I really should have stayed in bed. When I woke up this morning and found a few inches of snow covering everything, I should have gotten back into bed. I should not have taken a shower and dressed. I should not have warmed up the truck. I should not have fixed a nice cup of tea, with the help of my wife. I should not have packed up my laptop and camera. Most of all, I should not have walked out the door, gotten into the truck, and started the long drive into work.
Last night, we got a good deal of snow. In fact, before it was all said and done, we got somewhere between 5 and 7 inches, more snow than this area has seen since 2003 or thereabouts. Everything was covered in white winter glory. Sounds were muffled and everything smelled crisp and clean. And I plowed right through it due to some misguided work ethic. Maybe if I hadn't stayed at home on Monday to take care of my sick wife, I would have decided differently. But it is what it is, and I was there driving off into the white.
Four-wheel drive is a wonderful thing in the snow, and my F-150 plowed through with no problem and nary a slip. I stopped along the way to tow a stranded motorist out of a ditch, doing my good deed for the day. Afterwards, I trudged on, slowly wandering my way through the winter wonderland on my way in to the office for at least half a day of work.
The trouble began about two-thirds of the way in as the truck started gasping and stumbling. She finally gave out on a deserted, snow-covered back road. A man in a truck stopped to see if I needed a ride to the gas station a couple miles back. I told him that I wanted to try to start the truck one more time, and failing that, I would gladly take him up on his offer of a ride to the gas station. He said, "OK," and then drove off never to return.
Luckily, there was another guy in a truck just behind him, who also stopped. He DID help me get the F-150 going again, after a quick jump. I thanked him and continued my trek on into Durham. Along the way, I decided that the battery, which I thought was old, had finally given out and was not taking a charge, thus causing my problems. To remedy this, I stopped at a local auto parts store and plunked down 100 dollars worth of plastic and installed my shiney new battery. Everything was grand.
I went on into work, aided by the smell of my recently aquired Bojangles breakfast and spent the next few hours doing some actual work, almost alone, as only one other person on my team actually came in. Everyone else was "working from home" doing exactly what I should have done all along. Damn my work ethic!
Finally, at a quarter till two this afternoon, I had had enough. I grabbed my gear and headed for home, and the adventure should have stopped there, but alas, it did not. Instead, I made it just to the gas station to refuel and the hesitation/truck-death-throes started again. This was getting a bit frustrating.
I managed to get it going and made it back to the same auto parts place I had bought my battery from before. By this time, I was working through various potential issues that could cause this. I had replaced the battery, and the alternator had been within the last couple years after Dana had a misadventure with a busted alternator. So what's left? Plugs? New. Wires? New, also. But I didn't replace the distributor cap... Hrmmmm...
After purchasing a new distributor cap for the low price of 15 bucks, I sat in the engine bay and swapped the cap out. The old one was dirty, burnt, and certainly in need of changing. "That must be it!" I thought as I climbed back into the cab to turn the key and triumphantly bellow as the old 351 Windsor roared to life. But I was wrong yet again.
The battery was dead. SO, back into the store, to wait for it to charge. Then we tried the alternator test just to be sure. Nope, alternator still good. Battery good. Wires and cap good. So what's left?
An internal combustion engine needs three things to operate. Food, Fire and Air. She was getting air, sucking it in like mad through the very breathable K&N filter. Besides, if it was the filter, it would have ran poorly all the way not in random spurts. That only leaves food, and she drinks fuel like it's going out of style.
Three more dollars later, I am dumping a can of gas dryer into the tank. Maybe there's some water in there that's getting sucked into the fuel lines. Gas is lighter than water, right? No joy... still wtih the non-starting, stumbling and all around not working.
Finally, I had to give up the chase. I was out of ideas, and out of what I could accomplish in a parking lot on a cold, wet winter day. I called my wife, and convinced her to come pick me up and drive me back home, no small feat since it's an hour in each direction, and she STILL had to drive another 40 minutes after that to get to HER job at UNC.
The truck sits now at a mechanic. Luckily, the mechanics's shop was right across from the auto store I gave so much needless money to today. Tomorrow, if the roads are good enough to venture on in a small, Japanese sports car, I'll stop in and enlighten them as to why there's a big red 4x4 sitting in their log, and ask them to please find out what the hell I am missing in this puzzle.
Maybe it's a failing fuel pump. Maybe bad lines. Maybe bad gas. Maybe the coil pack is going. There are just too many variables, and I could throw money at it hand over fist trying to debug this. But in this case, I'd rather just let someone else do the debugging for a change and give me the status report afterwards. I do enough debugging as it is in my day job.
So here I sit, late, staring out the window at my snowy back yard, watching the dogs frolick in the light of the flood lamps typing out the day's adventures. I am often reminded of my mantra "Why does everything have to suck" on days like this. Often reminded of the price of kharma and more importantly, the cost of "doing the right thing" and going in to work on a day when I should have just crawled back into bed to enjoy the warmth of my wife, my dogs, and a nice heated mattress pad.
Das Aggregator!