Springtime events in the Florida Panhandle...

It's been an eventful few months in my life here in the panhandle of Florida. My wife has given birth to our first daughter and she's a wonder beyond imagination. What a gift. Everybody is happy and healthy. My vehicle has been a thorn in my side, however.

I was in Apalachicola, Florida (http://www.apalachicolabay.org/) headed to a friend's house when my clutch started a horrendous squealing noise. I couldn't believe it, as I had compiled a list of items that needed replacement on my truck and the clutch wasn't on it; the dealer I bought it from 4 years ago put a new one in before I bought it. (I know he did because they didn't tighten the bell housing bolts all the way and the terrible shuddering that ensued was corrected by tightening said bolts) I proceeded to Advance Auto Parts in Port St. Joe and bought a new clutch. It took my friend and I seven hours to remove the 4x4 trans axle and transmission, which entails removing the exhaust, both front and rear drive shafts, and a supporting strut under the transmission itself. Bunches of fun, I tell ya. My buddy jumped in and began removing the exhaust connections to the manifold and proceeded to break two bolts before I suggested we let them soak with Kroil (http://www.kanolabs.com/google/) a while before trying the other side. A little patience in situations like these help one maintain one's sanity. We had to remove the starboard manifold to drill out the broken studs and in doing so I noticed that the manifold gasket had started to deteriorate, which turns out to be the reason I had a tapping on that side from not enough back pressure on the valves. Yay! We got the clutch, pressure plate, throwout bearing and CLUTCH FORK, of all things, reinstalled and the transmission slid back in place and splined up nicely with relatively little effort. The little things that make my heart rejoice. As a side note, the clutch fork should be good for the life of a vehicle. It broke (and was the cause of the clutch problem) because of the shuddering resulting from the last mechanic failing to tighten bell housing bolts. That's why we double check behind ourselves. If you look at the clutch plate in the image, there's a lot of life left in the plate surface. The problem is the fact that the center bearing and spring plate are detached from their mounting surfaces. It should have been good for another four years. Oh, well, I know it's done right this time.

I felt I was able to breathe a sigh of relief at this point. I drove the truck home that night and everything operated normally. I was happy that I was going to be able to take the wife to the hospital to have a baby, you know. I was working on a roof in Apalach with the same buddy that helped me with the transmission, feeling that after three days of helping with my truck I should probably throw some work his way. We went back to his house for lunch and after it cooled off enough to get back on the roof we got in the truck and the starter did nothing. Ugh. Said buddy climbed under the truck to tap it with a hammer (which works when they're first starting to go bad) and that didn't help. As a side note, in March the starter went bad and I took it apart and replaced the brushes. I had to modify the brushes (drill the holes bigger and shave the sides a little) so I didn't expect them to last as long as a new starter, but it was a $6 fix instead of a $40 fix at the time. Ok, so the process of removing a starter and installing a new one is a matter of two nuts and two bolts. No big deal. That went as smoothly as I expected. And was on the aforementioned truck repair list.

Then the wife had our daughter. Yay! The truck made it back and forth for that monumental event for a week. The baby had a slightly elevated white blood cell count so they had to keep her and my wife seven days for observation and antibiotics, which I abhor, but that's another rant. She weighed 6 lbs 15 oz and had ten fingers, ten toes, two arms and two legs. What a beautiful gift. She likes Mama better because she has on-demand nourishment. She just hasn't realized I have tools, yet. I've decided that I want to be called Shrek. My wife isn't wild about the idea, but I think it's meant to be. I can already hear her as a nine year old: "Let me go ask Mom and Shrek..." It'll grow on my wife. The baby's name is Naomi. She already seems like a Naomi to me. It's strange what having a child does to a man; I hear gentle squeaking emanating from a paint roller and I think of my daughter. It makes me want to be more cautious, where before I was just a tad reckless sometimes. It's an interesting, involuntary evolution. I didn't think I had a soft side.

I was commuting the 65+ miles from Apalachicola to the hospital in Panama City and one evening the truck overheated in Mexico Beach. I just happened to look down at the gauges and noticed that the temperature gauge was red lined. 260 degrees plus. In doing everything else I hadn't noticed that the water pump had started to leak water, indicating that the impeller seal was going bad. I ran her out of water big time. Ouch. for a fraction of a second I debated whether or not to stop the motor, and decided I needed to, as I didn't know how long it would take for me find water. Fortunately, across the street there was a house with a long, black hose full of hot water which I promptly transferred into my five gallon jug (that I'm glad I tote around) and was able to pour hot water into the hot motor. I didn't crack the block, thank the Gods of mechanics. Water pump. Ugh. I didn't really want to deal with this bugger. I went over to Apalach by seven in the morning and by the time my buddy came out to see what I was doing, I had the fan shroud out, the fan off, belts and bracket bolts off and she was ready to come out. I got the rebuilt pump installed and bolted up and filled the system with water. I noticed a leak and saw that I'd kinked the gasket on the passenger side. Out comes the water pump AGAIN. I remedied that problem and reinstalled the whole thing, all the way through the fan. I gave the fan a spin to make sure all was well, and all was not well. The shaft coming out of the water pump was bent. The fan wobbled horribly and that is not good for anything attached to the belts that the water pump drives. Back to Port St. Joe. Had to buy the only one they had left in stock which was a more expensive brand new pump. Ugh. With the core charge on the rebuilt pump it was 32 bucks or something like that. The new pump was roughly ten dollars more with no core charge. I had to pay 96 cents to get the new one which means they cut me a five dollar break. That was pretty cool of the Advance guys. The "new" new pump went in smoothly and all the gaskets seated properly. After installing everything up to the fan I gave it a spin and it was normal.

My truck is running well. She runs cool, starts without a hiccup and has a strong clutch that catches the right distance off the floor. It doesn't, however, run better than it did in its earlier days. It doesn't run faster, stronger or more elaborately. The problem I have with working on vehicles is the fact that everything is NORMAL when I'm finished. Nothing is better. Just normal. That's why I'm a carpenter.

To be fair to the gods of mechanics, the power steering pump, which was on the list I mentioned towards the beginning of this post, seemed to like the temporary upheaval. The power steering has been less than brutish for a few weeks. It's been kind of weak, especially around turns at lower RPMs (where I happen to need it most). They didn't have one in stock at Advance, so I just left it hooked up to the hoses and it got banged around, knocked over, fluid leaking out of the cap... well, it LOVED the abuse. I actually have *normal* power steering. What a luxury!

That's the news... I hope everyone that happens to read this is well!

The last photo was actually taken with the truck running! (and notice that the one in this picture is a black one and the one in the above picture is a defective silver one)