Ok, I’m back again
I’ve been very negligent about updating this blog, because I’ve had a lot going on recently.
The other night I uploaded a couple months of photos of Ryan, so be sure to check them out.
This weekend Melissa bought a van. She will be making the payments out of her monthly budget. It’s a 1999 Chrysler Town & Country. It’s in excellent shape, and the interior looks nearly brand new. It drives as easy as my car, and it’s a lot easier for Melissa to pack in Ryan and all of his stuff. It’s definitely a nice vehicle to have.
When we were researching the van, I ran a Carfax.com report on it. It was $20 for a one time report, or $25 for unlimited reports for a month. If anyone wants one run for free, just let me know. It only takes me a couple of seconds, and I can give you a link to view it online.
I’m going to make a better attempt at keeping this up to date for everyone.
Later!
cute kid, just browsing some blogs saw your page. this is my site: http://www.designconnection.com/
Great picture. I bought a 1996 Town & Country new & had it until 2002. It was the best designed and most comfortable and useful vehicle I’ve ever driven. Unfortunately some of the engineering was the worst I’ve ever had. The vehicle came with a defective cooling fan relay which caused it to overheat one hot afternoon in the middle of nowhere, the plastic on the steering wheel was so bad that it actually fell to pieces before I’d driven it 10,000 miles, the windshield wipers kept coming on at random. Right after the 36,000 mile warranty ran out, the air conditioning compressor pump failed and locked up, it cost $1200 to fix, and the fix only came with a 1-year warranty. 54 weeks later, the same lockup occurred. Then they wanted to charge me $1800 to make the same repair, and didn’t offer me any options. On my own I figured out that the defective compressor could be removed and replaced with an idler pulley and a different fanbelt for just $200, so they did that. I drove the vehicle for several years with no A/C, it was tolerable, although hot in the summer. This bypass of the A/C is something no mechanic will ever tell you about. The day the lower right ball joint fell apart as I was leaving my driveway was its last with me, and after fixing that I traded it in, got next to nothing in trade-in for it. It still looked almost new. By then I had noticed that sometimes the auto transmission failed to engage when I shifted from reverse to forward, and I took that as a sign the trans was about to go. Looking around on the net, there are many complaints about the A/C and trans on this model, so be careful. (The A/C also runs whenever you have the defrost on.) If they don’t give you trouble, the van should be really enjoyable. I got around 18 mpg in town and 24-26 on interstate speeds. I would have bought another except for this engineering deficit on Chrysler’s part.