Retiring Black Beauty

Yesterday I was finally able to share some amazing news that Allyssia and I have been keeping a secret for a while now and wanted to leave that blog post to just revealing that.  Today I have some bitter sweet news.  After bring my old truck in for an inspection sticker a month ago I came to find out that the old girl needed quite a bit of work for an inspection sticker.  I was pretty hurt by this news but was planning on doing the work to keep old Black Beauty on the road for another year because this truck has been through a lot with me. 

You can't go to far down though my blog without seeing this truck in the background or even being the center of attention.  This truck spent many a day up to Peru at my old woodlot hauling equipment up there and hauling wood back home and has been on so many excursions chasing old tired iron.  We discussed the options of fixing what needed to be fixed or buying a newer truck and I started to get prices to have the repairs done until the transmission started to leak, actually hemorrhage transmission fluid.  It took me multiple quarts to plow the driveway last storm.  With no inspection sticker and leaking ATF we started cracking down on finding a new truck.  After testing and checking out multiple different trucks we settled on one in our price range.

It is a 2005 Ford F-350 with 70,000 miles on it.  It is rust free with good tires and it already has the goose-neck rails in the bed.  We ended up going with the dual rear wheels because it was one of the only low mileage trucks in our price range.  We were also looking to upgrade the cab size to fit a car seat in the coming years so this extended cab fit the bill.  It's not my old faithful black flatbed Ford but I think that it will serve us very well.

As far as old Black Beauty goes I plan on fixing the problems over time.  If I have the time I can fix most everything myself such as the floor pans and cab mounts and when the time comes I can dive into the transmission.  Until next time stay in touch, check back often, and don't forget to leave a comment.