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Cheryl Hughes: Leap of Faith

Sometimes in life, you just have to take a chance, even if it’s just a little chance.  You have to look at a situation, weigh the pros and cons then decide yea or nay.  The same is true when it comes to investments.  I think it was Dave Ramsey who said, “If you don’t tell your money what to do, it will leave you and go to somebody who will tell it what to do.”

 

                We have a co-op student working for us who took a 500 dollar leap of faith that paid off in a big way.  Skyler tore the transmission out of his ’98 Ford F150.  He found a ’97 Ford F150 listed online for 500 dollars.  The seller, who lived in a nearby town, said the transmission was in good shape, but something was amiss with the engine, because it wouldn’t stay running in idle.  This meant the truck would have to be hauled on a trailer back to Morgantown. 

                Skyler has good friends and a good family, so he borrowed a trailer and some ramps then his friend, Lucas, and his dad went with him to haul the truck back to town.  When they got the truck back home, they discovered a hose had come loose from the bottom of the throttle body. They reconnected the hose and the truck ran like a charm.  Skyler drove it around for a while to make sure the transmission was in fact in good working order like the seller told him.  It was, so the crew set about getting the transmission over to the tech school, where Skyler and Lucas are students. 

                After they finished putting the ’97 transmission into the ’98 truck, Skyler drove it around to make sure everything was in working order.  It wasn’t.  The truck was missing and it wouldn’t shift right.  After a little research, he discovered that the plug on the side of his ’98 transmission was a 9-pin plug, but the plug on the ’97 transmission was only a 7-pin plug.  He went back to the ’97 truck and removed the wiring harness and computer then swapped it out in his ’98 truck.  It worked.  At this point, he has gained a working transmission, a wiring harness and computer for 500 dollars.  But there’s more.

                One week after Skyler put the transmission into his truck, he blew a head gasket on the engine.  He went back to the ’97 truck for the motor.  This time, he had to pay a mechanic $370 to put the motor into his ’98 truck.  (It’s important to know your limitations or you can undo all the previous success you have had with your investment.)  Skyler sold the old motor, old radiator, drive shaft and catalytic converters to a junk yard for $200.  He sold the ’97 truck body for $256.50.  He kept the rear differential from the ’97 truck as a spare, as well as the hood, in the off-chance that we get a late seasonal snow—there’s nothing like a car-hood sled.

                Skyler’s 500 dollar investment seems to have paid off, so let’s do the math: He paid $500 for the ’97 Ford F150.  He sold the parts he wasn’t going to use, as well as the truck body for a total of $456.50.  He is now $43.50 from making his total investment back, but he still has to pay the mechanic $370 to put the ’97 motor into the ’98 truck.  This means he now has $413.50 invested in repairing his ’98 Ford F 150.  But let’s look at what he got for that investment: a transmission, motor, wiring harness and computer, as well as a spare rear differential and a snow- sledding hood.

 Yeah, I’d take that deal all day, every day.  I told Skyler he might think about bringing trucks back from the brink of death as his life’s work.

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