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oh fuck and the truck
Wednesday, September 7 2005
Fed up with the Grundfos circulator pump, which is what I installed to move water in my solar heating loop, I headed into town today to look for a replacement. I drove the truck, which I've used very little since the price of gasoline began spiraling out of control in mid August. Every time I do drive it, I have a continual awareness of the message spelled out on the back gate in huge letters made of cut-up "Support Our Troops" and "God Bless America" ribbons, the magnetic kind that are so easy to steal. It's an in-your-face retort to the sanctimoniousness of ribbon-based sentiments, reading simply "oh fuck." I love for people to see it, but it also keeps me on edge, like I'm committing some sort of low-level misdemeanor. I was driving through that web of Kingston that spreads between its Uptown district and the Mansard-roofed hell of Ulster Avenue, listening to Sugar's Copper Blue very loud when two fire engines appeared out of nowhere in my rearview mirror and I dove to the side. That was no big deal, but then at a stoplight the engine stalled. I know from experience that a vehicle with an automatic transmission is in serious trouble if it's stalling, but to determine what was wrong I had to get the damn thing off Ulster Avenue.
At first I thought maybe a screw had fallen out of the throttle "floor control" or whatever it is that keeps the engine idling at a certain rate. In my old Punch Buggy Green a screw could be twisted to set the bottom idle rate, and in my truck there seemed to be a place for a screw but no actual screw. Lacking any tools to help with my situation, I decided to worry about the pump I had set out to buy and then the truck later. I found that a good Taco circulator pump could be had for only about $65 at Security Plumbing Supply, so that was what I bought.
I took the most direct route home, heading past "Tech City", the office park once occupied by IBM but now mostly empty, save for a few Bank of America (formerly Fleet) offices. Out on the open road of US 209, I realized there was something profoundly wrong with the truck. It wouldn't go more than 40 miles per hour even on a flat, and there was a grating noise coming from the engine. I'd heard that noise before and recognized it as a problem with lubrication. But there were no lights glowing on the dashboard and both the temperature and oil pressure gauges were positioned in their usual places on their respective analog scales. Fearing what the truck would do on the big hill on 209, I took a detour to the Kingston traffic circle on Sawkill Road and then headed out on Route 28 towards Hurley Mountain Road. By now it was making such a racket that I decided to get out and scrutinize the engine more closely. Parked at the entrance to that baseball diamond near where Hurley Mountain Road reaches Route 28, I finally checked the oil. There wasn't any. Whoops! It seems the dashboard meters hadn't been conveying any useful information. (The speedometer works fine, however. The truck has logged over 130,000 miles.)
So I immediately set out on something of a minor Odysseian adventure to get oil. I traveled the way one travels in times of crisis or poverty, on foot. It's can be frustrating and time-consuming to be reduced to this primitive mode of conveyance, but it's probably good for whatever it is you might call my soul. By walking I could reacquaint myself with the reality of distance on my part of the planet. The nearest gas station was the Hessout to the west on Route 28. It was about a half mile away, but since I didn't really know where it was, walking there seemed to take forever. I bought four quarts of oil and would have bought a crescent wrench too, but there were none for sale. (I really wanted to drain what little oil was in my engine; in my initial panic after discovering there was no oil on the dipstick I'd started pouring hydraulic fluid into the engine thinking it was oil and hadn't discovered my error until after a couple tablespoons of the bluish fluid.)
With two new quarts of oil in the engine, I drove south down Hurley Mountain Road. The truck seemed to be running better, but it still wasn't the same. The best test was the steep grade of Dug Hill Road and it failed that miserably. The truck could only go about ten miles per hour in the half mile before my driveway, about fifteen miles per hour slower than usual. Worse still, it was making that horrible abrasive engine noise the whole time. Perhaps I'd broken a ring on one of the pistons. Suffice it to say, I won't be taking the truck on any more errands. It looks like Gretchen and I are going to be buying a hybrid sooner than we'd initially planned (unless all you diesel fans can find us a car that wasn't built by a corporation formerly controlled by Nazis).
The trouble with the truck was bad news, but at least the new Taco circulator pump, once installed, worked reliably. I was tired of that problem consuming valuable hours in my limited lifetime.
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http://asecular.com/blog.php?050907 feedback
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