I BROKE MY TRUCK - Do You Ever Have One Of Those Days???

A neighbor once told me that a good day is when nothing breaks. Today was not that day. Today was a very bad day. I had a phone meeting with a client scheduled for 3:00 in the afternoon and because of the good weather forcasted, I decided to head over with a neighbor and work on the Dozer (It's a Track Loader). The transmission pump needed to once again be removed and adjusted to get the hoses to fit.

We've been working with this thing forever and it seems like we were never going to get it running. So I headed off once again to see if I could get some work done on it.

But on the way there, just as we were getting close to my friend's house with the track loader, my truck started losing power. The truck died. It just wouldn't start.

Out here on these country roads, usually any passerby will stop and ask if you need help. Just as my neighbor and I started looking for the cause of the power failure, a local stopped with his truck and started to assist. We decided it was very likely a fuel pump.

My neighbor who was with me recently had to replace his fuel pump on his truck and recalled that it was quite a job. "You don't want to drop that tank", he said. "That's a pain in the butt. You want to pull the bed, but we'll need something to pull it up with, a tractor or something."

I remembered that Bob, (The owner of the house we were headed to) had a forklift. "That'll work" my neighbor said.

My father in law, Tim (@hans jurgen) had left for town this morning and I knew if I could catch him he could pick up the pump. Since I didn't have his number on my phone, I called home and left Jaimie all the information she needed about the truck so Tim could pick up the part at OReilly's. She got a hold of @hansjurgen and he was off to pick up the part.

Our job became to get the truck bed pulled off and lifted up to easily access the fuel pump. We unscrewed the 8 bolts underneath the truck holding on the bed. (Most of the nut and bolt sizes on this truck are metric which blows my mind).
Then Bob came around with his forklift and we used my chain to lift one side of the bed up slowly and put blocks underneath it.

With the truck lifted up on the drivers side exposing the fuel tank, we went to work on accessing the fuel pump and getting it removed.

Once inside we couldn't figure out how to get the ring off to pull the pump out of the tank. However, noticing that Bob's area has cell service (A luxury that most of the rural parts of my county does not have), I just googled an installation for a fuel pump on my exact model truck and found it! You can find anything on google. The instructions told us to bend a clip that was hold the ring on before we began to turn it. Found the clip. Lifted. Turned. Off. Easy peasy.

Next we detached the fuel lines going to the pump and pulled it out.

The old and new. @hansjurgen arrived from O'Reilly's with two pumps. There were two models for my truck. A single and a double plug. He had bought both just in case thinking we could simply return the unused pump later. The pump pulled from my truck ended up being the double plug connector.

But the plugs were still different on the new pump when compared to the plugs on the truck. The new pump included a wiring harness to splice in with your old truck plugs. I didn't have my wiring and splicing tools here but thankfully Bob had a splicer. So I went to working on putting the new harness on the truck.

Be careful not to drop any tools down that hole!

With the wiring done, the new pump slipped inside the tank and locked in place, the truck started right up no problem! YAY!

MY TRUCK BROKE (PART 2)

We still had to head to town and drop off the extra unused single plug fuel pump back at O'Reilly's and check at the hardware store for some bolts for the dozer(It's a track loader, Zac) . While I worked on the truck, my neighbor went to work on the dozer and pulled that pump part off. We made note of the part we needed in town along with some bolts and we were on our way.

No way was I going to make my meeting at 3pm. It was already 2:30. I texted my boss and let him know. He was cool with it.

After running our errands in town. We headed back to An American Homestead. Just over halfway there, a horrible grinding noise started coming from my truck. "What in the world?". We stopped on the side of the road and looked under the truck and saw that a u-joint on the drive-line was flinging some fluid on the underside of the truck bed, but not too bad. Maybe a u-joint seal going out. We also noticed the drive-line would move a bit if you tried to turn it. That's not good.

We started the truck and moved it forward. Nothing. No sound. After a bit more examination, we realized:

THE TRUCK WOULD NOT GO IN REVERSE!

MY TRANSMISSION WAS SHOT!

"A New Transmission" The words that no vehicle owner ever wants to hear. We can put a man on the moon but we can't make transmissions last the lifetime of the truck!

So today I will be looking for a Transmission shop. I like working on my truck but that is above my pay grade.

I hope you had a better day yesterday. See you on Sunday. There will be a NEW HEAD BULL IN TOWN!

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