The old Trooper

Life for most of us seems to be one step forward and two backwards.  Our current dilemma centered around our 1990 Trooper.  She's old, has nearly 300k miles on the odometer and looks like she's ready to collapse at any minute.  But the truth is that she's straight and just keeps trudging along.  (kindred spirit?)  Our road (which we're hoping will be repaired soon, Belize time) has taken it's toll on both of our cars.  The Trooper steering has become pretty loose and the front end sounds gave me the feeling that her parts were going to head in separate directions at any minute.  Also, the brakes would occasionally fade.  Not a good sign.  With a heavy heart we took her to Herman Peters in Santa Elena.  This was our first visit to Herman, but our good friend, Dave, has been taking cars there for years so we gave him a try. They pulled the front wheels off and gave the front end a tug.  Aha, everything was loose and rattled.  They started rattling off the parts that would be needed and I was getting a huge sense of doom.  These parts couldn't be used, had to be new.  More doom.  Art looked at me and shook his head.

We keep the Trooper as an extra vehicle, Rene uses it on the weekends for family errands and we like it to sit in the yard as evidence that someone is home, even when we're not.

The fellows phone around and priced parts.  We decided that we had to  go ahead and keep her running.  The incredible part is that Herman had all the repairs done the afternoon of the next day.  They replace most of the front end, the master cylinder and rear brake pads for, drum roll please, $660BZ.  Yes, that's $330US.   Can you imagine what it would have cost in the US? It was a sad hit to our limited bank account, but we're blessed that we had it.   The little champ trudged home minus lots of her rattles and brakes working great.  She may not be pretty, but she is a Trooper.    Blessings,   Gale