Bringing Not So Sexy Back

About a week ago, my fantastic wife said to me, "hey, you want to drive over to Medford to get your truck back?"

I imediatly said, "really?!"

"Yeah. You deserve it. Besides, we need a second vehicle to get you to and from work."

Well, at least that's how it goes in my head.

Let's start with a little background first- I used to have a really awesome (but really ugly) '85 Dodge Ram Charger. It's got an old crate engine 318 with an Edelbrock intake and carb, long tube headers and some sort of non-descript cam. It was a fantastic truck. It would go where ever you pointed it, and was one of the most reliable trucks out of all my friends. Also it was built before Chrysler decided they need to build a lot of suck into their truck devision.

Everything was great up until gas started to skyrocket. Before long, we couldn't aford to put gas in it. The tags were about to go out of date and the old Thornbird tires I had on it were starting to crack. So it sat in the front of my house for months while I tried to sell it. I bought it for $1200 initially, which was the same price I was trying to sell it at. Sounded reasonable to me. Unfortunately, nobody else did. This is where my buddy Big Mike comes in to play.

Mike's been a great friend of mine for quite some time. I told him that I had to get rid of the truck because we were moving (forgot to mention that!) over to Medford. I decided to just give it to him. It needed new tires, a battery, fuel and new tags. If he could do all that, I'd just give it to him. There was one condition-I got first dibs if he decided to get rid of it or sell it. He agreed.

So, back to the story at hand. We decided to take the trip over there monday on my payday (which also happens to be my only day off). Of course, the checks were late once again (screw you, UPS!), which threw us off by several hours. I needed to get over there early because Mike had told me that the truck needed a new fuel pump and I wanted time to actually work on it.

The check didn't come in until noon, so we didn't leave for Medford until 1pm. Awesome. The journey over went without a hitch, so that was nice, but we didn't arrive until about 4ish. Mike and I imediatly went to work on the truck. I tried to get underneath it in his back yard, but I didn't appreciate the giant fucking weeds with giant fucking spikes all over them stabbing me in the spleen, so we rolled it onto the street. It's amazing how comfortable laying on your back on the concrete feels after laying on a bed of natures own nails.

The job looked fairly straight forward enough. It was a mechanical fuel pump, so it's not in the tank, but on the block. As a matter of fact, it's right behind the alternator bracket. Mike had suggested that we remove the alternator for the ease of replacing the pump, but why the hell would I want to do things the easy way? I enjoy moving a wrench one micron at a time. We kept the alternator on, and things were slow going and frustrating, just the way any easy looking project should be.

We got every thing off, replaced the pump and installed a new fuel line from the filter to the carb because the old one was well, old and in need of replacing. We picked up some gas from a local station to prime the carb and also to put in the tank because Mike had ran it out of gas the precious time he tried to start it.

Once we were certain that every thing was hooked up, I got in the cab and Mike primed the carb. Things got off with a roar, as the Ram Charger came to life with an exhaust note that sounds like the four horsemen of the appocalypse raping a grizzly bear that's been gargling broken glass. A truly life altering sound that turns mice into men and drops the IQ of every one within the range of one mile. Too bad that it wouldn't stay running. After almost an hour of priming, starting, dieing, wash, rinse, repeat, the battery gave up the ghost. Even though we had a fresh battery waiting in the wings, the women and children were supposedly starving. We decided to give up for the day, and try it in about a week or two when I can get some more time to come back.

We haven't narrowed down the problem just yet, but considering it was getting fuel aft of the pump, but not aft of the filter (which happens to be brand spankin' new), I figure that it's either a directional filter and we put it on wrong in all the hullabalu, or it's already clogged for one reason or another. Eventually I will get it started, and I will get it back to Brookings. Eventually.