Nephew's Pickup Truck: What to do, opinions appreciated...
Hey folks,
Off-topic discussion here. I'm just looking for opinions, and blurbs of insight that I may have not considered for myself.
I have a good nephew who's about 18 years old I guess. His mother is my wife's sister. His mother has always been a mooching bum. However, over the last few years (of like 30 years bumming), she's worked as something like a teacher's aid. Just enough to rent some place, but that's all. She's been in a "state" of divorce for 10 years, ran the husband off (the king of the mooching bums) like 10 years ago, and he's paid very very little child support for his 5 kids. I tell you this just to give you some background on this son.
These kids are surprisingly good kids. Non-bumular (so far). This nephew, let's call him Brad, is working 2 jobs, going to school, and has a girlfriend that lives somewhere sort of far away, (130 miles). Brad lives in south GA, very rural. To the point...
His mudda somehow (I think the father managed to help a bit) bought her son a 2002 or 2003 Dodge Ram 1500. Yeah yeah, I know. Not such a quality vehicle, but they could afford it and Brad was happy to have a truck. And Brad really got to liking his truck. About a month ago, it stopped running. Towed it to a repair shop and it has been sitting. I called the shop and they were nice enough. They said it's just a blown head gasket (which is not what I was expecting from Brad's description of how it stopped running). The mechanics say that it's too expensive to repair.
Now some mechanics, I have respect for (a lot I do not). Let's say you get a vehicle worth $2,000 on a good day, and it requires a $1,500 repair. A good mechanic is probably either going to NOT work on it, or strongly recommend NOT to work on it. Because their risk to get stiffed on such a repair gets rather high. And that's where this mechanic shop is.
So Brad's truck has just been sitting in limbo while the rest of the bum family try to figure what to do. All this is going on about 220 miles away from me.
I've done 2 or 3 head gaskets, but of FAR SIMPLER engines. I've done other work, even as deep as requiring the removal of cams. This would be the deepest I will have dug, simply because of the architecture of a V8. His engine is a 4.7L V8. And yes, they're known to blow a head gasket.
I've got 2 weeks off during Christmas. I'm considering going down there and hauling his truck to my Mother-in-law's house, she's got a nice big garage in which to work on this truck. And just going to town digging into the truck and replacing the head gasket. Brad can help me when he has time (and he would help me too, he's a really good kid). Brad just doesn't have a male role model in his life, and nobody he knows has 2 nickels to rub together to help him.
The problem is, as I see it, I think this would take 2 whole days (for me), and that's based on everything going PERFECTLY, and having all the service parts I need ready to go. But the bigger problem is, crap like this NEVER goes perfectly (for me) and I'm concerned we will start digging into this engine and find more crap wrong with it, than expected (like a dropped valve / valve seat) and those items would have to be addressed and the cost would go way up. I saw exactly that, on a 4.7L Dodge engine, and the guy just replaced the entire head with some kind of new / rebuilt aftermarket head with all the valvetrain ready to go.
And the kicker is, I could put all this work into his truck (and admittedly I could screw it up, but I'm meticulous), and it could go 3 months and throw a rod or similar.
So, I don't know ... what's your opinions? Even if I were to do it, and it were an inexpensive massive success, there's no dancing girls in it for me. No atta boy. No pat on the back. When it's done, I get to tuck my tail between my legs drive home and pay bills. Even with no 40 virgins, I would still feel good about helping this nephew. On the flip-side, I could be opening one massive can of worms by working on this truck. I just don't know. And I don't have room at my house to bring it here and play with it.
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