2001 GMC Sonoma 4x4

[Dougnuts]

Last week we lost my 90 year old Grandfather. You all would have loved him. He rarely, if ever, sold a vehicle and he had his own junkyard. His hobby was scrapping metal, so he would always buy little trucks to run around town, hauling scrap back to his junkyard or to load onto his trailer. He lived 1200 miles away from me, so I didn't get to see him but once or twice a year, unless he came my way to visit. He was a GM guy, always cycling through large GM trucks and small trucks for runabouts and the aforementioned scrapping. Sometime in the last few years, he bought this 2001 GMC Sonoma SLS 4x4.

Last weekend, as the family was meeting every day to divide up the estate, my Mom asked me which cars I would like her to try and get. This truck was marked as non-running, but it appeared to be in good shape. Like a lot of other car people, I have begun to appreciate early 2000's vehicles, for their reliability and repairability. We knew he parked it for a reason, but I figured that worst case, I'd tow it home and fix it. Put me down for that one, Mom.

Once the cars were divided up, and I received the news that we got the truck, I enthusiastically pulled around the block (Grandad also seemed to have a proclivity for buying up cheap land), hooked up the jumper cables ( 2023 date code battery) and turned the key.

I was greeted to a huge cloud of dust coming off the cooling fan and a dash that looked like this:

The temp gauge would quickly resolve itself and hitting the trip button revealed that it only had 120k miles, score! I pressed the A/C button and it also works, winning!

I put it in gear and drove it around the block, back to the house. One of my family members was outside, and the look on their face was shock and a little jealousy. I left it idling to charge the battery and wait for the inevitable issue to rear it's ugly head. Why did he park it, what surprise does it have in store for me? Will it be expensive? At least I know I can drive it onto the trailer.

 

[Dougnuts]

This same morning, we had gone to a local Walmart to get some fresh fluids. While we didn't know which vehicle(s) we may end up with, we knew they would be from GM, so we knew which fluids to get.

With that said, let's inspect the Sonoma a bit further. Fluid levels looked good, the oil even looked clean. However, the coolant overflow was a little low and the coolant in the radiator, while full, didn't look very healthy. No problem, I have what I need and will change it out tonight, before leaving tomorrow.

Let's look over what kind of cleanup is going to be required.

Interior:

Bed:

I decided not to worry about the interior, as I had a plan. The bed got cleaned out into a local dumpster. Yes, I reluctantly scrapped the Eeyore toothbrush holder. I drove to a local gas station and added about 15psi of air to each tire.

After dealing with estate items all day, we loaded up and drove the 20 minutes to where we were staying......is that a slight odor of coolant I'm smelling? These 15 year old tires sure do make some noise at highway speeds.

I pulled the truck into the garage and didn't find any coolant leaks, nothing even dripping on the ground. I could smell a little oil burning off the engine, but the underside looked dry. Still winning! I drained and filled the coolant in the radiator and topped off the overflow bottle. FYI, that radiator petcock was not easy to reach! The next morning, I am beginning to feel confident that the truck would make it a few hours, where we planned to rent a U-Haul trailer and tow the truck the remaining 1045 miles home.

 

[Dougnuts]

At this point in the trip, our goal was to make it 196 miles, RoadKill style, to rent a U-Haul trailer in Ogallala, Nebraska. If things went well, perhaps we'd keep on trucking on I-80, where the speed limit was 75mph. The sense of adventure was palpable. I donned my Grassroots Motorsports shirt, for good luck, and we hit the road at sunrise.

We stopped for gas at the nearest station, just to check if the nearly full tank reading was accurate. It wasn't. Twelve gallons in.....I wondered out loud what the tank capacity was. Google said 18.5 or 19 gallons, depending on trim. Great news, but what kind of fuel economy do I get? That's something that I'd have to figure out. We pulled off from the gas station, with the slight odor of coolant keeping my eye on the temp gauge for hours.

We made it to Ogallala, where stopped to eat and contemplate our options. My brother, whose truck we took, has zero experience towing a vehicle, and I only have a little. Did we want to drive across the windy Nebraska plains for our first long tow? We decided to risk driving the truck, against my Uncle's recommendation. We had tools, fluids, and the tow from Lincoln (if we made it that far) would be 275 miles shorter, so we filled up the gas tanks (21mpg), stopped at Walmart for a 12V to USB plug, threw away the old air freshener hanging from the mirror, and set the cruise for just over 75mph.

Edit: At this point, I had my wife call to have the truck added to our insurance, which costs around $30/mo. for liability. That seems high to me, but it's way more palatable than the $150/mo. I had been paying for full coverage on the new Tesla MY Juniper.