1996.09/22 Cross Country Trip III

EXCERPTED FROM MESSAGE TO CASSIANO SUREK

> Hi Kim!

Greetings Cassiano!

> Did your truck make it back? I sure hope so!
> 
> Tell me about it!

Well, here's the story.  The truck was flaky the entire summer, and in the
middle of the summer it totally died.  Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
I went to start it one morning and it simply wouldn't turn over.  All the
power would cut out when I tried to turn the ignition key; no whirring,
nothing.

So I took the truck to a nearby Nissan dealer (after jump-starting the
truck) and had them look at it.  Three days later they said: "Well, sir,
we don't know what's wrong with it, so we are going to randomly replace
parts and charge you for it."  The first thing they changed was the
battery, and then things miraculously worked again.  They called the
case closed.  Of course, the *real* problem wasn't fixed but at least
the truck ran.

Another serious problem was my accelerator.  Whenever I would push
the pedal down past a certain point the truck would choke and sputter.  I 
could drive fine if I stayed within a "safely slow" regime, but I couldn't
accelerate very fast or go up hills.  Very boring, and not very confidence
inspiring, either.

Anyway, at the end of the summer I went to Massachusetts again to visit
friends and family and hooked up with Ray, my best friend back east.  He's
mechanically inclined and looked at the truck.  He postulated a transmission
problem, so we took the vehicle to a good transmission place he knew.  One
of the guys there took it out for a test drive with me and diagnosed the 
problem.

"First", he said, "there are two problems.  One is that the engine is messed
up somehow, the second is that your clutch and transmission is going.
We don't fix engines, but we can fix the tranny.  It will cost $525 to
replace the clutch and another $75 to look at the transmission, which
will probably need to be replaced."

At this point, Ray pulled me aside and gave me some advice.  "Kim, ditch
the truck, fly back, and buy a new truck when you get there.  This truck
is on it's last legs.  It's not going to make it back."  So I asked him
if replacing the transmission would fix things and he said, "Sure.  Right
up until the next thing goes wrong three months from now, in which case
some junkyard is going to get a great deal on a new transmission."

So I looked into alternate means of getting back west.  The place I worked
for over the summer said that they would pay to fly me back if I didn't 
think my truck would make it back, which was exceedingly nice of them,
all things considered.  However, I didn't want to take advantage of their
generosity, so I thought about getting to California somehow myself.

The key factor in all this was the huge amount of junk I had taken with
me over the summer.  I had textbooks, clothing, and my computer.  If I 
hadn't had all that stuff, I could very easily have rode the truck into 
the ground and then caught a bus / train (which are the most economical
ways to go, by the way).  Eventually I discovered getting a rental car
wasn't so bad, and that I could get one virtually anywhere in the US. 
So I decided to run the truck to death and see how far it made it.

Right before starting the trip, I hooked back down to Princeton again to
attend a symposium there.  So my point of origination was about 100 miles
south of the path I usually take across the country.  I decided to take
a different (and more "direct") route, which would hook me through the
more southern states before I hit my normal route in the middle of the
country.  That was my big mistake.

I now know what the phrase "the flowing hills of Kentucky" means.  The 
whole bloody state is just hill after hill.  Quite verdant.  Very 
picturesque.  A nice vacation spot.  But hell on a truck with a fading
transmission and an acceleration cap.  Eventually the truck slowly died
and I pulled into a small town outside of Lexington.

It was early morning then, so I grabbed a snooze, ate some breakfast, 
and thought about what I should do.  I figured that it couldn't hurt
to have someone look at the truck and see if they could fix it.  So I
called up a local place, they towed the truck there, and puzzled on it
for awhile.  

The first thing the mechanic said was that the transmission wasn't a real
problem yet.  My clutch was workable, the transmission was okay for now;
rather, something had to be wrong with the fuel intake or firing.  He 
worked on the former for awhile, but got nowhere.  Then he tried tinkering 
with the firing and was able to connive it to work again!  (It turns out 
that I have a dual ignition system, with 2 spark plugs per piston.  He 
simply swapped the leads to the ignition coils and it worked!)  So he 
figured that one of the ignition cores was bad and needed to be replaced.

Anyway, I was mobile once again.  I drove the rest of the way into Lexington
and waited outside the city for tomorrow morning (it was evening when I
arrived).  The next day I found a place called Complete Auto Repair.  If 
you are ever stuck in Lexington and need repairs, go to this place.  

So I tell them I think there's a firing problem and that maybe one of the 
ignition coils is bad.  They hook it up to a machine, discover the coils
are fine, and that something is wrong with the distributor cap.  Twenty
minutes of work later, they find the rotor boot on the distributor is
shot.  The longest wait of the day was when they ordered a new one from a 
local parts dealer.  Then they installed it, tinkered the engine, and 
suddenly everything was running great.  And all they charged me was $150, 
a mere pittance in the auto repair world.

So I get back onto the road and things are incredible.  The truck it 
running better now than it ever has; it's almost like new.  I no longer
have an acceleration problem, and I'm eating up miles left and right,
screaming at 75MPH+.  I get out of Kentucky and into Illinois by the
afternoon, and I'm thinking to myself, "You know, if that was the 
engine problem, then all I really need to do now is replace the clutch.
I'll do that the moment I get to California."

That was just about when I lost 5th gear.

I shift down into 4th gear, which works fine, and decide to pull over
into another small town around 80 miles outside of St. Louis.  As I was
slowing on the offramp I down shifted into 3rd gear... and discovered it
was missing, too!  1st and 2nd were gone as well!  So I had to navigate
the city streets in 4th gear until I could find someplace to pull over.

I lucked out onto a hotel and pulled into the lot.  It was late afternoon
on Friday the 13th, an ill aspected day which caused me no end of grief.
I get a room for the night and decide that I'll face things in the morning.
After making some calls I discover nobody is working on the weekend.
But persistence pays off and I find a shop about 30 miles away in
Centralia which has a mechanic on duty.  

"Sure, I'd be willing to work on your truck, but the big problem is going
to be finding the parts."  "What?" I said.  "Not many places around here
stock foreign car parts."  (I have a Nissan pickup truck, by the way.)  So
I call around to a dozen places a find out he's right.  "Sorry, we don't
stock that."  "We'll have to order that from St. Louis."  "I can get that
to you first thing Monday morning."

Two phonebooks later I find a place on the other side of St. Louis which
has the clutch in stock.  So I formulate a dastardly plan where I'll get
the truck towed to the shop.  While they are taking out the transmission 
I'd get a rental car, zip over and back for the clutch, and hopefully
they'd be just about ready to use the part.  

After the truck is towed to the shop, another piece of luck comes my way.
The mechanic, feeling empathy at my plight, made some phone calls of his
own and found a rebuilt clutch in Centralia.  Moreover, it was cheaper than
the other clutch I was going to get.  So I end up not zipping around but
just taking several walks around the city while they work on the truck.

Finally comes the moment of truth.  The new clutch is installed.  Was the 
problem just the clutch or was the tranny shot as well?  The mechanic
start the truck, puts it in gear and... nothing happens!  The only gear
which works is 4th.  AARGH!  It means that I need a whole new transmission.

Of course, now I'm stuck in the town until Monday, because *no one* works 
on the Lord's day.  So I stay in a local hotel for a couple nights.  Come
Sunday night I decide to do a full walk around the whole city.  On my way
back to the hotel, two guys pace me for a few blocks.  They deftly guide
me into a semi-secluded area and I think to myself, "Oh great.  I'm going 
to be mugged."

I turned around and faced them directly.  Just as they are about to make a 
move on me, a police car pulls slowly onto the street.  Both of them stop.
They look at me, they look at the cop, they look back at me, and then
simultaneously they decide now probably wouldn't be a good time to mug me.
They hurry past me and I walk over to the policeman.  He very courteously 
guides me back to the hotel.

Things pick up after my near brush with aggravated larceny.  On Monday
the mechanic is able to find a junkyard with the exact same truck that
I have, which just got into accident over that weekend!  It was in a
front end accident, which totalled the engine, but the transmission was
fine.  So I got a used transmission instead of a new one (saving $1,000+ 
right there).

Anyway, they replace the transmission and it works great.  Wheelah!  I
get back on the road and once again I am warp enabled.  Not only that,
but this transmission didn't have the quirks my previous one did (like
coming out of 1st and 2nd gear).  In the next couple days I scream 
across the country, zip zang zoom!  Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, all blaze by.

The only remaining hurdle was a tornado and lightning storm I hit in 
New Mexico.  Lots of wind, rain, and lightning, but otherwise not very 
serious.  I only saw one tornado form, and since it was traveling east
to my west, I was in it for less than an hour.  It was clear sailing
after that, and I eventually made it to Caltech, in one piece, with all
my stuff, and moreover, with a working truck.  Yahoo!