Meet “The Chief”.

“The Chief” is Katya’s first car. It is a 1987 Jeep Cherokee Chief 4x4. She only cost us $600 and an extra $675 in repairs, but for the money she is a good little car. It has nice tires, is four wheel drive, has a good interior and is a nice mid-sized metal tank. Granted, like many of us, she comes with issues.

Her main issue is her driver’s side door. It not only has a rusted hole in it, it has issues closing. That means when you are driving in the early morning you get a nice cold breeze on your tushy (as I did this morning driving it to the mechanic). But Katya is looking for gainful employment and we will have the local body shop fix that part up soon. Since this is her car, she has to pay for it. There are a few other rust spots on the car, but we will see how much time, money and effort Katya wants to put into making this car pretty.

Life Lesson: Anything worthwhile is going to take effort

The previous owner was one of those people that wasn’t a big believer in maintenance. It has become very apparent that although certain parts of the car are in great shape, he only fixed things as they broke. So when Bob (my hero) spent the entire weekend working on this car with Katya – he found a lot of rust. On the upside, he was able to use his torch to “unfreeze” certain bolts. He had fun doing that. So, Katya can only drive this car as far as AAA will tow it back for free. Thank goodness for AAA and cell phones.

So as of now, “The Chief” has new rear brakes, front brake rotors & pads, rear U joints, gear knob, license plate light and a lot of new fluid and oil. Hopefully she will run without issue for a long time.

Not to mention I hope Katya finds a job so she can pay us back for all this.