Two Years Later - The Resurrection of Yellow Truck

Seattle | Tuesday, January 24 | Helen Street | - I don't even remember what finally did in Yellow Truck. It was probably just the end. Yellow had been a drinker ever since I got him. A lot of oil. Which led to a lot of smoking. He was a drinker and a smoker. He came to me that way. Had a weak heart. Was marooned on the East Coast, on Long Island, being sold by a flipper on ebay. Had spent all his life on the West Coast, outside Portland, Oregon, loving the chill damp and rain. Then was snapped up no doubt for next to nothing, put on a train, and shipped to NY. The guy I bought Yellow from had a bugkilling franchise and was car flipper on the side.

Yellow Truck got us home to Seattle the long way, about 9,000 miles. He made it just about another year beyond that. I put in a new timing belt. Water pump. Glow plugs. The like. His valves started talking, clattering. I kept tuning them. An old guy downtown was helping me tune my ear. I got pretty good with the clearances, getting them just right with the feeler gauges, even at thousandths of an inch, by touch, by measuring the tension in the drag.

But in the end it was Piston No. 3 making the noise, the noise I couldn't quite get to. And then on May 12, or thereabouts, something gave out down by the crankshaft. Compression failed. Nothing would hold. The smoking was unacceptable. Painful to breathe in. Couldn't run him any more without pissing off anyone with the misfortune of getting stuck behind me.

So the wait began. For a window. For the right plan. For the money and the wherewithal.

The truck sat all summer. I fired him up for our September wedding. Then he sat again through fall. November and December, these last two months, he spent parked among giant excavation equipment, at my father-in-law's yard in Tacoma. A plan was hatching.  

This past weekend, we got the truck safely to my brother-in-law's garage. We towed Yellow over in Mr. Merlot, Brendan's burgundy one-ton dualie.Yellow was Mr. Merlot's first cargo. Went beautiful. Super smooth. Smoother than with no load, the power band synching perfect with the gears.

So I've begun digging down to the motor. Photographing the parts as they come out. Maybe this weekend I'll finally be ready to haul out the motor and trannie, ready them for the trip to Kent for rebuilding.

Yellow Truck is coming back. Oh, how he'll purr and burble now. The 2.2 liter diesel. Parts coming from Australia, where they still love these little diesels. Cannot wait. The Champion of the Slow Lane, the unquenchable mesmerizer. Back on the streets, burning the recycled canola oil. I hope. I pray.

More soon.