Jim Lane

Repair or replace.
Imagine you are driving cross country and your belt tensioner broke off the pivot because you had been hammering on it last week while you were trying to get the bearing off, so instead of replacing the assembly you sort of fixed it and saved $20.00, all looks good except for the slight wobble (you blamed it on the cheap Chinese bearings but it could have been the direct hit from the sledge hammer) in the idler bearing but heck once you close the hood nobody else can see it or the belt tracking back and fourth on the water pump so now you are in the middle of the desert 30 miles from some Po-dunk town when the idler lets go causing the belt to snag a fan blade, the fod blade went through the radiator before it left the big dent in your hood.

So since their no cell towers out here you leave your wife and kids in the truck with no air conditioner and hitch hike back to town to the only station where Philo and Cletus are owners, Since they are not allowed to drive after that incident, their 93 year old momma Ms Iris Phlegm drives you back to your truck in their 1966 ½ ton tow truck she made herself in night school using well casings for the boom you know the truck that has no cushions on the seats and you sit on the rusty springs but now because your Cummins engine is so heavy and her new fangled truck cannot lift the front end she decides to push you back to town for 30 miles using the push bumper she made out of the left over well casings, it is just a shame she hasn’t mastered the clutch after her hip replacement they did in night school 10 years ago. Back to the garage that is located behind,



Where the 2 NASA trained mechanics try to install a used idler off from a 1962 Corvair they claim will fit.
So 2 days later after a few additional parts were broken in an attempt to get the big fan nut off, your hotel accommodations were the store room at the farm next door where they candle eggs for a mere $100.00 a day. Cash only.

Don’t ask how I know about these places exist.

Remember on Vacation when they sold Clark Griswold the 4 tires and he asks them how much? And the station owner said, “How much do you have”
Clark said maybe the sheriff would like to hear about this.
And the station owner said, “I am the Sheriff”.

Moral to the story:
Sometimes it is not worth it to try and rebuild a part when a replacement is so cheap.
Think of the inconvience and danger you might have to go through because a simple part broke when you could have got a remanufactured for $30.00 more than the part you installed to patch it up.

It is true that most remanufactured parts are junk and are probably almost as bad as the part you are replacing but at least if you bought it and it fell apart then you earned the right to stick it in their face and tell us to beware of that vendor but if we screw it up ourselves then it is not such a good fuzzy feeling and we tend to not brag about it to anyone.

Now if your truck breaks down in the middle of nowhere and you are like me and I make a replacement throttle cable out of a piece of rusty wire from a barbed wire fence or repair a leaking fuel line with the barrel of my pen then that is something you can brag about to all your friends.
I am a cross between McGyver and the Professor from Gilligan’s Island, so I have been called.
I can always find a solution to get out of a jam.

I had a road call on a transit coach with a dead throttle, rush hour in the bus lane.
30 minuets to get the tow truck through traffic, CHP were amazed when I cleared the call in 5 minuets.
I cut down both signal cords (the ones you pull when you want to get off) I tied them together, removed the back seat the opened the engine hatch and ran the cord over the engine and tied it onto the throttle bell crank the other end I tied onto the fairbox. All I had to do was to pull on the cord to act as the throttle. Drove it 30 miles back to the yard.
I had quite a reputation for doing things like this.

P.A. system: ROAD CALL... LOCKED BRAKES..at the terminal.. Send Jim..
I used to actually look forward to going to work.


Jim

apwatson50

How did it take the power steering and brakes? They are both gear driven off the engine.