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Ambulance HELL
The hellish nightmare of the Mountain
Ambulance... When you love old cars, it’s
like a heroin addiction…it causes you to do stupid things, things
you know you shouldn’t do but cannot help (like buying more cars
than you have space for or the money to fix) also, much like a
heroin addiction, loving old cars causes you to consort with shady,
questionable individuals whom you never would have anything to do
with if you were in the right state of mind and didn’t desperately
want a car from them. This is one such story… A few weeks ago I bought another
ambulance from an individual out here known as Crazy Dave. I knew
better than to expect the process to go smoothly even though the car
supposedly ran and drove because I have dealt with Crazy Dave before
and I know that something always goes wrong. I just didn’t ever,
in my wildest dreams, expect it to devolve to the circle of hell
that I did not previously know existed in the world of
ambulance/hearse retrieval. The main culprit in this wretched story
of humiliation, pain and failure was this car…a 1966 Cadillac
Superior Hightop Ambulance… The thing with Dave is this…he
sells ambulances, and there is ALWAYS something that goes horribly
wrong with the buying process, but he sells them so damned cheap
that you’d be crazy not to buy a rare collector car for that
price. I relate the situation to people like this…as a classic car
guy, you are ALWAYS horny to have one more car. It’s like a harem.
Dave is like a girl who is really, REALLY hot and you totally know
she will put out and it will be some good action, but the thing is,
she’s crazier than a shithouse loon and as such you are going to
end up with something extra you didn’t know you were going to get.
Maybe it’s just crabs and you can take a bath with some of that
crab juice to get rid of them, maybe it’s full blown Aids and you
might die. YOU JUST NEVER KNOW. Take for example the time I
bought a 1974 Miller Meteor Lifeliner for $1600 from him. Great
price and right before I left he told me he put some valid plates on
the car so I would be safe for the ride home. So about 10 miles out
on a trip of 80 miles the car dies and I have to pull off to the
side of the road. I come back the next day with parts to fix the car
and it is gone! Well, since no one I know of would steal a broken
ambulance I called state patrol who informed me that yes, they
impounded the car because the plates Crazy Dave classified as
“valid” actually belonged to someone from Arkansas for a Jeep
that had not been registered since 1985. This is just a small sample
of the kind of crapolla you get when dealing with him. I’d tell
you more about previous experiences, but it’s like opening a
bottle of Pepsi that has been half frozen and shaken for 42 days
straight by retarded howler monkies, you have to let it all out
slowly, gradually releasing the tension and frustration because if
you let it out all at once your
head would explode under the extreme release of pressure. So anyway, he calls me to let me know he
has a rust free 1966 Superior Hightop for sale, and it is…$350!
Now weighing in at 7,500 pounds and with scrap steel at $80 per ton,
no matter WHAT else is wrong with the shit burrito of a car I KNOW I
can make some money back, so I figure it is time for me to head back
to his far flung house to see if this was going to be the time I got
that proverbial case of Aids instead of crabs. It was.
I call him up to see if the car needs anything. “Nope,
it runs and drives” he tells me. “So I don’t need to bring anything with
me?” I ask. “Well, it needs a fuel pump” so I ask “Well, is that to
say the fuel pump is going out, completely gone, missing, or what?” so he
clarifies with “It needs a fuel pump”…ok, not getting anywhere
here…”So the car will not move because I need to install a new fuel pump
then?” to which he tells me “Oh no, it runs and drives”. This repartee
is repeated for about 5 minutes before I give the fuck up because he obviously
doesn’t grasp the concept that I am trying to nail down, mainly that a car
either needs a fucking fuel pump or it doesn’t and I want to know which it
is before buying a $35 part I don’t need. Now, before I go further, let me show you two pictures of
what the road to Crazy Dave’s house is like. First of all it is a series of
sharp turns up a mountain side on steep, unpaved roads with no guardrails,
it’s like the damned road to Mordor with the possible exception that a
fucking ORK wouldn’t even drive up it. He’d tell you to shove that ring
where Gandalf’s staff don’t shine. The last half mile up the mountain is
actually impassable by anything other than 4X4 and as such a normal car has to
park and the occupant has to walk the rest of the way up. This also means you
get to lug whatever tools and parts up a half mile of muddy, steep ass
terrain. Take a look at these two pictures, if you click them you can see the
full view of this damned road... See that little speck? That’s a full sized hearse
parked at the point of no return. So we walk up to his house with some parts
and tools and start working on the car. I figured at least give it a try and
attempt to start the engine. Now, first off the car has no keys, a slight
detail he forgot to mention to us before coming up. So we spend some time
figuring out how to hotwire a 1966 Cadillac. After we do that the car still
doesn’t start, so I figured I would get under it and take another look. Well
first off, the floor REEKS of cat urine, which just adds to the ambiance of
crap. Once I am down there I notice that the lines to the pump have all been
cut completely off for some reason, including the metal lines with the
threaded fittings. Soooooo, we leave and come back after I picked up an
aftermarket electrical pump because I can just set it anywhere under the hood
(for only a trip of 80 miles it doesn’t matter that much) and I won’t need
to remove the fan and power steering pump to do it. We head up there and lug a
gas can, a jack, the parts and hoses and a toolbox full of every conceivable
damned tool known to man. If we encountered GOD on our journey, GOD would get
motherfucking fixed with all the shit we lugged up that road. This is where it gets good, and by good, I mean fucked up
beyond the capacity for rational thought… I install the pump and get in to crank the engine. Still
it doesn’t start. I get out and watch it and find that even with the
electrical pump fuel is not moving through the glass filter, so to me the
obvious answer is that the tank is dry and we need more gas. So we head back
down the mountain, get 5 gallons of gas and haul that shit back up the side of
the mountain, adding about another hour to this ordeal. Now, at this point,
given what I have told you so far, would you even suspect for a minute that
adding gas to this car would be as easy as opening the tank filler door and
pouring it in? Of fucking course not! Why is this? Well it was not that easy
because Dave backed the ambulance into the garage. No, I don’t mean he
backed up into his garage, I mean he backed IN TO the garage, as in he rammed
about 7 inches of the backend of this vehicle through the drywall because he
can’t park for shit and it is buried in his house. So we now get to unwedge
this autoturd and push it forward by hand which we do on one flat tire because
since the last time I saw this car he managed to ram several things with it
and flatten one tire. So I am up front hooking the battery up and I ask Amber
to go back and figure out where the gas tank is since hearse and ambulance
makers in the 60’s couldn’t come to a common damned consensus on where
they should all put the filler tank. About 30 seconds later I hear Amber… “There is no fucking tank on this fucking car.” Amber
swearing is NEVER a good thing because she rarely does it, and when she thinks
things are fucked, you’d better believe it is a steaming pile of fucked with
a side order of fucked with a triple fudge choco chunk bowl of fucked for
desert. “What?” I ask. “There’s no damned GAS TANK on this GOD DAMNED CAR.
He sold us a car with no damned tank!” Sure as crap, I get back there and wouldn’t you know
it, $350 ambulance doesn’t include a repository for fuel. Part of this is my
fault really, I mean I never even ASKED if the car was designed to hold
gasoline, I just ASSUMED that “Runs and drives” meant something like
“Has four tire, a gas tank, keys, and HAS NOT been driven into a wall in the
mean time”. Now at this time it is 4:00 am and I call him up inside
his house to inform him that the following is going to happen – 1. He is refunding $150 of our money. No, I am not making this last part up for comic effect
either, we discussed pushing it off the cliff and claiming that the brakes
failed if the cops got there before we got the fuck out. The only thing that
stopped us was the fact that there was a house at the bottom and I know, just
KNOW that even if every law of physics stated that this piece of shit car HAD
to stop before reaching the house, it would defy all known laws JUST to crash
through it and spite us, which if it did it would probably kill everyone
inside and you just KNOW that’s the sort of thing that causes you to have to
fill out some hefty paperwork with the local authorities. Join us for another installment of this column on 5-16 as
well as more new hearse girls… -Zachary Byron Helm
Copyright © 2005 Denver Hearse Association. All Rights Reserved.
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