Trip Report, 05.06.07

Tacoma

Et incurventur ante non
Location
far enough away
So.

Again, in a Panera parking lot. God bless them! Talked to the guy with the Chevelle, but not about money, and not much about the car. It's an original, umolested '67, which I think is the sweetest of the Chevelles. Shouldn't need a TON of work, so that's cool. This guy is building a jetboat with a Corvair engine my pal TopTruck Tom pulled out of a car in the ravine near his house. :D

Looked at a sweet house in Hawk Run PA, outside of State College, and while the house is supersweet (it's an old hotel, full of character), it's also unheated, uninsulated, and on a weird, smallish lot, so no way am I going back east. Got to TopTruck Tom's, and took a ride to look at trailers and motorcycles, in his stupid SCCA Viper. Looks like neither of us can afford to do Silver State this year, but oh well. That car is so wicked fast it's not even funny. The OD on it has got to be enormous though, as we were loping along in 6th at about 1600rpm or something. Stupid car! But fun.
Took a ride on a Kawasaki 200-something enduro deal, it was ok, but dogged hard on the road. That's no good. Took a much less permissive ride on an older DRZ400, which was better, but the forks sucked.... and then sat on a Honda 650, which was much smaller than I would have thought, and should do the trick. So it's between the Honda, a KLR650 w/the huge gas tank, or the Suzuki DRZ for it's smallness. Bah.

Got the truck sorted out. Had a couple problems. Coolant sensor was jacked, but had no effect on driveability, and I lacked time. So I had to take some time, after backfiring left and right and having no power whatsoever. Turns out that 3 of the plug wires just sucked, and had a ton of cooked wire inside. So I trimmed the sheath, (shut up, Meat), and remade the wires, and the truck runs better. I will get new wires Wednesday, when I can stop and breathe again for a second. 20hr days RULE!!! The other problem was that the remote start, which has been acting hinky lately anyway, was keeping the ECM in open-loop startup mode, and also keeping the fuel pump running, but intermittently. So I disconnected the whole thing, since it didnt' work anyway. Looks like a decent setup, but I'll have to look at it and figure out what the hell is wrong with it. *shrug* and whether it will work with diesels or what. :D

Tomorrow I will be in Gettysburg around noon, and should actually have some time to take a look around this time, at least I HOPE I do. It's ridiculous how many places I go but how little time I have to see anything, and it makes me a little blue, I must say.

TopTruck Tom showed me how he's got his Bridgeport in the gun shed. His dad used to make small, working replica cannon in there, and reproduction revolvers too. He's got a sweet old drill press that spins as slow as 150rpm, and can deal with a 1.5" bit(biggest that has been put in it yet, and it's BIG). It's got a.... T-96?? transmission rigged up to it, and it's supersweet. Anyway the Bridgeport has another head on it that is apparently pretty rare, for concave/convex milling, and it's awesome. Definitely has me thinking of stuff for him to make for me, like maybe the brackets I need for my other big block.... ? And we messed around with the screw-cutting deal on the lathe, man is THAT cool to watch. I found out that aluminum has better heat-retention qualities than I would have ascribed to it, but suffered no lasting harm. :D

This Friday I hope to be in Philadelphia, and the Friday after that I hope to be just south of the NY border, which would mean that I would have a mere 3 days to go after THAT.... and then I could collect a 60 or two, and hightail it home. So we'll see. I am definitely feeling the last two weeks of ridiculous hours but oh well.
 

Tacoma

Et incurventur ante non
Location
far enough away
If you've got a house in the country, with some land, cool. :D

Otherwise, the views and mostly the FREEDOM in the west has a strong pull.
 

Tacoma

Et incurventur ante non
Location
far enough away
UPDATE: 06.03.07


So it's been a fun 10 days here. Ran through Harrisburg, Gettysburg (and no, I DIDN"T GET TO GO...AGAIN!!!!), York, Lancaster, and Reading. The fun started in Reading. Oh yes!
Thanks to a crazy district manager, I am not permitted to work during the day in her district. I will not permit myself to ever see that crazy b***h EVER AGAIN, she's so completely irrational and it's not worth the trouble. So I'm in the truck, taking a nap, at 11:30pm, preparing to wake up about midnight and work till like 6am or something. I am woken up by noise in the back of the truck, which is some tweaker riffling through my stuff (work stuff, which isn't much). Being Western Man, infused with a good dose of Eastern Irritation, naturally I jump out, full of anger at 1. being woken up and 2. being stolen from.

It was raining out. We ran! I chased this guy barefoot, and almost had him, but coming around a corner, I slipped off the curb's big yellow-painted edge, and rolled over my own pinkie toe. Naturally, it wasn't resilient and I lost all the skin on nearly the entire tip of my toe. Yeah! that did hurt. But, the guy dropped my stuff, and escaped the drubbing he richly deserved.

So the next week was unfun, hobbling around in sandals w/half a toe and no real way to deal with that, given the nature of the work I"m doing LOL... so that was fun. And then! On the 30th, I jumped off the truck, landed wrong, and strained the hell out of some tendons in my other leg. So I was hobbled for a few days. Kind of sucked. My toe has healed well, and my leg is alright, but I REALLY need to get finished and just cool out for a while.

So anyway. I make it to the Philly suburbs, and disaster strikes. For the previous 3-4days, I had noticed a sort of clicking in the steering column when I turned... turns out it's the dreaded "loose GM tilt column", and from the time you really notice it (when it feels like something is wrong) to total meltdown is about 8hrs. And when it goes south, the wheel and the tilt joint will turn, twisting the ignition switch rod, turning your vehicle off. Fun!!!

So I struggle to a parts place at about 5pm, on Saturday. Use all available non-fitting tools, and get the wheel off, the 4 bolts tightened up, and back together by 10pm, when they close. But I dont' have the wheel on, and the shifter won't work. Hmmmm.

A word about taking apart a GM steering column without experience or a manual: it is a bad idea, and you should only do it if you absolutely must. There are a number of small widgets that MUST be aligned properly or nothing works.

Morning hit, and found me, and one of the guys from the shop, sleeping in our cars in the parking lot. Apparently he tied a couple on and couldn't drive home. Good times! We had breakfast at McD's, and I got some tools before they opened. Yay. I figured out that I had the lock cylinder and detent collar misaligned, so that was easy. And then I put together the strange and wrong-looking upper steering shaft bearing, thinking hmmmmmmm something looks wrong. SO on goes the steering wheel, and yeah, it was wrong.
"Round then, my friend Poolio (he takes care of pools) called because we were going to go to dinner. I told him I had to take the wheel off, but he said, no, come over to the east side and my pal George will take care of you, he's got a shop! SWEEEEEET. So I talked to George, and he confirmed that the upper bearing was wrong. Said it goes together the exact opposite of what you would think, and also said he had a bearing, so I was all kinds of happy. Off I went.

On the way, there was a huge lightning show, just amazing, all around me but nothing right where I was. That changed when I met up with Poolio. I was on the phone w/my wife, and as I was telling her what a crazy bunch of lightning was going on (it takes a fair amount to impress me, and this was INTENSE), a lightning bolt fried the road at the top of the hill I was going up, sending a loud concussive wave through the truck and making the phone crackle. And then the rain came.

I could not see more than about 5' in front of me. I actually bumped into Poolio's XJ bumper at one point. It was crazy! A tree branch hit Poolio's Jeep, and one smashed into my big water tank and ripped off a valve on my truck. We managed to get into a parking lot, and he called me freaking out. I shared his sentiment, and then had to chuckle at the insanity of my last six days.

During those 6 days, I probably got less than 2hrs of sleep a day. It was very bad. Anyway, we made it to George's. George is my new hero. He's a small guy, living in a suburb of Philadelphia, but he knows A TON of automotive knowledge, had two very strange parts I needed, and it working on a sweet 78 TransAm with a blown 454... and it's painted John Deere green. He said he's going to get the graphics painted on in JD yellow. :D

Off I went, with a sweet, solid steering column, which should be good for another 160k. :D Getting up to Allentown PA, I started noticing a problem with the pressure washer, which is really awful. I have less than a week left! NO PROBLEMS!!!!! but the valves were WAY out of adjustment all of a sudden. So I reset them. Motor blew a seal (PETA was angry, but understanding) and blew oil all over everything, which glazed up the drive belts, which then overheated and stretched, so I"ve lost some pressure there too. :( And, the seals in the pump finally started to go, so I need those. The place that has them opens at 7am tomorrow, and it's pouring out right now, so I'm in a hotel, watching Deadliest Catch and catching up on mail.

The belts are $85 each, and the seals (6, about the size of half-dollars) are $100 for the set. Awesome!!!! but oh well. The pressure washer will be rebuilt in UT, because it's old, and things need to be fixed properly. The accumulated field fixes work but not as well as things fixed right. :mad:

Tonight finds me comfortably esconced in lovely Wilkes-Barre PA, home of... well... let's see. AH!

This is where miners dug too close to the bottom of the river, and caused the Mighty Susquehanna River to drain into the mines, and also killed mining in the entire Lehigh Valley. It is also home to the Ashley Breaker, a large coal breaker, or colliery. The Lackawanna Mine Tour is also up here...
This is a nice valley. Lots of good mountain biking, and it's relatively close to NYC and Philadelphia. Very hilly here. And the entire downtown is wired for highspeed wireless, which RULES on a nice sunny day. :D

So tomorrow I'm going to pick up some parts, then haul ass through this area, and Tuesday I'll finish up about 180mi of orphan work scattered through the hills, and then up to NY! weeeeeeee I should be done Friday, barring disaster.

If anyone needs anything from Extreme Axle Sales, tell me. I'm picking up an axle there soon. :D
 
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