THE ADVENTURES MK III - Still doing it my way

Well I'm down at the Charlotte OC now. When I went home Friday I told the ICR I spoke with that I was dropping my empty at the Charlotte OC. Of course that task never got emptied, so when I messaged in to ops today asking for an empty for my load tomorrow, it resulted in the usual trainwreck. I had already accepted my preassignment, but they decide to add on a completely new work assignment showing the pickup and dropping of the previous empty that I can't complete until I finish this load. LOL. So I message in and started heading for Charlotte. I stop in Greensboro at KMart and message in telling them what happened. I sit for 30 minutes in line before getting in to KMart. They have empties there. Still no response from ops. Whatever. Hook to the empty and roll. Get down to Charlotte, guy at the gate tells me that the trailer isn't on me and that I need to finish my workflow. "Will do"... I say. *Cough*. First I try to park, of course the OC is full again. Find another IC that is leaving the front row, sweet I can take his spot. Nope, my ****ing truck can't turn sharp enough to get in there without hitting the trailer with my trailer as I pull in. Just another day in the life. So I back up, drive around to the front, somehow the spot isn't taken yet even though there are 4 trucks sitting at the fuel islands waiting for a spot to open up, whip around and back in. Done.

I got my parts from CAT earlier today. I bought a plate that goes in place of the primer pump, and the gasket and bolts. It was like 16 bucks all told. A new pump was over $100, and they are prone to leaking and letting air in. So I opted for the plate. I threw the primer pump in the side box and can put it on in the time it takes to remove two bolts if I ever need to. The primer pump was leaking fuel and probably sucking in air so hopefully this will improve fuel consumption. I still have no real idea what it's doing yet for MPG, haven't run enough through it yet to tell, but my butt dyno tells me it's running better now that it's no longer sucking in some air.

Hopefully the man upstairs will look out for my headgasket and keep the little leak external until I've built up enough cash reserves. As long as there is no oil in the coolant or vice versa it's all good and I'll run and just take it real easy on the truck. I haven't noticed a drop in oil or coolant levels, so that is a good sign as well. Ideally it will hold on long enough that I can just save up for a complete in-frame. The problem with this repair is it usually is more than just a headgasket on this 6NZ CAT... if the liners aren't protruding enough you can slap on a new gasket on there and it still won't seal right and you're back at square one. I could afford the headgasket repair right now, but when you start talking about pulling liners, maybe just overhauling, etc., etc., I just couldn't pull that off right now. I know CAT will finance overhauls but with my limited credit history, and the fact that I already have a personal loan that I took out to help pay for part of the truck, I doubt that would fly.

It's a risk I took. Dang thing dyno'd great, rest of the truck checked out great, head stayed perfectly dry until that second load I put behind it LOL. Good thing is that my payment is next to nothing on the truck, so if I needed to park it for a bit and do something else for a while to save up for a complete overhaul I could. Don't want to though! Hopefully I won't have to... fingers crossed, and lots of light easy loads in the meantime!

Ran into rickybobby down here at the OC... anyone else here in Charlotte tonight?