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  nyone who's been around me for any length of time knows one thing for certain: I am a fan of Dr. Pepper. It's my soda of choice, hands down. Years ago, I had heard that their main plant in Texas still made it with the original recipe, with cane sugar instead of corn syrup. It's been a foodstuff holy grail for me ever since. Today, I finally had an opportunity to try one. It definitely gives it a different flavor and is totally awesome. Hey ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) fujerica, want me to bring you one?
Sally was a pain in the ass yesterday. First, she conspired with the trailer to have the door unlatch itself while I was pulling out of a dock. The door swung wide and clipped the mirror of the truck beside me. Luckily, the truck had break-away mirrors and no damage was done. Then one of her tires went flat and I had to get it replaced. Finally, the fan on the HVAC in the bunk stopped blowing which... blows, frankly... especially in this heat. Then this morning, the blower was mysteriously working again, although not as strong as it should. Crazy bucket of bolts. I hope I can just keep her together until I'm through with the payments, then I'll have plenty of cash to sink into her and get her all fixed up sweet.
All we're waiting on with the house is for the appraisal paper work to be completed. Home inspection? Check. Termite inspection? No treatment recommended. Home owner's insurance policy? Check. Notice given to landlord? Check. As long as the appriasers don't drag their feet, we're still on track to close on the house next Friday. I'll be glad, too. I'm tired of all this headache. | |
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 ne of the recurring issues with Sally is a problem with the coolant system. I've been told by a mechanic that something is causing compression in the coolant. This causes me to lose about a half gallon of antifreeze over the course of a day through the overflow tube. I'm thinking of trying to rig something to "catch" the antifreeze as it overflows so that it's not just money down the drain. My guess is that this is a major, internal motor issue which won't get solved until I do an overhaul, which won't be for at least another year.
More annoying than that, however, is the overheating. More than likely this is related to this problem, though I'm not entirely sure. When laden and pulling a grade, however slight, the temperature creeps up quickly in a truck. This is ordinary and the engine fan kicks in at 210 degrees and knocks it back to down to 200 before turning back off. In this heat however, on really long grades, even the slightest of them, I've been experiencing problems with it climbing over the 220 mark, which results in the computer shutting the engine down. I've learned over the course of this summer how to avoid this: I have to keep the RPMs above 1500 so that the fan turns fast enough to cool the radiator sufficiently. This isn't difficult to do, just annoying. Sometimes you have to slow down and grab a lower gear just to keep the RPMs there.
Since I've figured this out, my previous two students both had a good deal of experience with road tractors and making them understand this principle wasn't difficult. With Tom, however, it's been more difficult impressing upon him the importance of this. He learned this lesson the hard way the other night as we were driving into Memphis. It was a long, gradual grade; virtually flat to the eye but Sally sure knew it. The "high coolant temp" warning was given and I instructed Tom to get onto the shoulder as quickly as possible. In times past when it's happened to me, getting off the road and letting the engine idle quickly enough will sometimes avert disaster.
Okay disaster is a strong word. Pain in the ass might be more appropriate, only this time it was disastrous.
The truck shutdown from the high temperature as expected. Ordinarily, I fix this problem by CAREFULLY venting the coolant reservoir, letting the hot vapor escape then refilling with some fresh coolant. Apparently I wasn't careful enough and the cap blew off the reservoir as the pressure inside sought its way out. I was greeted with a blast of hot coolant to the face. I was standing on top of the motor when this happened and I immediately turned and jumped for the ground before I got myself completely scalded by the green geyser spewing from my motor.
Thankfully I wasn't hurt, from the coolant or the jump. The sudden pressure release had resulted in a complete loss of coolant. I had four gallons of coolant on-board with me and began pouring it into the reservoir, watching it all disappear down into the motor. There simply wasn't going to be enough to run it. What's worse was that the reservoir cap was nowhere to be found. We tried looking up and down the highway, in the nooks and crannies of the motor, and the ground beneath... it was gone. I'm guessing it was ejected into the corn field and lost. So even if I had enough coolant, I had no way to keep it in.
First I called the breakdown department of my company. After being on hold for over twenty minutes I sent a Qualcom message to them. After no response for 15-20 minutes that route, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I called welfy and got her to run some Google searches for a Freightliner dealer in the Memphis area. Armed with phone numbers I placed calls until I got myself hooked-up with an area towing/repair service. I employed them to pick me up a cap from the dealer and to bring me copious gallons of antifreeze and water. The entire ordeal took 3-4 hours and we were finally back on the road. Ever since then, Tom has been more vigilant in monitoring the temperature guage on grades, making sure Sally keeps cool and it hasn't been an issue again.
Otherwise, it's been a great week. I've covered nearly 5,000 miles in the past seven days. It's much needed after the way last week went. | |
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 his next month is going to be so stressfull and drive me crazy if the past few days have been any indication. The process of getting utilities turned on so that inspections and appraisals can be performed at the new house are underway, and I have already spent more time on the phone this morning with people who aren't welfy than I do in a typical month.
As if the hassle of buying a home isn't headache enough, Sally has decided to throw little fits and tantrums. On Friday, her clutch rod came unfastened. I got out of that one fairly cheap with some help from my student Gary, who was a diesel mechanic prior to becoming a driver of the them. He offered to do the labor in my drive way, so all I had to pay for was the parts.
Then today, heading back on the road after a few days off, Sally starts whining about low oil pressure. She has plenty of oil, and her engine's not knocking, so this is probably something reasoinably small and simple to fix - perhaps a bad sensor or switch. The shop I got her into though won't be able to even diagnose the problem until later tonight or tomorrow morning. This means that, by the time she gets fixed some time tomorrow, I'll have been off the road for nearly a week. This is not a good time for me to be losing income. I have way too many things on my plate at the moment that's going to require funding over the coming weeks.
Do I know that all of this is worth it? Absolutely. But getting to a point of comfort again is going to arduous and taxing. I'm going to be irritable and cranky all the time until I get to the other side of it. You best stay out of my way for a while. | |
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 f you're driving through Arizona on I-10 this afternoon and see a candy-apple red truck pulling a big blue trailer, and the driver ain't got no clothes on... that would be me.
It's supposed to get to 115 today. According to XM, it's already 105. Lawd-a-mussy.
I'm getting a new student this afternoon in Phoenix. He only has 70 hours to complete, so he should be a breeze. Just teach him to use the Qualcomm and let him make money for me. This means I need to clean-up Sally this afternoon... in this heat. It's a bit of a wreck having had it to myself for the past month. Yesterday she got a bath and is all shiny on the outside... but the inside... hoooo boy.
I suppose with it being a holiday that there's a good chance I'll be sitting around until tomorrow. If that's the case, I might seriously consider investing in a motel room for the night. Poor Sally's A/C can't keep-up with this kind of heat.
I think I need to get a picture of Sally while she's clean and replace that icon I have of The Beast.
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took the additional time-off as a sign that I should probably do something about my tooth abscess/sinusitis. Even though my puffy-ness from a couple of weeks ago has subsided, it was eventually replaced by a headache which is ever-present unless I'm constantly dosing myself with Advil. He was able to squeeze me in at 4pm yesterday to check me out and prescribe a regimen of antibiotics, decongestants, and nasal sprays to combat it. He actually praised me for waiting a few weeks to give my body a chance to fight it on its own, since I'm otherwise an amazingly healthy person. He and I seem to be of like-mind in that too many people seek to over-treat simpler maladies at the slightest sniffle. I've long believed that the current trend of the past 15 years to sanitize EVERYTHING and the over-use of antibiotics has contributed to poorer health, and has not been a benefit. Certainly appropriate steps need to be taken to prevent major outbreaks of E. Coli or salmonella, but goin' all Howard Hughes with the hypochondria and paranoia only serves to weaken the immune system. Personally, I think we're already seeing the effects of this, as its been my observation that we've become less hardy as a species. In another generation, I feel this may come to rue with a vengeance.
 ver since getting the new EVDO Aircard, after accidentally (if not somewhat gloriously) smashing my old one to bits in a laptop tumble, I've had problems with the computer halting in error while the new card has been in use. My fear is that the PCMCIA slot was damaged in the tumble and that the card is shorting somewhere when it's jostled around, yet I've never been able to discern any specific correlation to the computer-freeze and the jostling. I've found Windows XP SP2 to be a remarkably stable OS for the most part. The type of halt I get is a blank, black screen and then I have to to do a hard shutdown and reboot. In my previous experiences with this sort of halt, it's most always a hardware issue. I'm hoping that it's not, and that I just have some nasty registry problem due to the new card and it's drivers essentially being copied over the old one. I've tried numerous uninstalls/reinstalls and firmware updates to no avail. The next step is a reinstall of the OS, which frankly I'm probably due for anyway. If that doesn't fix it, I guess I'm screwed. I had hoped that there was maybe some sort of USB-to-PCMCIA solution on the market, but they seem to be very hardware specific to the card and pricey to boot. I may have to suffer through the year of frugality with the annoyance of laptop crashes. 2008 will mark my two year anniversary as a Sprint customer and should enable me to get a $150 credit toward a hardware upgrade. There is a USB version of the EVDO modem which I might have to seriously consider if my PCMCIA slot is indeed fux0red. That would probably be a more cost-effective solution than trying to repair the slot itself.
he repairs on Sally were completed yesterday afternoon. After returning from my doctor's appointment and fetching welfy from work, I went to retrieve her and brought her back to the house. I made myself available for a load and made dinner for us and chasinghighways, who had been hanging out with me at the house for the past two days in hopes that the truck would be ready at a moment's notice. Around 9pm, I got a load assignment. We loaded in Columbus around 5am and have begun the 1,100 mile trip to Houston. It doesn' t have to be there until Monday morning, but I suspect we'll be there sometime in the middle of the night tonight. I know LARM is just as happy to be back on the road as I am. Even though he gets PAID regardless while he's in training, it's no fun sitting around when all you want to do is drive, learn, and see the country. On that note, Sally is running rather nicely and I hope that she will continue to relatively problem free for the next few months. She likes to run, and I still have a good deal of faith in her engine. Once she gets going, she has no desire to stop. I just have to make sure that the things she needs to roll are kept in good repair so she can. She's like an aging person who's still full of heart and adventure, she's just getting arthritic and needs a hip replacement every now and then.
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