Everybody I know has had some kind of a hard time or another during this past week (8/21-27), here’s mine. I guess some background first. I drive a ‘71 Dodge pick-up as a daily driver. I’ve got a thing about Mopars, old pick-ups especially. I think they’re cool, and I can generally fix them myself. No computers or fancy electronics. It also puts me in a supportive and resourceful community of old car guys. I’ve got a lot of pride in driving and fixing my truck. I’ve replaced the engine, rear end, front end components, brakes, done the wiring, changed both manifolds and gone through a couple of carburetors, had bodywork and paint done, seatbelts, airconditiong, gauges…. Just about anything at all that works on this truck is a direct result of my actions. Every trip I make is a triumph of my mechanical ability and fortitude. More about all of this some other time.
So I’m driving my old slant six powered pick-up west on Enfield, taking Max to his piano lesson, when my truck just up and dies. It dies slowly, like a fuel problem, and I’m thinking that the gas gauge that I thought I re-calibrated correctly (mainly by bending the rod the float is screwed onto) is wrong and I’ve run out of gas. I get Max out of the truck and into the shade, both because it’s hot and Enfield is a very busy street going on five o’clock in the middle of the week and I don’t want him to be in the truck if it gets rear-ended. I’m getting ready to call Polly when a most excellent samaritan in a big ass Ford 350 4×4 Diesel pulls up. He tells me he’s got a five gallon gas can at home just around the corner and he’ll be right back. While we wait for him two cars, a sherriff’s deputy, and a UT police car all stop and offer assistance. The good samaritan, whose name I recall as Greg (Thanks, Man!), helps me pour five gallons of his gas into my tank and some into my carburetor. The truck runs with the gas in the carb, but stops pretty quickly–gas isn’t getting from the tank to the carburetor. Greg offers to tow me around the corner and even gives me my choice of chain or strap. I choose strap and his mighty Ford has no trouble at all towing my Dodge around the corner and under some mercifully shady trees. Still can’t get the truck started, and after a while think it might be vapor lock, due to it being a hundred and ten degrees outside and having sat with my truck idling and the A/C on waiting for Max to get out of school. Probably spent ten shameful minutes doing that. I’ve since found out that I can go inside and wait to pick him up in airconditioned comfort. After refusing monetary compensation, Greg goes on his saintly way, saying it was “just the right thing to do.” Thanks again.
Vapor lock. That’s when the fuel gets so hot in the lines that it goes from a liquid state to a gaseous one. That’s what I tell Max on our journey of a couple of blocks to get some cold drinks for us and ice for the truck. We get back to the truck somewhat refreshed and pack the fuel line from the fuel pump to the carburetor in ice. Cover the fuel pump and the carb in ice, too. Max is an absolute trooper during all of this. Doesn’t seem too upset about missing his piano lesson. After a reasonable amount if time and cooling I try to start the truck again. No go. Gas seems to be having some problems getting past the fuel filter.
The fuel filter is dirty, and has some chunks floating around in it. I take it off, try to blow through it. Not the best thing to do on such an evil hot day–both because of the taste and the pressure on my head due to the blowing. Gas tastes a lot better when it’s cold out. But don’t be putting gas in your mouth either way. Blown through and banged on and hooked back up the fuel filter still doesn’t seem to be passing much gas through. So I call Polly at work. Major problems of logistics here. Polly’s work is a fair trade retail shop that runs mainly on volunteers, and she’s able to snag a generous volunteer just as she’s going out the door so that Polly can take off and come rescue me. I’m helped out by another kind stranger. While waiting for Polly I have the brain storm that I can punch right through the filter element with a phillips screwdriver and solve the problem. But it doesn’t. There’s enough crap in the filter that I think that may still be the problem anyways. I drop Polly and Max off at her work then go to the closest parts store to pick up a fuel filter. I’ll pick th up Max and Polly after she closes the store for the evening and I attend the English Department meeting held at the ACC campus on the far other side of town. After I get that pesky fuel filter installed and everything is copacetic, of course.
With a new fuel filter I’m still not getting gas to the carburetor. So I take off the hose to the filter again to see if I’m getting fuel from the pump. OK, I know I probably should have checked this earlier as a back up. I did have Max watch and see if gas was coming out of the line to the filter and he said it was, though. I’m sure he did see gas being pumped. But it wasn’t getting pumped now. Looks like I’m going to miss the English Department meeting. I go back across town to the nearest O’Reilly Auto Parts because they’re generally pretty good with parts for older engines. They give me the choice between a US-made fuel pump and one that’s seven dollars cheaper. I support the American worker and put the pump on my credit card, confident that my travails will soon be over.
A fuel pump on a slant six engine is easy to get to. It’s on the passenger side of the engine, in front of the distributor. Two nine-sixteenths bolts are all that hold it on. The fuel pump is a diaphragm type pump operated by a level that rides on a special lobe of the engine’s camshaft. The new fuel pump’s lever is much stiffer than my old pump’s, so I figure it really does need replacing. But there’s also a brass fitting on the old pump that needs to be transferred to the new so that the outgoing fuel line can be attached. That fitting is rounded and a wrench just can’t get it loose. It’s almost dark. I’m hot. I’m tired. I’m dizzy hungry. I don’t want to have to go to another parts store tonight. So I leave my baby on a strange street and go pick up Max and Polly. I’ll get after it again tomorrow. Max points out that at least it’s a good neighborhood we’ve left my truck in. Polly is silent with great forbearance.
The next morning I drop Max off at school and visit two different places to get the brass fitting that I need. The ingenious guy at O’Reilly’s saves me a couple of bucks by selling me a brake line to cut down and use as a fitting instead of the five dollar and forty nine cent part that is the official fuel pump attachment. I’ve got an hour before Polly needs to be at work. I figure I’ll slap the fuel pump on, get my truck running, drive back across town to our place, pick up Polly, drive back to my truck, and she’ll drop me off at my smooth running truck and we’ll both be on our ways. It’s easier to take a pump off that to put it on. The key is to put the bolt that’s harder to get to, the one towards the front of the engine, on first. I get the new pump on and there still isn’t any fuel coming out of it.
I like to think that I’ve been taking a fairly reasonable and logical approach to this whole thing. I’ve started at where there wasn’t any gas coming out and gone back. I’ve tried the less expensive fixes first. One of the big things that happens in trying to fix cars, and it isn’t just imbeciles like me who do this, is that parts get replaced that didn’t need to be. I’ve even seen garages and professionals do this. I spent a lot of time the night before pondering my situation. It’s possible that the fuel pump was not the problem. Maybe it was whatever caused those big chunks of stuff in the fuel filter. Maybe the problem lies inside my thirty-five-year-old gas tank. It’s possible that over the years some dirt has accumulated or rust developed or something. The cure for that problem is to blow out the lines with compressed air. Unfortunately, I don’t have a way to get compressed air to my truck. I’ll have to buy a little compressed air tank. If the problem was just the fuel line, I might not have had to buy a fuel pump. But then the spring and diaphragm on the old one seemed pretty weak. It would have needed replacing sooner or later anyways. The name for fuel pump in Spanish is very cool. It is called a bomba de gasolina. They probably wouldn’t let you take one of those on an airplane. Someday it would be cool to go on one of those missions to Cuba where they bring old auto parts to the guys down there who have been keeping their cars running without any access to parts since 1962. Those guys could use a bomba de gasolina or two. In French, a fuel pump is a pompe de essence. Sounds like something you’d dispense perfume with. Tres elegant.
I’ve used up enough time so that I have to go pick up Polly, but swing by my neighborhood Advance Auto to pick up an air tank. I do have an air compressor that I bought from my buddy Bill when he went out of the upholstery business, so at least I won’t have to roll quarters into a machine at 7-11 to fill it up with air. An air tank at Advance Auto is five bucks cheaper than the same thing at O’Reilly’s. I checked the price when I got the brass fitting earlier. I fill the air tank up with eighty pounds per square inch and Polly drives me back across town to my truck. I use one of my dad’s old jokes and tell her that the tank is really heavy because there’s eighty pounds of air in there. She’s as amused as she’s able to be.
Back across in the good part of town my truck is in the midst of a bunch of landscapers’ work vehicles. I unhook the fuel line to the fuel pump, take off the gas cap, and shoot compressed air through the lines into my gas tank. Polly puts her hand over the gas cap hole to see if air comes out. After some huffing and puffing air does start to come out and Polly says she can feel the gas burbling in the tank. All I should have to do is hook the pump up and I’ll be in business. The truck still doesn’t start. I blow out all the fuel lines and still nothing happens. Polly turns the key and I can feel a slight suck on the intake side of the pump, and pretty much nothing at all on the outlet side. Now I’m thinking that O’Reilly’s sold me a defective fuel pump. Polly has to go to work. I drop her off, and go back to O’Reilly’s. The only fuel pump available is the cheaper one I didn’t buy the day before. This one is made in Canada and has a silver colored top instead of gold. I don’t mind supporting Canadians.
Across town again I take the fuel line off the bad new pump’s inlet and gas comes spurting out. I take that as a good sign. I have to plug the line with a bolt and then hook it up to the pump after Max’s sodapop bottle from yesterday gets filled with gas. I’ll use the pop bottle gas to prime the carburetor. New pump hooked up, carburetor primed, I get inside my truck and turn it over. I’ve been worried about running out of battery the whole time, and am glad to have Polly’s car there if I need a jump. My truck fires up from the gas poured into the carb. Just as it’s starting to die, it roars back to life–it is getting gas from the fuel pump, and from the fuel tank to the fuel pump and through the fuel filter. Hallelujah. I let it run for a while as I put tools away and clean up. It runs fine the whole time. I like to think the problem was a combination of things–junk in the gas tank, old fuel pump, and a fuel filter that should have been changed. I also like to think I saved some money by not taking it to a garage to get fixed. After all the trials and tribulations there’s some measure of satisfaction, too.
I’ll drive Polly’s car home, get cleaned up, and go pick her up to drive to my truck when her afternoon volunteer comes in.
So. Yeah, blogs are about as self indulgent as it gets. I do like to think I had a couple of points here, though. One is about the pitfalls and pratfalls of automotive diagnosis and having an old truck. That’s for my gearhead buddies, if any of them decide to read this. Another point is that it was a big frustrating time and I thought I’d feel better if I had a record of it. So I guess that was pretty self indulgent. But then I’ll make literary claims, too. A French writer named Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote an experimental novel in the sixties (I think) called Jealousy. It is an excruciating read. The set-up is that a rubber plantation owner’s wife has gone off the town with a neighboring plantation owner. The reader is stuck in the mind and surroundings of the guy waiting for his wife to come back. Robbe-Grillet manipulates his writing so that the attentive reader is as disturbed, edgy, bored, etc. as the protagonist. It’s quite the artistic acheivment, but an overall unpleasant experience. So maybe the feel of my recent truck troubles came across that way somewhat.
For what it’s worth,
Joe
The official book release for W. Joe’s new book, Galvanized, will be hosted by Dalton Publishing, Austin, Texas in September or early October, 2006.
