[joe_a_buaiz]

I would say the absolute worst vehicle I've had, is an old Chevy Suburban. I still have it. It was a project truck, completely assembled from the ground up in the back yard. It has the 1976 1/2 chassis, 3 speed 2 range transmission with the bulldog gear, super-duty transfer case, 4-wheel drive with hubs that you have to get out and turn to lock (when I think of the times I've found myself nearly swimming in mud to try to get to those hubs...), very low gear ratio, eight lug non-slip differential axles, and an asthmatic 265 (or 267 or something like that) small block engine, that produces barely enough power to move this 7,000 pound truck. It averages around 7 miles per gallon, empty. It originally had a 427 that would smoke the tires in third, but it got 3 miles a gallon, so I changed over to a 350, which got around 5 or 6 miles per gallon. I don't want to install anything smaller, because then I will be holding it wide open all the time, and end up with even worse mileage. I won't have to worry about gas mileage anymore, though, when I build a few of my carburetors; I might even drop the 427 back in.
It's on it's third body shell, this one a 1984 (I think). Starting at the front: The steel bumper is kinked in, the plastic grill is held together with zip-ties and tape, the front fenders are kinked in, the hood is kinked out, the front doors are both kinked in, and the vent window on the driver's side is made of card-board and duct-tape. The back doors are also both kinked in, the driver's side is a replacement (wrong color) with a vent window held together by that stupid stick-on tint, and the passenger side was bent forward while open (I forgot to close it, then tried to back up into the woods, with predictable results), the rear quarter panels are bashed in, and the tailgate is a replacement (wrong color again) that had 'BACK OFF' spraypainted on it when I got it (I painted over it with a roller). And the roof leaks. And I can see the pavement through the floor. And the floors don't join up the walls anymore. And I'm afrid that the walls and roof are going to fall down over the floor while I'm on the road somewhere.

But it'll pull large trees out of the ground, roots and all.

---Joe