR valve that uses a diaphragm and it does indeed have a distributor cap and rotor.

Actually, I don't believe I did.... But, my DSL is so fu*&#d up right now, I can't vouch for anything I've said.

Reply to
Neil Nelson

Neil is correct... It (95 blazer) does have a distributor. I got to look under the hood again and it does look like the original cap, wires, and plugs - perfectly harnessed. And after about 2K miles on the oil it's still perfectly clean and perfectly full (a "like new" engine at 90K mi).

And for the 600mi + side trips over the weekend it ran perfectly - so the work that was done seemed the correct items it needed (though dealer expensive).

Will need to waite and see how much the dealer who sold it will reimberse.

And going from Long Island to Binghamton it was rather amazing the price differences for the vehicles for sale along the road. Upstate they seemed about 40% less (that's a WAG (wild ass guess)) based on vehicles in the roughly $5K to $10K range.

Elliott

Reply to
Elliott

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