#3: The Door Saga

If you look at the picture in this photo (on the trailer), and at the one from the last post where the truck is sitting in the field, you might notice something is different.

Yep...in the original picture, the pickup had a red door on the passenger side. In this picture, from the day we loaded it up to bring it home, the red door is gone, and there is a matching blue door. This is a good thing, right?

Not so much...

Debbie's grandfather had changed the doors out at some point because he was using the pickup I bought, and it needed a passenger door. The original door had messed up hinges, a broken latch, a broken window, and the interior metal cover was gone.

When Dave and I picked up the truck, the other pickup (a 1963 that also sold at the auction) was gone, and the blue door was back on the truck I bought- with all the problems that I mention above.

Since we're part of the Ritter family- we had access to the auction information. That coupled with an odd phone call from the other buyer wanting to buy my pickup the day before we went to get it let me to the conclusion that he'd traded out the doors.

So, on Wednesday morning, I called the Wallace County Sheriff and told him my story. Short version- he called the Sheriff in the county where the other pickup had landed, that Sheriff when out to check, and sure enough there was the other door on the other pickup.

With a little help from the Sheriff, the other buyer agreed to bring me the door back later that weekend- which would have been May 22 or 23. The Sheriff later told me that it was not the first time that something like this had happened with this fellow, and that if I didn't get the door back in a timely manner to let him know.

Saturday afternoon I called. He was going to bring it on Monday.

As we were headed out of town for a week in San Diego, I called Tuesday morning, and he was in Garden with the "doors". Turns out he'd actually crushed the door I wanted with his loader when he loaded his pickup (I verified this with the Sheriff later). He found two other red passenger doors, and gave me a choice.

I picked the better of the two, and now am back in business with the door.

Only problem, I still get to replace the window. That's better than the legal goo I'd have had to go through otherwise, and so I'll take it.

Excepting the window glass, the "new door has all the parts that are missing from the other one.

I'll try to add a pic of the new door tomorrow, and I'll add posts about getting the old girl to run...