Van Hägar needs some serious help

 Recently, Jazzi and Jesse were driving a used car that I had purchased 2 months ago and was selling to them in installments. They were driving on the interstate when the car started smoking and spinning out, and they ran into the wall of the interstate. They initially thought it was a blowout, but upon inspection of the vehicle, the rear axle had broken in half. They were the only vehicle involved in the accident. Luckily, they were approaching an exit and had slowed down considerably when it occurred; otherwise, someone easily couldve been injured if not killed.

The vehicle in question was a Ford Windstar, purchased used for 1200 dollars only 2 months ago. With only liability insurance, this no-fault accident was not covered. The car is totaled, and we're dealing with the additional costs of towing and storage, which adds another $275 to our total money lost. Between the 3 of us, we only had 2 cars to use for daily commutes before this. Now, we only have 1 working vehicle (that also has a check engine light on/problems). 

The 3 of us have a very unfortunate history of car accidents and failures over the past 5 years, including both touring and personal vehicles. We're asking for help for the first time now, after a long series of unfortunate car mishaps. This is less about one car in particular as it is about our constant struggle to have reliable vehicles for our daily commutes. For you to understand the backgroung of this situation and why we need help so bad, so here is a timeline of our car troubles from when the first van broke down to the present situation:


2014: 1988 Chevy van: Breaks down on us 3 or 4 times throughout our first tour. We call AAA mutiple times, have to tape bags of ice to the hood to keep it from over heating, etc. The transmission goes out, so we get rid of it.

2014: We buy an old 1980's ambulance for $850. We have to do tons of work to make the insides useful, and spend another $400 on getting the electronics worked out. We lose the transmission to the mountains on the way home from our first and only tour with it. We get home, and the engine literally catches on fire. We end up scrapping it.

2015: Tired of old vehicles and their trouble, we all throw down on a nice, used Chevy G-20 conversion van- one previous owner, meticulous care, low miles, $5000 cash. We take one trip to kansas and back, and the engine seizes, throws the pistons, and cracks the transmission. It's totaled. It costs us $1200 to get home, riding in the cab of a semi. We sell it for $200 for parts.

2016: Now completely broke, I take out a loan and buy a used Dodge van, that will surely solve all of our problems. Wrong. We have major issues with it before we even leave Nashville. We have to sink another $1200 into it. We move to Richmond, and it works for a while. We attempt to take it on tour. We get 40 miles away from our house, and the van breaks down. The transmission is thrown.

2016: Jazzi uses some inheritance to buy a nice, reliable Dodge Caravan for 5,000. Someone runs a red light, t-bones her, totals the car, and hospitializes her. Compounded with chronic illness, the accident causes her to lose her job. She's unable to work for 8 months.

2016: The city puts up signs in neighborhoods with no off-street parking saying they have to be cleared for "leaf removal". Jazzi and Jesse's only other mode of transportation, a Subaru legacy station wagon, with a bad starter and dead battery, is towed by the city. The towing and storage fees are more than the car is worth.


2017: I trade in my dream drumset, a $1400 Pearl crystal beat, a for an '88 Ford van. I spend a year pouring money into it, trying to make is road-ready. After spending hundreds in work on it, I find out that what I thought was a bad starter is actually the entire wiring harness. It's totaled. I get $100 for it from the scrap yard.


The three of us live together and share vehicles, and we likely will for the foreseeable future. Jazzi has a chronic pain disability and can only work part-time. Jesse and I both work full-time/overtime. We are hitting a wall with how much we're able to afford even with all of us working as much as we can. We're asking for help now, for the first time, because of how difficult things have gotten for us. This isn't a fund raiser to pay for our band, it's more about us as people. We hope you think of this as being about a family who need reliable transportation to continue to work and live.


We own 2 used cars with problems we can't afford to fix. We lost a $1200 vehicle we owned outright. The amount of money we've lost in cars over the years is in the tens of thousands. We have never asked for help before, but we are now because this is our only option. The amount we are asking for is enough for a down payment on a car that's more reliable and to repair our 2 other vehicles. We hope that soon all 3 of us will have a safe way to work and back.