My old Toyota 4Runner went Communist on me in December, had to be parked facing downhill to allow it to be started next time. A Catch 22 involving if-replacing-the-starter-doesn’t-fix-it has left me having to borrow a vehicle anytime I need to go into town, or have someone pick up what I need has existed from then until now.
Meanwhile this old ranch truck has been sitting up there for the last five years unused after he twisted off a fuel line. Gale, my old bud who owns this place and the F350, has had a long run of guilt-not-bad-enough-to-cause-him-to-fix-it, but too bad to just free him up, solved both our problems in one fell swoop:
“You can have that old F350 if you’ll fix it.”
“Whoooooopeeee!”
It’s an ’83 and hasn’t been registered for public roads since the early ‘90s, but he says it ran fine until he broke the gas line. Unfortunately, over the years other people tried to fix it, coons lived under the hood, the wiring is chicken noodle soup.
I bought a vintage Chilton Manual from Amazon dirt cheap, but it didn’t have anything much about the wiring.
The coil appears to be made of scrap iron, the electronic ignition might be a retrofit. Not even going to tell you what the inside of the distributor looked like when I popped it.
It’s not getting fire and I’m about out of fancy ideas. If I don’t figure something out soon I’m going to have him tow me into town and let a real mechanic work on it, put an inspection sticker on it, and register it for the highway.
I think it’s going to make a pretty good old truck.
Robert Earl Keen – The Road Goes On Forever
http://youtu.be/_tMDXgf2cH4
About 11:30 AM Saturday
Reading the Terlingua or Bust blog http://terlinguabound.blogspot.com/ I see he’s blowing out tires something awful out there even when they aren’t on the ground. Some of the comments suggested it’s the heat, which makes sense.
I don’t think the roads here are much better than his are likely to be, so maybe I ought to be glad I haven’t gotten that truck on the road yet. Getting up to Gale’s is the worst of it… about half-mile of badly eroded 2-track rotten limestone trying to tear up tires at the best of times. But his house to the pavement is another half-mile, better maintained but still rough. Then the three miles of pavement to the mailbox has several lousily maintained cattleguards a person can never predict whether they’ll have a loose somethingorother pop up and take a whack at something.
From the mailbox to the main highway is a lot better, state road with no more than the usual fry-an-egg-on-it hotter-than-a-$2 pistol asphalt.
Once again I owe the Coincidence Coordinators a debt of gratitude for sparing me stuff I didn’t even think about might happen.
Thankee Coincidence Coordinators. I tips my hat to you.
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 