The following is what it feels like to buy a 47 year old, 20,000 lb plus truck (sight unseen) and drive it about 1,000 miles with no tools, the mechanical gremlins we faced and how we overcame them. It's a lot, so I'll be writing and posting in installments.
We flew up to Philly on Sunday night and showed up at Eastern Monday morning shortly after they opened. There's a lot of cool trucks there and they have an impressively large shop. It's a pretty big operation.
We took a short test drive and the truck seemed to run well. It stalled once but started right back up, so I chalked it up to something intermittent.
After they installed the mud flaps and mounts I brought with me, we set out and were soon on an onramp, merging onto I 95 South.
First impression was "Man, this thing's big". I'd seen a couple in person over the years but never actually sat in one and once we were out on the road, I found myself looking down at drivers in Mack trucks and the 18 wheeled tanker in front of me seemed kinda… small.
The mass of it is impressive. It feels like if you veered off the road and hit a house, you would just plow through the house. You would also crush a car full of people if they got under your tires. so there's an inescapable sense of responsibility to not kill everybody around you. You have to pay attention and watch out for everybody else. Kinda like riding a motorcycle except you're doing it for their survival, not yours.
The second impression was noise. It really is a loud machine with very little between you and thousands of pounds of spinning, hammering steel and cast iron. I wouldn't describe it as a whine. It's more of a roar.
The third impression was after we got up to speed. There was a hammering in the suspension and steering wheel. It was pretty rough and I wondered if 2000 lbs of cold rubber just rode that way until they warmed up. Like I said, I had no previous experience with these things and no idea of what was "normal". It's a stupid way to go into something like this, but I did it anyway. And I brought my dad along for the ride.
We were roaring and hammering along with traffic and then… the engine stalled. We coasted over onto the shoulder (which didn't seem wide enough for the truck) and got it restarted again. I wasn't gonna try to figure anything out sitting on a narrow shoulder with traffic flying by, so I got rolling and got off the interstate at the first exit I saw. We dropped down into a neighborhood with narrow, one way streets and intersections where I couldn't make the turn without making it a three pointer and started looking for a place to stick this thing.
Then it stalled again. I didn't want to block the entire city street (which I would have) so I tried to use our momentum to pull off the road into a conveniently located parking lot. With the engine stalled and no power steering, it was a hard turn to make. There was a concrete filled steel post that it looked like I was doomed to hit. I didn't think "I'm going to crash", I thought "I'm going to destroy this concrete and steel post", but I managed to miss it by inches and get the truck to a stop. I opened the hood, which is pretty heavy and seems about 10 feet long, but it's actually only about six feet long and I was able to figure out where to walk on the fenders to get it all the way up, leaning against the windshield. Glad it wasn't windy.
Then I saw the problem. The wire providing the 24 volts to open the fuel solenoid was loose. It was effectively just sitting on the terminal stud so the vibration of driving would break the fragile connection, the solenoid would close and the engine would be shut down until we stopped moving, the wire stopped wiggling and then it allowed me to start it again.
All I had to do was tighten up the nut and terminal post holding the ring terminal to the solenoid. Trouble was, I had no tools. Not even a multi tool since I couldn't get that through airport security. I got a lot of good advice about what tools to bring, but I didn't follow through and spend the money and time to get them. Then a AAA car pulled up...
He was there to help someone else out, but I asked and he was kind enough to loan me a pair of pliers and a small wrench. That was all I needed, the solenoid connection was tight and the big Cummins never stalled again. Just a simple loose wire.
Now all we had to do was figure out how to get back on I95. This was an area where having a co-driver was very helpful. My dad was helping me watch my blind spots and figure out where the **** we had to go. Trying to get familiar with driving something this large (especially in the city) while trying to troubleshoot and keep an eye out for problems and navigating a strange city at the same time would have been pretty hard and probably not too safe.
My intent was for this trip to be an extended birthday gift for my dad's 75th. I hoped it would be an adventure and a good memory.
As I squeezed the big truck down the narrow streets, looking for a way to get back on the interstate, out of Philadelphia and begin our 1,000 mile trip south in this large, strange truck, I began to wonder if that was going to happen. But I was already glad he was with me.
To be continued...
