On Truck Problems and Unbelievably Good Luck

They say we make our own luck, but how could I in this case?

I’m up in Central Washington State on a number of cherry drying contracts. My only means of transportation — unless you want to count my bicycle — is my husband’s 2001 Chevy Duramax Diesel pickup. It’s a great truck, well cared for and very reliable.

The other day, I started noticing that it was having trouble starting. It would start, but it needed more cranking than usual. I attributed that to my bad habit of listening to the stereo with the engine off while working on the helicopter. I figured that if I stopped doing that, the problem would go away after my next long, battery-charging drive to Wenatchee or Ephrata to fill the transfer tank with 100LL.

Yesterday was my big errands day. The weather was supposed to be good. I planned to do my laundry at 7:30 AM, then head up to Wenatchee to get some fuel, a new mattress for the RV, and some groceries. And maybe some sushi for lunch.

These grand plans came to a grinding halt when I turned the key in the truck. I waited, like a good girl, until the glow plug indicator (a diesel thing) had gone out, turned the key, and got the sound of an almost dead battery trying in vain to crank a diesel truck engine. Not enough juice.

Of course, I tried it a few more times. It just got worse.

I dialed my husband in Arizona. I figured I’d ask him if he’d ever experienced this kind of problem before and whether he had any tips on how I should start troubleshooting. But he wasn’t answering his phone.

And that’s when my next door neighbor here at the campground appeared, standing at the front of his travel trailer, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Having trouble?”

He’d heard the dismal cranking sound and had come out to see if he could help. I produced a pair of jumper cables — the Girl Scout motto is “Be Prepared,” after all — and opened the hood. But instead of him pulling his pickup over to mine, he walked over with what looked like a brand new car battery. He put it on the ground beside the truck. Then he went back to his truck and came back with a battery tester. He tested both batteries in my truck. (Yes, it has two.) “They’re both a little low, but they should be okay. Sometimes it’s the connections. A loose wire or a gunked up terminal. Then the battery doesn’t charge right. You have terminals on the sides, but the ones on the top are better because they’re easier to keep clean.” He went on in the same vein, telling me more about car batteries than I ever wanted to know.

It was then that I remembered what this man did for a living: he traveled around the northwest, collecting and recycling car and truck batteries. In other words, he was a car battery expert.

How could I be so lucky?

We jump-started the truck from the battery he’d brought over and let it run for a while. That confirmed that the problem was not the starter. He pointed out where the connections could be a problem. I shut off the truck, then turned the key and restarted it. I asked him where I should go to get it fixed. He told me that if I took it to a car place, they’d probably try to sell me another battery, which I didn’t need. He was pretty sure I just needed my terminals cleaned. He said he could do it.

A Bad BoltTen minutes later, he was pulling off the terminal connectors and cleaning them with his wire brush. (For the record, I also had a wire brush in my toolbox.) One connector had quite a bit of corrosion — it might have been the culprit all along — and needed to be replaced; he pulled a new one out of his truck and did the job. (Do you know anyone who keeps new terminal bolts for side battery connections handy? Can you say Maria is lucky?)

We chatted while he worked. We talked about the geology of the area. He collected petrified wood and knew all about the Missoula Floods that had carved coulees through the volcanic rock of the area. “You should see them from the air,” I said.

“Yeah, that must be great.”

“When you’re done, I’ll take you and your wife.”

Ancient LakeSo when he was finished and I had everything put away, he followed me to the ag strip where the helicopter is parked. I had to do some interior reconfiguration — remove my helmet and the oil bottles under the front seat that I’m using for ballast, add headsets — and then we all climbed in. I took him and his wife for a 20-minute flight around the area that included downtown Quincy, Crescent Bar on the Columbia River, Quincy Lakes, the Gorge Amphitheater, and Frenchman’s Coulee. Along the way, I learned that he and I had the same birthday (different years) and that he’d won a helicopter ride when he was a kid in the late 1950s. He took pictures and said he’ll send me copies.

I really appreciated the way he stepped up and offered to help me with my truck problems. It’s nice to see that there are still people who are willing to come to a stranger’s assistance when they can. Most people couldn’t be bothered. Or they’d worry about liability.

He really appreciated the helicopter ride. He wouldn’t take any money for the parts or his hour or so of time in making the repair. This morning, before he and his wife headed out to their next campground, he stopped by to thank me yet again.

But it was me who needed to thank him again. Not only had he fixed my truck for free, but he’d given me a good excuse to go flying on a nice day — for a change.

Glass Replacement FAIL in Wickenburg

How does anyone get anything done in this town?

The old guy Mike called to give us an estimate for replacing two windows refused to take driving directions to our house. Instead, I had to drop everything and go out to meet him.

He wasn’t at the corner where he was supposed to be. Instead, he’d driven his unmarked truck past me and was waiting two blocks from our home. He used his cell phone to call me. I tracked him down and he followed me to my house.

Upstairs Windows

The window on the right is the one that needs replacing.

The windows are upstairs. He followed me up the stairs. I pointed out the 4 foot by 8 foot double-pane glass panel that needed replacement. The seal between the two panes had failed and moisture had slipped in. Each day, the window would fog up in a way that couldn’t be wiped clean. Since the window is one of two that offer the best view in the house, we wanted it fixed quickly.

He walked up to the window and looked at the garage roof outside. “How do I get out there?” he asked.

“On a ladder,” I replied.

“We can’t do that. The glass is big and heavy.”

“You did it twelve years ago when we first bought the house,” I told him. I pointed at the identical panel of glass beside it. “You replaced that one right after we moved in.”

“How did we get up there?” he asked.

“On a ladder.”

Bathroom Window

The bathroom window is broken.

I took him into the upstairs bathroom to see the other window that needed replacing. This was a small two-part window of white-smoked glass. One panel slid back and forth to open or close the window. The other panel remained stationery. The stationery panel had always had a bad seal that let moisture in, but we never bothered to replace it since you couldn’t see through it anyway. But during a recent storm, that panel’s outside pane had broken. We wanted it replaced.

He pulled off the panel that slid back and forth and set it down beside the toilet. He reached around, pushing the screen out a bit and mumbling about how he hoped nothing fell.

“How do you get up to this window?” he asked.

“On a ladder,” I replied yet again.

“What size ladder?”

“My husband uses an extension ladder. We have one you can use.”

He put the other panel back in place. “I don’t know why anyone would build a house like this,” he muttered as he led the way out of the bathroom.

My patience was stretching thin. “People don’t usually design houses just to make it convenient to replace windows,” I told him.

He went downstairs, outside, and around the side of the house. I followed. He looked up at the bathroom window, which had to be at least 20 feet off the ground. Then he looked at the comparatively short climb to the garage roof.

“Once you get up there,” I told him, you can walk on the garage roof pretty easily.

He looked at the situation for another moment, then suddenly said, “I can’t help you, lady.”

I don’t know if he was expecting me to argue or beg with him, but if he was, he was disappointed.

“Okay, thanks for your time,” I said quickly. “You can find your way out? Be careful backing up.”

And then I went into the house, leaving him find his way back to wherever it is he’d come from.

Of course, since the old guy is the only glass replacement option in Wickenburg — or at least the only one my husband could find — we’ll have to get someone up from Phoenix to do the job. But that’s typical here. No matter how much you try to spend money locally, you just can’t get what you need.

I Love My 1987 Toyota MR-2

Book value: $250. Reliability: Near 100%.

This morning, I had to drive down to Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT) to pick up my helicopter for a charter out in Aguila, AZ. I have a 1987 Toyota MR-2 that I bought new in October 1986. That’s my airport car. It basically lives down in Deer Valley when I’ve got the helicopter out. The idea was to drive it down to Deer Valley, park it, do my flight, and then bring the helicopter back to its Wickenburg hangar so I could wash it before returning it to Deer Valley.

That was the idea, anyway.

This morning, the MR-2 roared to life, just like it aways does. But I had some trouble getting it out of first gear — I leave all my cars in gear when I park on our hilly driveway. I rolled back and got it half turned around. Then I attempted to shift into first or second to depart. The gearshift wouldn’t budge.

Understand this: the car is standard transmission. It was my first standard transmission car. I learned to drive stick on that car. A week after taking it home, I was driving back and forth to my job in downtown Manhattan from New Jersey, battling bridge and highway traffic. I got really good with a stick shift really fast.

And the car still has its original clutch.

It only has 133,000 miles on it. When I bought my Jeep in 1999, it became my secondary car. When I bought my Honda S2000 in 2003, it became my third car. I didn’t even need it for sporty drives anymore. That’s when it became my airport car.

R22 and Toyota at Howard Mesa

Here’s my old helicopter and Toyota MR-2 parked at Howard Mesa during the summer of 2004.

I don’t think I put more than 1,000 miles per year on it after that. It spent the summer of 2004 at Howard Mesa or Grand Canyon Airport when I flew helicopter tours for one of the operators at the Grand Canyon. It spent at least two years in Prescott as an airport car — my mechanic was based there for a while — and then another whole season in Scottsdale — I used to fly there quite often. When the Scottsdale cops called and threatened to tow it away, I drove it home. It spent a year or two in my hangar. Then I brought it down to Deer Valley to be my airport car there.

It didn’t mind neglect. It just about always started up when I turned the key. The only exception was once in Prescott, when the battery had finally died. Fortunately, I’d parked it pointing down a little hill. I released the break, popped the clutch in second gear and got it started. Drove it to Sears, put in a new battery, and went about my business.

Every year or so, I get the oil changed. I bought it new wiper blades and sun screens about a year ago.

Today, when the clutch wouldn’t engage, I wasn’t very surprised. Hell, it was the original clutch! More than 23 years old! What the hell did I expect?

Honda and Toyota

My Honda visits my Toyota at DVT.

I took my Honda down to Deer Valley. I locked it up. I wasn’t happy about leaving my best car overnight at Deer Valley. The Toyota was disposable. The Honda wasn’t.

As I flew west to my gig, I thought about the Toyota. I wondered if this was how it would all end. It didn’t seem right to put hundreds of dollars into a car with a Kelly Blue Book value of under $250.

I did my gig. It involved over 3 hours of flying north of Aguila. It ended with a flight to Wickenburg to photograph some property. I’d drop off my clients at either one of the spec homes they’d built or nearby private helipad that they led me to believe was part of their property. We were doing the photo flight when I heard some chatter on the radio. Wickenburg Airport was closed. Turns out, an F-16 trainer had crash-landed there earlier in the day. So I landed on the helipad. I didn’t have enough fuel to get back to Deer Valley and I couldn’t land at Wickenburg. I wound up leaving it there for the night. As I type this, the airport is still closed.

Back at home, Mike got the idea that maybe the Toyota’s clutch wasn’t broken. Maybe it just needed fluid.

We pulled the owner’s guide out of the glove box and looked it up. We found the reservoir. It was bone dry. (Oops!) We grabbed some of the recommended DOT 3 brake fluid out of the garage and filled the reservoir. I pumped the clutch pedal. A lot. I started the car, pushed down the clutch pedal, and smoothly shifted it into first gear.

It works.

So my Toyota continues to run smoothly with its 23-year-old clutch. Best of all, it seems very forgiving of my neglect.

How can I not love a car like that?

On Stiff Mixture Control Arms

The saga comes to an end…I hope.

If you follow the helicopter-related posts in this blog, you may know that I’ve been having a problem with my helicopter’s mixture control. My usual interface with this device is the red knob with a button on my instrument panel. Push the knob to get fuel flowing. Pull the knob to shut down the engine. Don’t mess with the knob in flight.

Simple enough, until it got stiff and then broke. I wrote about it here and here.

Mixture Control ArmTurns out, the reason the mixture cable became fractured is because the mixture control arm (lavender in this image) on the fuel control was too stiff. When I pushed or pulled the mixture control in the cockpit it was buckling and fraying. Pushing it in may not have resulted in full rich fuel, which could result in the engine running hot and lead to even more problems.

Good thing we caught it!

Fuel ControlEd, Wickenburg’s very best airplane mechanic, followed up by pulling the fuel control and fixing it, following instructions of the device’s manufacturer in Wichita, KS. Here’s what it looked like sitting on his workbench with the offending arm removed for repair. This is a lot more of my helicopter’s innards than I usually like to see. But it was interesting to see the piece I’d found an illustration of for this blog (see above) in a place where it was clearly recognizable.

Ed has since put everything back together. I was busy yesterday with the Endurance Ride, so I didn’t fly. And I don’t want to bother Ed on a Sunday. But come tomorrow morning, I’ll be at the airport with the helicopter out on the ramp. I’ll start it up and Ed will likely look at everything from below as its running to make sure the mixture is indeed full rich. I’ll pull the mixture and he’ll watch it work. And then he’ll sign off on it.

And give me a bill. (Ah, the joys of aircraft ownership!)

Of course, if things don’t go as planned, you’ll likely read more about it here.

No Flying this Weekend

It could be worse.

Robinson Mixture ControlThe other day, I reported a mechanical problem with my helicopter. In summary, the mixture control had been kind of stiff and it made a weird noise when I pulled it out. When my mechanic attempted to lubricate it, the mixture cable snapped.

The photo here shows a Robinson Raven II instrument panel very similar to mine. I’ve circled the mixture control. Remember: push in to allow fuel flow, pull out to stop fuel flow. Airplanes have similar controls. Airplane pilots adjust this in flight — that’s called leaning the engine. Helicopter pilots generally do not do this. It’s either in and the engine is running or out and the engine is stopped.

I didn’t make a big deal out of it then because it seemed to be a simple enough fix. We ordered the replacement cable from the factory and I figured that Ed, my local mechanic, would get that sucker installed not long after it arrived.

The more amazing thing to me — at least at the time — is that I’d proactively found and set about resolving a minor mechanical problem before it got me stranded somewhere inconvenient. The timing couldn’t have been better. The day before, I’d written an article for HeliNews about that exact topic. I was pleased that I’d learned a lesson.

Mixture Control SchematicWell, things are never as easy as they should be. Ed got the cable and went to work installing it. He soon ran into problems. The cable wouldn’t move smoothly. It wouldn’t go in all the way. He’s pretty sure we’ll have to order the entire cable assembly today. (This image, taken from Robinson SB-55, shows where the mixture cable attaches to the fuel mixture control. I highlighted the cable and its sheath in red. We ordered just the cable and it is apparently having trouble moving in the original sheath.)

Today is Friday. Although they could overnight the part for Saturday delivery, Ed doesn’t normally work on Saturdays. So I’ll save a few bucks on shipping and get it delivered Monday. With luck, it’ll be just what Ed needs and he can install it then.

Until it’s installed, there’s no flying for me.

But that doesn’t seem to matter much. I have no flights scheduled for this week and I have plenty of writing work to do. (I’m developing my third course for Lynda.com and have an open request for short how-to articles to fill for one of my publishers.) This weekend, I’m volunteering at the annual Land of the Sun Endurance Ride by marking horse butts with numbers, making my famous vegetarian bean soup, and timing in the 50-milers at the 25-mile manditory break. It’s almost a good thing that the helicopter is down for maintenance; less of a distraction for me.

I do want it running soon, though. Murphy’s Law of helicopter charter operations states that the most calls for your service will come in when you’re least able to meet customer needs. It must be a sign of the economy that my phone hasn’t started ringing off the hook yet.