My evening on the ground started with some cryptic directions from mom that she had written on an all ready printed upon page of computer paper. The directions were in blue ink and most lights that I found to read under were blue so I finally resorted to using my head lamp which I always carry when I travel.
I had missed the first bus from the airport that went downtown, 88 so I waited for almost an
hour for another bus. I had previously learned that you have to have exact change to board the bus and so part of the reason for missing the first bus was a wild chase through the airport trying to find someone to give me change in a world of electronic transactions and credit cards. I finally found a newspaper stand, he would not give me change unless I bought something, so I bought something and got some change, made a mad dash to the bus stop only to see 88 riding off into the sunset like a scene in an old western movie.
The bus ride was a prime example of cultural diversity. Everyone was black but me, I am
glad I was there to provide the diversity. Downtown I had to walk a number of blocks with
left and right turns and find another stop and another bus. As luck would have it and with the
help of mother's impeccable directions (more about that later) I arrived across the street from the stop just as the last bus was heading for my final destination. Having not previously tried
the GPS function on my phone I decided to locate my present position to see if in reality I really was in the right place. The phone made some interesting noises, flashed a loading message and much to my surprise located me and then clicked again and told me which
buses came to the stop and when they were coming. Suddenly I realized I was in hog heaven and I rejoiced in the technology that was resting in my hand. I asked another fellow at the bus stop about the buses and he told me that I could take another bus and get to my final
destination. He was waiting for the same bus so he told me just get on it with him. In the interim a lady came by, gave me her whole, lurid, life's story and as a clincher asked me for money. Money was not what she needed, sorry to say, but being the moralist that I am, I smiled and told she would be fine and got on the bus.
I had passed the motel on the way in but didn't realize I was there and so I asked the bus
driver if he would drop me off on his return trip. He said he was parking the bus and then going home for the night so he would not be able to drop me off. I visited with another fellow standing in the canopy and he was going another direction and warned me that it would not
be prudent for me to walk through the area at night, he described it as "dark" (duh) but implicit in his description was dangerous. I told him dark was not a problem as I had a headlamp and I launched off into the night for a two plus mile hike to the motel
I followed the directions mom had given me but when I came to a critical intersection I didn't feel right about the direction indicated so I had the presence of mind to ask a guy in a gas
station where to go. It was a left turn and not a right turn as indicated.
The lobby of the motel smelled like a can of curry powder so I knew there was going to be some cultural diversity at the motel. Not surprising, almost all of the motels in the US have curry in the lobby, especially in the smaller and outlying areas. I guess that it must be a goodinvestment to own a motel in the US.
Wednesday morning was pickup time for the truck. Coparts was about 3 miles away so
I launched an hour early thinking that it would be about that amount of time to walk to the
facility as they call it. There are no sidewalks in the area and the highway that became
my path is bounded on both side by gigantic barrow pits, probably built for evacuating water during the hurricane season. The barrow pits slope so sharply as to render it almost impossible to walk on the side of the road so I walked on the highway and jumped out
of the way of the traffic onto the edge of the barrow pit. The traffic came in herds, clutches or congresses, whatever, as the various lights changed and groups of cars surged through. My jumps were perfectly timed as it witnessed by my currently healthy state and this blog entry.
I can't count how many Coparts places I have been to. This is probably the largest and the most impersonal. I obtained the title for the truck (Clean) and then went to the gate clerk to give him the paper work so they could get the truck. Since it was a run and drive I asked
them not to bring it out with a fork lift but rather to drive it out. I watched the fork lift driver go down to the end of the line, park his fork lift and then get out of the car and disappear into the side of the line for a few moments. It was then the truck emerged and started towards me.
The truck is silver and I would be remiss if I didn't admit that I have always wanted a silver
truck. It was coming my way and I knew that my want of silver was about to be fulfilled. There
was at that moment an almost imperceptible flash of light under the front of the truck followed by complete stoppage of movement of the truck. Customers are not allowed in the area
where the truck was so I had the gate guy call on the radio. The driver said the truck had stopped and he was trying to figure out what was going on and he would get back to the gate guy.
An hour passed and the assistant manager came and sat down with me in the lobby to tell
me that the truck was out of fuel and indicated that I would have to get fuel for it. I folded my arms across my chest, planted my feet firmly in front of him and indicated that the truck was a run and drive and that he needed to drive it to the gate and I would take it from there. Two hours of negotiations followed with Coparts insisting that I needed to go get fuel and me insisting that it was their responsibility since they had run it out of gas. It must have been the way my arms were folded across my chest or perhaps the position of my feet on the floor, both negotiating tricks learned from my wife, but they relented and put fuel in the truck.
As you all know, running a diesel out of fuel is a fatal error as the whole fuel system has to
be purged before it will start again. The Copart people worked on it for a couple of hours with
no luck. At one point they even let me go down to the truck and give them some help. All of this was to no avail. When I got close to silver I instantly fell in love. Falling in love with a vehicle is always a bad business decision and I knew it but we have to allow ourselves some vices at various stages of our lives.
It was obvious I needed a mobile mechanic. I called one that was recommended by Jacento, a nice man at Coparts who had become my friend through this ordeal. The mobile guy said it would be a couple of hours, the time passed and then he called and said a couple of more hours, finally towards the end of the day he called and said, "first thing in the morning". The phone had worked me constantly during the day, with truck problems and job problems at home and the usual barrage of phone calls my battery was dead by 2.30 and I had to plug it in the keep going. I called a cab about 6 and no one came, finally a cab came for someone else and by this time it had started to pour rain, for a St. George guy it was kind of like the precursor to a hurricane. The cabbie offered to let me ride with the other guy, return to coparts, punch the clock and take me back to the motel which he did. I talked to Brandon in the cab and got an update on the crisis that he is dealing with. It occured to me when I walked into the motel that it had been 36 hours since I had eaten anything but a glass of juice and a muffin. There is no place to eat but a golden arch (such an inappropriate name for such a crummy place). The rain had abated by this time so I did the jump and avoid thing
to the arch and finally had some food.
Thursday morning I walked to Coparts again, I was a little later so traffic was worse but I was better since I had all ready practiced the trip once and made it all of the way without incident. The mechanic was a disappointment. He was not deductive, intuitive or even interested in thinking through the problem and after three hours I told him that this wasn't going anywhere and I sent him away. My feeling is if you pay some one to come and do something they need to come and do it or you don't pay them. The negotiations were tough but I did get about half of the bill abated.
It was obvious at this point what was obvious in the beginning. I should have had the truck
towed to the dodge dealer and had them deal with it. Whatever the gremlin was, it was bigger than my experience, deductive reasoning and maybe even my prayers but probably not. My now fast friend Jacento made arrangements for a wrecker and a nice fellow by the name of Victor showed up. He had lost 70 pounds in the last 5 months and he was anxious to tell his story and I was anxious to hear it.
The 19 year old service advisor at the dodge dealer had told me in the initial part of our conversation that he couldn't get to the truck until Monday but looked at his schedule and came back on line and said if I would get it right over he would get it looked at. By 430 he
had not called and when I finally got a hold of him he started feeding me a bunch of bologna thinking that I would swallow anything he dished out. His flippant attitude and lack of honesty was disgusting and so we had a heart to heart talk about our "word" in business and how it
is the only real thing that matters.The transformation was miraculous and we were suddenly operating on the same page. Close to six he called and said that the ignition switch was bad and they needed to fix a fuel leak and then the truck would be ready to go. Someday I am going to write a book entitled "Incompetence in America".
Friday morning he called and said they couldn't work on the truck until Monday. I told him to
send a car over, I was going to buy the parts and some tools and fix it myself.
I arrived and went straight to the parts department and started going through the list. About 30 minutes into the parts department discussion the service guy showed up and indicated that he had broken a man loose and he would be able to get right on it. Another barrage
of phone calls, emails and the like and suddenly it was almost four on Friday afternoon and somehow I felt this was a bad sign. About the time that thought crossed my mind the service
manager showed up and told me that they had fixed everything but the truck still didn't work and they needed to diagnose the ECM, electronic control module, or computer which makes this truck work. Shortly he returned and indicated it was toast...literally, see paragraph about a flash of light under the truck.
A new ECM is $2600 installed which at this point was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I think they knew I was desperate to leave and they figured they could throw anything at me for bait and I would bite. Much to their surprise I said no deal and started working the phone to see if I could solve this problem. My St George guy had it for $1100 and said I could probably install it and they are all over the internet for $600-800 so I figured I had this guy on the run. I met with the service manager and he agreed to let me work on the car since it was
in the parking lot and so arrangements were made for me to come back Saturday and work on the car.
I started working the phone early in the morning on Saturday and at about the 15th call had located an ECM from Texmex auto parts. It was a cash only place with no refunds but they were sure they had the part. With my phone GPS I drove through some pretty wild looking parts of town and finally arrived at Texmex and purchased the part. I was gleeful and returned to the dodge dealer and drove to the rear of the parking lot where silver was parked alone in silent repose waiting for its brain to be installed. Part of the instructions that I read on the internet indicated that the batteries had to be disconnected prior to working on the ECM. I noticed that the battery cables where not installed correctly, in the process of working
on the truck I had had the batteries replaced as the old ones were dead. There was a lingering sense of something not quite right when I thought about the cables but I pressed forward. I crawled under the car and there was a fair amount of diesel fuel on the ground. I didn't want to lay down in the fuel to work so I looked around for something to protect me from the fuel. There was nothing in sight but I did happen to glance in the back of the truck and there was a bowed and broken piece of plywood that appeared to be of sufficient size to lay on.I wrestled it under the truck but because it was bowed and broken at one end it lodged against a lower part of the frame before it went all the way under. Holding onto the front suspension I pulled myself under the truck and onto the plywood. Removing the ECM went fairly quickly, particularly considering it was my first. Replacement was a repeat of the above but with some fancy language that helped to snake a laptop sized box through a bunch of
hydraulic hoses. I made the necessary electrical connections and then pulled myself from under the car and connected the batteries so that I could start the car. I checked everything and double checked to be sure that nothing was amiss. I had noted a lingering smell of fuel but had assumed that it was related to the fuel on the ground that I had avoided with the piece of plywood previously mentioned.
After some eternal pleading and heartfelt prayer I turned on the ignition and maybe not much to my surprise the engine started almost instantly. That was great news. I pushed on the accelerator pedal to hear what the engine sounded like in power mode and nothing happened. I turned it off and then turned it on again and went through the same procedure with the same result. I then concluded that the engine needed to warm so I sat in the truck and let it idle to warm up. Diesels take a long time to warm up, sometimes 15 minutes and as I now know generate a lot of heat in the process.
I became aware of what smelled like smoke about five minutes into the warming up process, at first the smell was not alarming as vehicle that have been sitting for a while often
have dust and dirt on various hot parts that burn off as part of the normal process of starting
a not often run vehicle.
My first clue the smoke was cause for alarm was an orange/yellow flash that I noted on the
passenger side of the vehicle and a sudden awareness that it was extremely hot in the cab.
The rest of the experience was a little bit of a blur, the fire truck, the police, the wrecker and the sacrosanct trip back to Coparts on the back of a wrecker for silver, this time in an altered state and finally this admission of what was sheer foolishness on my part to disregard smells, smoke and finally fire.
There is a picture for reference. I wanted to share this with all of you and am hopeful that
you won't spread it around. I feel badly that it happened but figured it would probably come
out at some point in time and assumed it best that I break the news rather than have it come
to you in some other way.
Things like this happen and they happen with regularity but in this case if you have worked through this story like I have you probably should look at your calendar and realize that today is the first. april 1st. gotcha
