Let's just say I hate road trips.
So July 31 my wife and I took off from idaho and traveled to go see my sister in cali. Around Reno Nevada the check engine light came on. Po330. The truck then drove like crap and would not go over 65. It felt like a miss fire or loss of a cyl for power. So we stopped off in Reno at 9 pm looking the truck over. I kept playing with things trying to figure out what was wrong. Well it turns out the truck knock sensor went off and it went into limp mode for the last ditch attempt to save the motor from blowing up due to timing and fuel being off for some reason. We managed to say screw it and drive the 2 hours into SACRAMENTO to see my Sister and work on the truck for the weekend.
So after doing some research I found out the knock sensor or most likely the wire harness to it was the culprit. The dealer wanted $940. To change them (higher due to most because of the supercharger). Well I found a guy from Tacoma world that was willing to let me use his garage Monday morning as I replace the knock sensors (took 5 hours). It was hot as hell!
Jump back on the highway and drive it back to my sisters house. Runs great!! No codes or problems! Until I turn on her street 15 miles later. CEL turn on. Same po330. FUUUHHH. WELL this sucks!
Well the truck just had the CEL turn on but it still runs the same. Some major ping around 2400 rpm. So I did my best to stay out of the range.
So Wednesday we leave Sacramento and head to Richfield Utah. We make it to Fallon Nevada (middle of no where, very center of Nevada)
And the truck sounds like a diesel truck at idle.
Pull over PPP the hood and I instantly see the problem. My bolt for the super charger pulley came loose, fell off and the pulley slid off the shaft and actually spun the pulley on the woodruff key so it bored out the inside shaft of the aluminum pulley. NOOOOO.
So in this Tibet little town we find a hardware store and I ask for metric bolts. The old lady working the counter says. " I don't think we have any.
Wait a second. I might have some in the back"
All they had was a small box with some sized metric grade 2 bolts that happen to be exactly what I needed.
So I purchased it and a thing of super glue ( they didn't have locktight) and glued that bolt in so it wouldn't come off.
By this point the damage had already been done to the pulley. The woodruff key messed up the inside of it pretty bad so it still made noise but we kept on trucking hours into the night until we reached Richfield Utah around 11 Thursday night.
Friday we took the day off so I sourced parts to find a woodruff key because it had been destroyed from the last 6 hours of driving. Home Depot didn't even have it. The hardware guy had no clue what I was talking about ether!
What the F Os wrong with these small towns not having what I need! So the next morning I went to ace hardware to see if they had one. LUCK! they did and I also purchased some JB WELD to try and fill in the gaps that was created from the pulley spinning on the supercharger nose cone shaft. Here are some pictures of the damage.
So I getto rigged it all up by reversing the pulley so the new key would contact the good part of the pulley and we set off for Toby [MENTION=92884]snivilous[/MENTION] house in Colorado.
The truck ran great after the fix. No problems. Went over Loveland pass no problems...... I knew the pulley wouldn't last until my house in Kansas City so I called gadget and he over nighted one to me. But Toby is out in the sticks and fedex doesn't deliver overnight on weekends. DAMN! No truck all weekend!
We got to Toby's house up in the mountains and the truck sounded like a diesel.
So we hung out with Toby for the weekend having a good old time.
So a few things we did was go see a movie, work on his truck, watch my little "trip" play with Toby's dogs, went on a bike and Atv ride. And did some other stuff. Like working on his truck. Again... Haha
Toby is a great guys and we had fun this last weekend.
Notice my truck is broken in the background? Yeah it didn't move. Sad!
So Sunday we were working on trucks and I took my pulley off in preparation for getting the pulley Monday morning. Here are some pictures of how jacked the thing was!!!!
Monday came around. FedEx showed up, and the rest is history. I'll be in Kansas City back home around midnight.
Haha JOKES!! things couldn't be that simple!
Driving on I-70 ALMOST to Kansas, still in Colorado I notice we have gone 170 miles and we are almost out of gas. The light was not on but getting there. Ok I'll just stop at good land Kansas and fill up. Well we go another 20 miles and the truck sputters. I look down and the gas light it on. It sputters again. SERIOUSLY! Out of gas!!! SERIOUSLY!!!
I've run out of gas multiple times so I know the drill. Rock the truck around and try and have the pick up find some little bit of fuel still in there. Start the truck and drive until it stalls. Then coast as far as you can. Well we end up driving / coasting on the shoulder for a mile and into a closed weigh station. LUCKY!
So I know we have a gas can with us (that's empty). And the dirt bike has some gas left in it from our ride yesterday. We filled up the truck with 2 gal and drove a few miles into the small town that had a station.
ONE PROBLEM....
Put 3 gal of this crap in the truck to get us 20 miles into town with 91.
Filled the truck up. 14 gal. + 2 from dirt bike + 3 from gas station. The truck was empty. 190 miles. That sucked!!!
ULTIMATELY THE LESSON I LEARNED FROM THE PAST WEEK.
My wife loves me!