Ok, so update on the 2000 Explorer (Green Truck).
Back in May, I lost the clutch slave cylinder pulling out of the parking lot at work. Drove home without a clutch, parked it, and borrowed the MIL's truck for the rest of the day. White Car's battery was stone dead, so put it on the charger overnight. Next day, was able to shuffle the vehicles around a bit and started driving White Car again. Lucky me, didn't get around to selling it.
Drove White Car for ~4 months before I got all the good parts swapped over from the 1997 Explorer (Black Truck) to get Green Truck going again. Black Truck donated a resurfaced flywheel, new clutch master and slave, new clutch/throwout bearing, functional rear O2 sensor, front part of the muffler pipe (flange on Green Truck was rotting off), misc. nuts and bolts to replace rusted/busted ones, etc. Pulled all the rocker panel trim off Green Truck and could not put it back on - rust had consumed necessary mounting holes. Cleaned up a few bits in front and painted them a non-matching green I got free at the local Re-Use center. Managed to put a nice cut in my scalp by dropping a driveshaft on it while putting loctite on the bolts I hadn't put into it yet. Swapped over a few misc. slightly better parts off Black Truck, too. Got it going and it smoked like mad burning out all the crud that went into the manifolds and pipes while working at getting bolts loose. Once all that cleared up it ran fine. Running RWD/2WD for now because I left the front driveshaft off - busted bolt in the front mounting flange, with a busted-off EZ-Out in it. Pay someone for an hour and a half of labor to swap on a better flange and hope the bearing preload turns out OK, or wait until I "have time" (ha ha ha) and just swap over the rebuilt axles from Black Truck?
Drove Green Truck for about a month like that, Check Engine light went on for a bit after the smoke and then went out and stayed out - no more rear 02 sensor code! Figured out something, too: my mpg tank to tank varies a lot partly because those air shocks in the rear are extremely inconsistent in terms of angle the tank sits at - and thus how much gas is in a tank when it is "full". Only getting about 16 something MPG or so average. Not horrible, but not great either.
Monday morning before driving to work I lost the rear brakes - after it being fine while moving the vehicles around to shovel the driveway on Sunday. Haven't taken a close look yet, but it looks like the hard line on the rear axle has developed a severe leak. Black Truck has a completely new rear brake system on a rebuilt rear axle - I "just" need to undo 24 bolts, two flare fittings and two parking brake cable connectors, tear apart the Black Truck parking brakes to get the levers freed up properly (Green Truck also has new rear brakes, but has the same parking brake problem...), and swap them over. If I do that, though, I might as well swap over the front axle too so they match and I can re-install the front driveshaft and have 4WD again. That's a lot more work...
Driving White Car again. Lucky again - haven't gotten around to selling it yet.
Needs an oil change, even though it burns enough to replace all 4 quarts via top-ups every 5,000 miles or so. Still drives good, gets 30+mpg. Will need brakes in the spring. Getting noisier, too. Rust holes are getting bigger, and it rides like crap with the blown struts.
The garage bay Green Truck lived in for 4 months being worked on is now full of stuff, so it's stuck outside in the increasingly inclement weather we have here in a MN winter. I can't just move the stuff back in the house - it came out of the house so we could sell it cheap. Decent desk and chest of drawers, or I'd just pitch 'em. Trying to flog them cheap on one of those neighborhood sale sites. Then I have no idea how long Green Truck will be in the garage this time around.
I have a serious "sunk costs" problem on my hands, as there's no economical way to fix Green Truck without doing all the labor myself, using the good parts from Black Truck. Paying someone else to do it and/or buying new parts would be just tossing away money. Scrapping both trucks would just throw away most of the money already spent, plus mean giving up on a hobby for the second time. Pretty close to doing that, TBH, but can't get past the "I should be able to do this - I did it before!" argument. Plus I still haven't had a chance to see if I like off-roading again. Starting to see why people have a daily driver *and* a cheap 'wheeling rig. Realistically, I've had 2 spare vehicles sitting around for nearly a year at this point, so it isn't like I don't know whether or not I can afford it. Clearly I can, I just haven't accepted that old trucks that need unplanned repairs along with the regular maintenance are *not* meant to be daily drivers...
Guess I'm mostly venting here. I just hope White Car holds together long enough that I can get Green Truck rolling again, Black Truck stripped and gone, and figure out what my plans are to deal with the coolant usage issue.
Whatever happens, if I get a replacement vehicle of any sort, it damn well better have an *external clutch slave cylinder*!
