Where is everyone #5

Here we go again.

 

30 minute break? You do those? Lol.

Appreciate the advice Wore, and I know it's coming from plenty of experience. My first thoughts about owning a truck has always been reliability and affordability. The less time it sits in the shop, and the less it costs to fix, that's more money in my pocket, and more free time for me and family.

I'm not anywhere close to buying yet, but if the right deal comes along, and I have a decent plan in place, I'll probably hop on board. Granted, I'm not looking to burn any bridges where I work currently, and likely will run under their authority to begin with before getting out there on my own, but when I first started doing this for real, I never even once thought that owning my own truck was either a good idea or an achievable goal. I didn't think I'd ever be able to tackle the "extra work" involved, nor wanted to.

But now I'm looking at the independence it offers, and knowing that while it's more work, I get to do everything on my own terms. I was told to "be like a sponge" since I first started, and boy, can I say I've absorbed everything I could. I still know so very little relative to some of you old hands, but I always deeply appreciate everything you offer up. It's always just one more thing that helps me stay alive and get me through each day.

And yes, I add every restaurant and truck stop recommendation you (and several others) give to my Google maps "want to go" list.

 

I know I'm getting paid by the hour to sit here, but that itch to drive 600+ miles in a day, 5-6 days in a row is getting worse. And now that I've found my paycheques are smaller than they were when I was running hard on a weekly basis, it's a little frustrating to sit here knowing I could be making more for less work.

That and I'm missing out on a lot of good weather driving days down south. Soon enough it'll be freezing rain and snow and a 600 mile day will be impossible.

 

@Zeviander , I can sure relate to that. I decided to take a break from the tank stuff till winter and propane picks back up. I was ready to take a ride and stretch my legs while we still have good weather.

 

I know, been there done that.....hate that pop sound, just ruins the whole day !!

 

You’re thinkin right. I value the reliability and affordability way too much, which is why I have kept myself from Pittsburgh Power’s website, and from ripping my ECM off and sending it away for a working over.

As much as I’d love to be able to outpull everybody on every hill, I also love having that rock-solid reliable truck that always gets the job done and finds her way back home.

Not saying it’ll never happen, we all have moments of weakness and bad judgement lol, but when a truck just flat works you hate to take a chance on screwing it up. Also not saying that a good driver can’t crank the fuel up and still have a reliable truck, just that in my line of work, as much off road low range hill climbing and mud bogging as we do, it’d be awful easy to mess up. I’ve seen my share of twisted and snapped drive shafts out here in the patch. Always takes out a bunch of air lines and stuff when that happens, and now you need a tow truck as well as a day or two of missed work while you fix it. No bueno.



#ifitaintbrokedontfixit

 

I miss those days. Just breaking it down for transport? We used to cheat and just jam a block under the cylinder, unpin it and then lower the stick onto blocking. Unpin stick and back away.

 

Pretty good plan for sure.

If I was a betting man I would bet that your block is in good shape, that a little pitting on some liners especially number 4 will be the worst thing you see.

 

My dad had one rebuilt back in '99 and the block was cracked around #6 where the liner flange sat. It was still rebuildable but the shop said that was common from poor coolant flow? I'm hoping the head isn't cracked. Had no oil in coolant or coolant in oil and the rad didn't appear to be getting any compression into it so I might get lucky.

 

@johndeere4020