So I got up early on Saturday morning and drove five hours to Lake Havasu where the truck has been in storage at my mother's house. This trip came a bit earlier than I had planned for. My mother is moving and I'm not positive her next living arrangement will have accommodations for my truck. It was destined to come home in about six months. I got to Havasu just before noon is quitting time at the local Uhaul. After procuring a trailer it was time to to tinker. I brought most of the tools that I needed to get it going. Except for maybe the one toll I needed. With fresh fuel and a healthy spark I couldn't get the motor to turn more than twenty or thirty degrees. If I had a 1/2 breaker bar, I could have turned the motor by hand and possibly freed whatever was stuck. I guess I could have pulled a spark plug and put a little oil on top of the pistons. Or pulled all the spark plugs and cranked it to see if the valves were sticking shut. I didn't find the problem. I gave myself an hour to mess with it before it was necessary to get to the hardware store to buy a come along. After dragging it onto the trailer there wasn't anything more to do with the truck but worry about how I would get it into my garage from the trailer. I honestly did prepare for the truck not starting. Overconfidence bites me again. For an hour or so I brainstormed as I was trying to get to sleep. Again as I woke up, and for the full six hours coming home. I came up with some really hair brained ideas. But the simplest idea was to gather friends and push it up my very steep driveway. I did all I could to level the playing field. I drove my truck tire up on service ramps and cranked the trailer tung jack all as high as I could. It was still looking pretty tough so I removed the valve cores in the tires in the rear axel of the trailer. That was surprisingly effective as it dropped the uphill end of the trailer four inches from eight at the start. Even with all this it took three good friends pushing three attempts to get it off the trailer. I'm a few beers in debt tonight but the truck is in the garage. I wish I could say that work will begin tomorrow. But the reality is, I probably won't touch it till the summer. I had intended to pick it up six months from now because that's when I will have the time it will need. My "grease monkey" accounts is accumulating every month. I still have some decisions to make regarding fueling. But when the time comes I'll be ready for a big parts buy. Most of which will be new kingpins for the front axel and shock mounts and everything else chassis related. I've got some time still. I'm happy to have the truck taking up space in my own garage again.
