Nice save Stan. It continually amazes me that so many people scrap or discard vehicles or machinery that only needs relatively simple and minor repairs. My first Massey Ferguson 65 tractor had a Continental gas engine, and I got it cheap because it was hard to start and ran like crap. Turned out that two of the plug wires were in the wrong position on the distributor cap. Total cost was $0.00 and a couple minutes to look up the firing order. My current Massey Ferguson 65 is a diesel, and also was running poorly, losing power under load as if starved for fuel, and not charging the battery. All it needed was new fuel filters, sediment bowl cleaned out, and I had to rewire it. Total cost less than $30.00. I've never bought a new lawnmower because people throw them away due to cheap and simple to fix problems like a bad spark plug or a carburetor bowl and needle valve gummed up with old ethanol gas.
A production worker recently asked me if I could look at his 18 Volt DeWalt battery drill. He was going to buy another one because he thought the gears were stripped out. He brought it to work and showed me how the drill ran, but the bit would stall while trying to drill a hole in a nearby pallet. I took it and turned my back to him, and simply turned the torque limiting adjustment, which I saw was on the lowest setting. I gave it back in seconds, and told him it was fixed. Skeptical, he tried again and drilled a clean hole in the oak runner and was amazed that I "fixed" it in seconds. He bought me a coffee for saving him the cost of a new battery drill.
Same thing happens with guns too. Many gun owners will dump a gun dirt cheap simply because they don't have a clue how to diagnose or fix relatively simple problems. Now you only have to hope your neighbor doesn't think he sold the Polaris Ranger too cheap, and has hard feelings about it. Chances are it would have rotted away, or ended up hauled to the scrap yard if you hadn't seen the potential.
