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Dawg Story #5
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Dawg Story 5
Category: Automotive
If I hadn't had to live through this experience, I'd say it didn't happen, but every word you're about to hear is the truth and I'd stand by it to the death...and I do have witnesses...
The roughest experience I've probably had in my life was the move from PA to VA...not because I didn't want to make the move...I was going from a place where I wasn't wanted to where I was treated (and felt) like I belonged. I shoulda been in VA all along; moving is just the worst thing you can do...at least the way WE do it. We had been based in PA since the mid '80's...and had 60 years worth of stuff to move (the arithmetic don't line up, I know... just ride along here, kids). That's why the process was spread out over a number of years...ending with six months of misery at the end, where most of the equipment and stuff was moved. In that time, we had between 35 and 40 truckloads of stuff...steel, tile, planters, metal stuff, shop equipment, 20 + vehicles, automotive and racing parts, engines -- everything you can imagine-- going down the road. We had convoys of four and five trucks at a time on that road. Meanwhile we were still conducting business in PA, and overseeing construction in VA (and doin a lot of the work our dang selves -- hey, my family is pretty hard-core and you're about to see another example of it)...
In all these road trips, everything happened, and I mean everything-- blown tires, fuel pumps, ignition problems, at least one blown engine, the hitch broke on one of the trailers one time...'bout everything short of a wreck. This final six-month push started in late 2005...we'd been getting pretty well known in this area even if we weren't here full time at that point, and people would stop by just to see what we were bringing next...
Setting up for the March trip, we have to go back to the last day of January 2006. I was in the red '87 GMC stakebody truck and blew the engine on I-64 between Staunton and Charlottesville, VA...on a mountain we call the "Widow Maker"... we had to load the truck on the rollback (which my dad was driving) and pressed on to PA without sayin a mumblin word most of the way. The next day, I bought another engine and we took it and the truck to a truck garage to have it installed. It took them a month to change the engine...(we'd do it ourselves in an afternoon, but our stuff was in VA).
Fast-forward to March... the truck is ready to go the next time we're in PA, so we go get it and load it up...along with a number of other trucks. Again, I'd be driving it. My dad and a friend each left early Sunday March the 12th... later on once the other trucks were ready to go, we headed out. I had a bunch of stuff, including animals in my truck, when I pulled out on the road and headed up the hill to the filling station. About half a mile up the road the truck quit. I wound up kickin it out of gear and coasting back down to the end of the driveway, where I had to get under the hood. Did i mention how hard it was raining? I think I saw an old man with an ark go past me...
Bein it was Sunday, no parts stores were open and I had no way to get there if they were. So I had to "borrow" parts out of a distributor on a truck that was parked on the property (we later bought the truck, relax) and I did get that bully to run. But since it was so late by then, we decided to leave on Monday.
Monday was a sunny day, and we left. Problems didn't start until about 20 miles up the road when the transmission started slipping. My mom, who was following behind me in a Penske rental truck, told me there was a trail of oil behind me. So I pulled over, crawled under the truck and found the cats at the truck garage didn't tighten up the transmission lines. I had to buy a couple of wrenches and trans fluid at a service station before we got to far along. We got 'er all locked down, good to go. Then we get to Allentown and I-78 and my water temp is at 250 (it was overheating). So we stopped for lunch, let it cool off, then I removed the thermostat to let it run cooler... but it still wasn't right. It was still runnin hot, and then it got to actin like it was runnin out of fuel. Fuel pump. I crept along til we got to Carlisle. The thing was barely turnin a wheel, runnin 235-250 degrees when we pulled into an Autozone parking lot. With darkness and a thunderstorm approaching, I changed the fuel pump and water pump (and did my durndest to keep from cussin in front of my mother). Goody's Headache Time...
Before leaving, I crawled up into the back of the truck to feed the animals. Then we hit the road. The light wasn't working in the temperature gauge, so in the dark i had to hold my lit-up cell phone up to the gauge...dang thing was still gettin hot. But it started raining so hard, I was payin more attention to stayin on the road at that moment. After what seemed like forever, we pulled into the Flying J truck stop near Winchester, VA...halfway home (!!!!!!!!). I filled 'er up with fuel and looked under the hood. The radiator was empty cause it all boiled out, dadgummit. I filled it up and we pressed on a little further, till we'd had enough and found a motel (mind you, this was a 7-hour trip last week).
Before leaving in the morning, I took a gaze under the hood and could clearly see a crack in the right side cylinder head. Oh goody. Off to Advance Auto Parts in Woodstock, VA for some block sealer, then back to I-81. Oh yeah, along the way a vent line on my new fuel pump blew off and sprayed gasoline for about 15 miles...but hey, my blood runs cold... I was about bullet-proof by now.
We pressed on (the canvas tarp on the back of the truck was shredding by now), and stopped for lunch and to let that poor son of a buck cool down before we tackled the widow maker. Things were goin alright for a while...then we hit 29 south...I never remembered so much of it being uphill (uphill=hotter engine). I finally had to stop and take a look at it when the gauge pegged at almost 300 degrees. We were at an Amoco station, and rather than buy more coolant, I took two gallon bottles to the sink inside and filled them with water, and filled the radiator...meanwhile, my mom called my dad to bring the rollback in case the thing blows up in the last 50 miles...
The last 50 miles were relatively uneventful (weren't we due for that???), and we made it the rest of the way. The trip wound up takin 31 hours, and you can bet I kissed the ground when we got home...and noticed the other cylinder head had also cracked. We did pretty good to make it that far.
(The reason for it running so hot was because the head gaskets had been installed backwards. Anybody who knows anything at all about engines will tell ya that it just will not work.)
Anybody wanna know why I just may have an ulcer?
Dawg Story 5
Category: Automotive
If I hadn't had to live through this experience, I'd say it didn't happen, but every word you're about to hear is the truth and I'd stand by it to the death...and I do have witnesses...
The roughest experience I've probably had in my life was the move from PA to VA...not because I didn't want to make the move...I was going from a place where I wasn't wanted to where I was treated (and felt) like I belonged. I shoulda been in VA all along; moving is just the worst thing you can do...at least the way WE do it. We had been based in PA since the mid '80's...and had 60 years worth of stuff to move (the arithmetic don't line up, I know... just ride along here, kids). That's why the process was spread out over a number of years...ending with six months of misery at the end, where most of the equipment and stuff was moved. In that time, we had between 35 and 40 truckloads of stuff...steel, tile, planters, metal stuff, shop equipment, 20 + vehicles, automotive and racing parts, engines -- everything you can imagine-- going down the road. We had convoys of four and five trucks at a time on that road. Meanwhile we were still conducting business in PA, and overseeing construction in VA (and doin a lot of the work our dang selves -- hey, my family is pretty hard-core and you're about to see another example of it)...
In all these road trips, everything happened, and I mean everything-- blown tires, fuel pumps, ignition problems, at least one blown engine, the hitch broke on one of the trailers one time...'bout everything short of a wreck. This final six-month push started in late 2005...we'd been getting pretty well known in this area even if we weren't here full time at that point, and people would stop by just to see what we were bringing next...
Setting up for the March trip, we have to go back to the last day of January 2006. I was in the red '87 GMC stakebody truck and blew the engine on I-64 between Staunton and Charlottesville, VA...on a mountain we call the "Widow Maker"... we had to load the truck on the rollback (which my dad was driving) and pressed on to PA without sayin a mumblin word most of the way. The next day, I bought another engine and we took it and the truck to a truck garage to have it installed. It took them a month to change the engine...(we'd do it ourselves in an afternoon, but our stuff was in VA).
Fast-forward to March... the truck is ready to go the next time we're in PA, so we go get it and load it up...along with a number of other trucks. Again, I'd be driving it. My dad and a friend each left early Sunday March the 12th... later on once the other trucks were ready to go, we headed out. I had a bunch of stuff, including animals in my truck, when I pulled out on the road and headed up the hill to the filling station. About half a mile up the road the truck quit. I wound up kickin it out of gear and coasting back down to the end of the driveway, where I had to get under the hood. Did i mention how hard it was raining? I think I saw an old man with an ark go past me...
Bein it was Sunday, no parts stores were open and I had no way to get there if they were. So I had to "borrow" parts out of a distributor on a truck that was parked on the property (we later bought the truck, relax) and I did get that bully to run. But since it was so late by then, we decided to leave on Monday.
Monday was a sunny day, and we left. Problems didn't start until about 20 miles up the road when the transmission started slipping. My mom, who was following behind me in a Penske rental truck, told me there was a trail of oil behind me. So I pulled over, crawled under the truck and found the cats at the truck garage didn't tighten up the transmission lines. I had to buy a couple of wrenches and trans fluid at a service station before we got to far along. We got 'er all locked down, good to go. Then we get to Allentown and I-78 and my water temp is at 250 (it was overheating). So we stopped for lunch, let it cool off, then I removed the thermostat to let it run cooler... but it still wasn't right. It was still runnin hot, and then it got to actin like it was runnin out of fuel. Fuel pump. I crept along til we got to Carlisle. The thing was barely turnin a wheel, runnin 235-250 degrees when we pulled into an Autozone parking lot. With darkness and a thunderstorm approaching, I changed the fuel pump and water pump (and did my durndest to keep from cussin in front of my mother). Goody's Headache Time...
Before leaving, I crawled up into the back of the truck to feed the animals. Then we hit the road. The light wasn't working in the temperature gauge, so in the dark i had to hold my lit-up cell phone up to the gauge...dang thing was still gettin hot. But it started raining so hard, I was payin more attention to stayin on the road at that moment. After what seemed like forever, we pulled into the Flying J truck stop near Winchester, VA...halfway home (!!!!!!!!). I filled 'er up with fuel and looked under the hood. The radiator was empty cause it all boiled out, dadgummit. I filled it up and we pressed on a little further, till we'd had enough and found a motel (mind you, this was a 7-hour trip last week).
Before leaving in the morning, I took a gaze under the hood and could clearly see a crack in the right side cylinder head. Oh goody. Off to Advance Auto Parts in Woodstock, VA for some block sealer, then back to I-81. Oh yeah, along the way a vent line on my new fuel pump blew off and sprayed gasoline for about 15 miles...but hey, my blood runs cold... I was about bullet-proof by now.
We pressed on (the canvas tarp on the back of the truck was shredding by now), and stopped for lunch and to let that poor son of a buck cool down before we tackled the widow maker. Things were goin alright for a while...then we hit 29 south...I never remembered so much of it being uphill (uphill=hotter engine). I finally had to stop and take a look at it when the gauge pegged at almost 300 degrees. We were at an Amoco station, and rather than buy more coolant, I took two gallon bottles to the sink inside and filled them with water, and filled the radiator...meanwhile, my mom called my dad to bring the rollback in case the thing blows up in the last 50 miles...
The last 50 miles were relatively uneventful (weren't we due for that???), and we made it the rest of the way. The trip wound up takin 31 hours, and you can bet I kissed the ground when we got home...and noticed the other cylinder head had also cracked. We did pretty good to make it that far.
(The reason for it running so hot was because the head gaskets had been installed backwards. Anybody who knows anything at all about engines will tell ya that it just will not work.)
Anybody wanna know why I just may have an ulcer?
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