Truck of Malfunction

In addition to my exploits in painful home improvement, this weekend also saw the advent of even greater depths of malfunction for my lovely TOM.

For the longest time I've been waging war on my truck to get it shipshape enough to pass a state inspection. As it is a TOM, this will never happen, at least in Dallas, because it cannot pass the emissions test. Not that it fails the emissions test, it's really very clean burning, weirdly enough, but the sensors on the engine that monitor such things are shot to hell.

And again, as it is a TOM, there is no easy way to get them replaced that does not require me pouring bushels money directly into every available orifice of the vehicle. Thus, I had the brilliant plan of taking the TOM outside of the city limits to get the inspection done, where people don't care about such things as "emissions," or "the environment," or "clean air."

So when I went home for the weekend, I took a side trip to the mechanic's for a little inspecting fun.

The mechanic rolls the TOM into the garage, turns it on and goes "Hmmm, what is that?"

It sounds exactly like the TOM always sounds - namely two seconds from an untimely death. I am unconcerned. Dude wheels himself underneath the TOM, goes "Uh oh."

Son of a bitch TOM.

The mechanic goes ahead and puts the TOM on the lift so I can see the full glory that is the TOM's malfunction: there is a big-ass gaping chasm in the middle of my muffler/exhaust system. It defies all rational attempts at description, but invoking The Grand Canyon will get my sense of largesse across. Thing is shot to hell.

So in the end, I still managed to pour money into the TOM, this time directly into the tailpipe as it were, as the mechanic sawed/blowtorched off all my exhaust system and muffler and God knows what else, and replaced it with nice, new, shiny stuff.

To his credit, the TOM sounds 80,000 times nicer now, and it is newly inspected, but for the love, how much more will the TOM require of me? I'm pretty sure next time it will skip all pretenses and just ask for a couple of pints of my blood.