Ok, so you all know the story so far. Here's where we are now.
Our new white van WILL be fixed.
The guy we took it to for the transmission is apparently a rip off artist. We asked for a quote and when the quote was too much for those willing to help us (plus our friend in the auto business kind of freaked out) we told them "No Thanks, we're coming to get it", only to find out that they had COMPLETELY disassembled the transmission - literally, taken it completely apart. Then charged us $500 for making it more broken. So at the moment it sits on the car lot of our friend, with the transmission parts in the back, waiting for us to find a new transmission for it (since the old one can't even be rebuilt, that's how bad they wrecked it.)
 | So for now we have a loaner. The church bought this van for us to use until ours can be fixed. I can't even begin to describe the generosity of these folks. We're a small church, about 30 people including the 10 of us, but we take care of each other. We've been the benefactor of that care-taking on many occasions. |
| The van is the same make and model as our white one, but it's about 15 years older and has nearly 100,000 more miles on it. It was a church van for the Calvary Chapel in our area, and supposedly it made a youth mission trip deep into Mexico earlier this year, but it's obviously been well used. But it runs and it's big enough. |  |
 | As you can see it's not nearly as nice as our white one, but beggers can't be choosy. It's not fuel injected like newer models are, so it pigs a lot more gas. But gas prices are falling, so that's been helping (though the CO2 emissions are not something we can help, thus another reason to fix the "good" one.) |
I took this shot right at sunset. Photographers call it "magic time". Even on our old camera, it makes this old van look good. I do kind of like the tire on the back, though, it's like an extra bumper (especially when our red van got totalled when hit from behind!) |  |
 | This was obviously the youth van because in spite of the torn up seats, the worn out carpet, the holes in the ceiling, it's got a brand new stereo with a remote and an iPod connector. It's loud enough to shake the windows on the house when we turn up the bass. (The kids love it, but it hurts my head!) |
Here's the back. You can see where constant use has worn out the carpet. However, they did install like 16 extra cup holders that slide out from under seats. I am looking forward to getting the white one back, though. Anyone have any leads on where to find an automatic transmission for a '93 Dodge Ram 350 passenger van? |  |
