[71SportRagtop]

My daily driver is a 99 Chevy Suburban 4WD. I've had it now for going on 8 years. It's got 138,000 miles.

It's been an excellent truck. I use it like a truck. My wife and I own a small vacation home in the Pocono mountains of PA. I've been using this truck to haul my wife, 2 kids and a dog up there for years. Up there I tow a small fishing boat with it, I use it to drop that fishing boat into a few different lakes sometimes needing 4WD to pull the boat out of the water. I've even had the rear quarters and exhaust under water and it pulls out of the lake like a champ. In the winter I run it up to the Poconos for skiing and it's awesome in the snow. 1-2 feet of snow is nothing for this truck.

I have 2 kids and a dog and it's still got plenty of room for all of us. I even used it to tow my 68 Firebird home when I bought it last month.

That being said the old truck is showing it's age. It's definitely burning more oil than it ever did. I'm adding about a quart every 2-3 weeks and I'm running 20W-50. I'm getting minor rust spots down on the lower 1/4's and it's all dinged up from fishing, skis, 2 kids, ect. Also my A/C hasn't been cold. I charged it up last summer and it didn't make it to the end of the summer.

I took the truck in to be inspected today and my mechanic, who is a good friend, told me that it needs some serious suspension work. It needs upper and lower ball joints on both sides, the passenger side upper control arm bushings are shot, it needs sway bar end links, then it will need to be aligned after all that work is done. I'm looking at about $1300-1500.00 worth of work and that's with him not even touching the A/C system.

I can't imagine that this truck is worth much more than $3000.00. Do I want to sink that kind of cash into a 13 year old truck with that kind of mileage?

I'm thinking I can either sell it as a mechanics special listing all the work needed for say $1500-$2000 and then add a few bucks to that to buy a newer truck. Or I can sink the money into it for the suspension work, add another $3-400.00 to have the A/C system fixed properly and just run it until it dies.

My alternative would NOT be a new vehicle. I'm sorry but I'm not forking over $40,000 for a new Suburban, plus I simply HATE car payments.

Decisions, decisions.....