[V8] Question of Theory: NAC...well, VERY little Audi Content

[Roger M. Woodbury]

Well to my great surprise I have bought a new-to-me truck, and I didn’t have
to go half a continent to find one.

 

The issue here in Maine is the liquid stuff that the DOT pours on the roads
in winter.  It is guaranteed to totally destroy the underpinnings and lower
bodies of any vehicle that isn’t made of galvanized steel, and even those
aren’t totally immune.  So buying a “good” older truck is problematic:
anything older than new is already rusted to pieces, which means that in
looking for a “duty” truck for our new home, I was prepared to go south or
west or have the truck shipped here all at enormous, non-truck cost.

 

Then day before yesterday about two miles from home there beside two campers
was this white, 1998 Chevrolet pickup.  As we drove by, I could see that it
had four wheel drive and that it was a ’94-95,’96, ’97, or ’98.  Someone had
washed it carefully and it shown in the early afternoon light.  I decided to
stop on the way home and take a look. That it was parked next to a travel
trailer was promising because that might have meant it was used for towing
said trailer to Florida in the winter.

 

Late that afternoon my wife and I stopped to check it out. It was a
“strippie” truck.  A Cheyenne with bench seat and no “luxury” options like
electric windows, but it was clean, and not all “stove up” as they say up
here in Maine.  It was a ¾ ton and although not perfect, it wasn’t rusty
around the cab corners, or the bed
even underneath the bed it was clean and
not showing a lot of sign of Maine Rural Road Cancer.  There was a number to
call and when I got home I called and made an appointment to see it
yesterday.  The sign on the window said $3900, FIRM.  

 

So I drove it yesterday.  116,000 miles, and as tight a truck as I have
driven this side of new.  It had new tires, which I found out driving it
home yesterday are very, very stiff, which add to the tight stiff feeling of
the truck.  The truck was used to pull a travel trailer and the elderly
couple who owned it are no longer able to go camping.  The truck is a 1998,
so I paid about half the current NADA book value.  

 

Here is one issue that I must deal with immediately. The former owners were
smokers.  Now, I don’t object o people smoking, so long as they don’t
exhale.  Unfortunately, the Spartan interior of  this truck:  bench seat,
rubber floor covering and very little else, is saturated with Essence of Old
Cigarettes, so it will take a gallon of Fabreeze or some such, and probably
the need to pull out the old seat and pitch it.  

 

So, for any of you with more experience in such things than I, can I fit the
split seats from a similar GM truck into this one without a whole lot of
agony and angst?  My choice will be to source a replacement seat from a
similar GM product and ideally, it would be one of the split 2/3rds/1/3rd
varieties.  The simple bench seat is fine, but the one in this truck has a
piece taken out of the driver’s side corner, so the bench itself is toast,
and given the smoke smell, I’d like to rip out the whole seat and replace
it.

 

And yes, come to think of it, a pair of Audi comfort seats would be waaaay
cool, too, if I could easily figure out the mounting issue.  Note that I
said comfort seats instead of sport seats.  I think the wider seats would
work better in this thing, than the sport seats, although I suppose it will
come down to what I can find, cheaply to make work. 

 

Comments?

 

Roger