Cheating Death on the edge of Death Valley

[Dollytrolley]

Well after getting the memory loss mother-n-law stabilized for 7 months we placed her in respite care for 10 weeks and loaded Dolly-the-paint-horse in the Dollyhauler and the Suzuki Sammy in the Dollytrolley garage along with a few tons of water, hay, tack, tools and assorted "essentials" and wondered all of the back roads from NW Oregon down to the Last Chance Mtn range on the Eastern edge of Death Valley.........

 

At first the temps were very cool mid 70's but last week when we started North we had hit +110f and forecast to keep going up........time to head to cooler camps.

 

After the 1,000 mile wonder of back roads on the way down I decided to partake of some $1.75 diesel at Pahrump so that the Dollytrolley would be set to wonder back North when the temps in Death Valley hit the jackpot. After filling up the Dolleytrolley we had a fat pill (ice cream cone) and turned on the AC and headed back to camp.

 

On the way to camp we had the AC fan on high but I heard a slight hiss so I turned the AC fan down low and the hiss seemed much louder........I kept a eye on the air gages but they seemed normal. I turned the AC fan back up but the hiss remained.

 

When we arrived at camp I idled the truck for a few minutes before shutting down but the hiss remained and it seemed to be right behind the parking brake valve.........humm the dreaded parking valve rebuild in DEATH VALLEY.........sounds like a cheap paperback trucker novel......

 

I shut the engine down and then I was mortified the sound was not some little sissy-hiss .....NO this air leak sounded like the main line from the air dryer was broken in half........I still sounded like the parking brake valve.has all of the airlines broken.

 

OK what to do?

 

Maybe panic? ? ?

 

No........ too hot to panic......

 

So I start taking the dash face off to get to the back of the park valve.......

 

After 10 minutes of big-time-hissing I get to the back of the backside of the park valve and I just know that I will feel a gush of air from the big bundle of air lines............ummm NO.....

 

I look over at both air gauges and they both still read 125 PSI........no way can a hiss like this not drain down the tanks faster.......

 

So I wonder over to the camp kitchen and mix up some dish washing soapy water and start brushing soapy all over the parking valve and trailer valve and.........NO LEAKS.........AND after 30 minutes I still have 115 PSI in the air tanks and the hissing is as loud as ever.......

 

I take the top off the entire dash (30 minutes) and the hissing is still loud and I still have 110 psi air........

 

I start taking a bunch of heating and AC ducts from under the dash and after another 30 minutes I still have a hiss and still have + 100 PSI air........

 

Finally I am taking a AC duct loose when I bump a tiny air cyl on a AC flopper valve and all of a sudden......NO HISS.......I reach over and move the air cly sideways and.........HISS!!!!........move it back side ways the other way .......NO HISS!!!!

 

OK imagine this the air cylinder is about the size of a pencil and it has a pair of air lines , one at each end and each airline is slightly smaller that a single strand of spaghetti noodle.........but OHHH NO the lines don't leak the little double cylinder leaks because it is forced sideways because the lower anchor clevis pin point is a flimsy chunk of poly plastic and it is BROKEN.........Bummer........Bad JuJu.......

 

The good news even though the HISS is loud the air leak is TINY.........

The Bad news is that I am on the edge of Death Valley in a ugly truck with the AC torn apart in a huge pile of parts.........

 

Time for some cool adult beverages...........

 

Next morning early the cowgirls go out on a horseback ride and I jump in the Suzuki Sammy and streak into Pahrump and buy every kind of plastic epoxy putty in town and then drive back out to the wreckage and .........it's too hot to work so........more cool adult beverages and naps until the evening cool off.........

 

Ok did I mention that a oral surgeon would be hard pressed to get down into the unreachable place that I had to build up the epoxy putty and form a new clevis mount with dental paddles and Exacto tools with my LED head lamp and 10X power monical like a brain surgeon.........

 

The fix was a bit of a hold your breath and keep a steady hand but it worked well.

 

The BAD part was cleaning out 1,000,000 miles of gross old sunflower seeds and about 100 tooth picks out from the wire looms and ducting under the dash.........The Trolly was a non-smoking truck but the guy sure lost a lot of tooth picks and sunflower seeds.

 

After 5 part time days the dash was back together again and the HISS was gone and the Dollytrolly had great AC for our escape last week from Death Valley.......

 

We are back up on the Columbia River taking care of mom and have yet to see temps above 75f yet so who needs AC anyhow now.........

 

Or stay on the edge of Death Valley was very serene with star studded night skies and some amazed snow birds looking at the pile of parts that came out of the Trolly dash...........wife was somewhat amazed that I did not have too many parts left over..........

 

Turns out that Death Valley is a pretty nice place to tear your dash apart...........

 

Drive on.............(Not all hissing is a big ......air leak)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[phoenix2013]

My experience from last year says that ability to procure air lines is inversely proportional to their size. Meaning you are more likely to find 3/4" line than some of those that play double for a horsehair.

[Dollytrolley]

My experience from last year says that ability to procure air lines is inversely proportional to their size. Meaning you are more likely to find 3/4" line than some of those that play double for a horsehair.

Indeed Henry,

 

Your very astute in your classifications of Truck Pneumatic Sleuthing (TPS)........

 

Thank my lucky stars that DEEP DOWN inside the maze of air ducting that the "Henry-Horse-Hair-Airlines" (HHHA) had not failed ........had one or some of these HHHA units failed it would surely been correct to call the insurance adjuster and have the truck totaled since repair is likely not possible.

 

I had hopes that by the time I had reached the full membership in the "Geezer Population Group" (GPG) that I would have amassed a huge knowledge base that would make TPS /HHHA a "No-Brainer" (NB) ..........as it turns out NB is exactly what seems to be in play with this little project.......you see ALL of the way too many "Tiny-2-Complex-Air-Cylinders" (T2CAC) are anchored by stout METAL clevis brackets riveted onto the maze of AC / Heat ducts that twist and interweave with huge wire looms and big bundles of BIG-to-not-so-Big-Air-Lines under the dash............the ONLY air cylinder clevis anchor that is cheesy plastic (likely recycled yogurt containers) is the one buried DEEP into the core maze of ducting that itself is riveted together ducting.......

 

I have to smile some of the time when I look at the newer generation of trucks and see some of the great features and.......not so great features.......it reminds me of some of my ....."Slightly-Great-Inventions" (SGI).........and.........."Not-2-Great-Inventions" (N2GI)........of my younger days......computers have helped a lot of .....good......and...... not so good ideas see the light of day.......the more things change the more they stay the same.

 

As trucks race into the Higher-Tech-Future it seems that like Geezers........ we will need to remod / rework and recycle parts / systems (Geezer-Knees) to keep.......on the move......

 

Driver on.........(do I have enough Epoxy putty to keep the Shaker......moving?)

[phoenix2013]

The year old experience I referenced was well described to this August body sharing a field ET install challenge at the ECR. Normally we quote 4 - 6 hours for a Jr install, it took a week. Nothing normal about this install or this truck. Part of the reason for the week was Pete's and KW fondness for LTQs, apparently your Freightshaker has the same fondness. Ah, LTQs (Less Than Quarter inch). One becomes painfully aware that although these air lines exist in catalogs, that's the only place they exist and that trying to obtain one in its physical form is akin to a search for a Holy Grail.

[Dollytrolley]

The year old experience I referenced was well described to this August body sharing a field ET install challenge at the ECR. Normally we quote 4 - 6 hours for a Jr install, it took a week. Nothing normal about this install or this truck. Part of the reason for the week was Pete's and KW fondness for LTQs, apparently your Freightshaker has the same fondness. Ah, LTQs (Less Than Quarter inch). One becomes painfully aware that although these air lines exist in catalogs, that's the only place they exist and that trying to obtain one in its physical form is akin to a search for a Holy Grail.

Henry,

 

Right on the mark as usual with your LTQ remarks........

 

Obviously in your many years as a engineer you have witnessed the engineering-creep-syndrome called ........I B U.......(I m p r o v e d B e y o n d U s e) .........at a little company that makes space vehicles, hovercraft, fighters, radar, bunk beds, toilets , airliners, and a zillion other items that can't be divulged because they maybe too silly to believe........had a salty chief engineer that told me once, that once a large enough group of engineers are mixed in with a bunch of sales and marketing geeks NO BAD CONCEPT is too bad but to be placed into at least limited production and this BAD CONCEPT takes on a life of it's own until the body count rises to the level that the Lawyers get involved and the BAD CONCEPT is then subject to the EVEN WORSE ECO (Engineering Change Order) and at that point no human on earth is safe from things falling from the sky hitting them on the head...........

 

I know I am being a Cranky-Old-Geezer (COG) here but have any of these truck engineers EVER thought of back tracing any of these itty-bitty LTQ air lines back far enough to find out that this HAIRBALL of air lines was actually drawing air pressure / flow from........THE TRUCK BRAKE SYSTEM............Dah hay dude just imagine how much junk we can leach off the brakes until we get to ........NO BRAKES.......now children that really is ........IMPROVED BEYOND USE......

 

Now of course I am ranting to a salty old goat engineer that has seen plenty of IBU so perhaps I need less cranberry juice and more moonshine but getting soused still does not change the fact that way, way, way TOO many dooo-hicky-thingymagiges are hooked up the the power supply to the brakes on the old Shaker........

 

I am seriously considering allowing the basic truck compressed air system supply ONLY the BRAKES .......and then......installing a second and SEPARATE air system supply ALL of the way too many NON-VITAL subsystems in the truck.......

 

As these trucks age the many Less-Than-Ideal-Systems (LTIS) become a ongoing source of headaches and downtime and $$$ down the drain.......

 

Ok Henry, now you know what happens when a geezer overdoses on cranberry juice.......

 

Drive on...........(That hiss sound in your dash might not be a.......rattle snake)

[Scrap]

Um, if a little hairball of airlines scares you go drive a 7.1 (post-October '15) Tesla. Drive on...............Hands OFF the steering wheel! The thing is insane.

 

But I still don't agree...... Air moded HVAC was the basis of trucks from the dinosaur days all the way up to 2001. Its how trucks are, everybody knows it, and everybody has had a couple of little air fittings and a fan resistor rattling around their glovebox since 1995. These cables and PWM controls are the new fangled pain in the neck stuff that still debatable whether it should be in the bush day in and day out.

[Dollytrolley]

Um, if a little hairball of airlines scares you go drive a 7.1 (post-October '15) Tesla. Drive on...............Hands OFF the steering wheel! The thing is insane.

 

But I still don't agree...... Air moded HVAC was the basis of trucks from the dinosaur days all the way up to 2001. Its how trucks are, everybody knows it, and everybody has had a couple of little air fittings and a fan resistor rattling around their glovebox since 1995. These cables and PWM controls are the new fangled pain in the neck stuff that still debatable whether it should be in the bush day in and day out.

 

Soooo.....Scrap.....

 

What your sayin is that the latest crop of trucks with PWM (Pulse Width Modulated ?) controls are I B U (Improved Beyond Use) as the case with some B&%#G aerospace inventions at times.......

 

So.......I should shut-up and just keep the hairball air lines in good shape and pray that I don't get silly and buy a new truck???

 

I have to say it is a kinda neat feature to have some airlines that are so Itty-Bitty that they HISS like king Cobras but leak tiny amounts of actual air volume ...........makes old geezers like me take notice and fix the darn hairball...........

 

I suppose that "Grumps" style of air conditioning would not work very well.........one day we had the old D9 Cat with a huge shank ripper on the old lowboy and we had a hotrod KW with a 220 cummins streaking up a Loooong 3 mile grade at 95 f hot day, so Grumps geared down to 2nd in the main and first-under on the super-brownie and pulled out the dash throttle wide open and then opened the door and stepped out on the battery box and steered through the open window at all of maybe 4 mph and then poured half of the canvas water bag over his head when all of a sudden..........a howl of a cop car screamed above the sound of the old Cummins.........it was our local state cop that had pulled up even along side Grumps and Yelled ..........Grumps what the H%%$#$# do you think you are doing..........Grumps yelled back........What the H%%$#$ does it look like I am doing..........I am cooling off AND do you know you are on the wrong lane and the truck coming down the hill ahead can't stop........Wilber (Cop) hit the gas peddle and passed Grumps and just shook his head and drove on........I yelled at Grumps Wilber will be sitting at the top of the hill and he will have the ticket all made out for you.......Grumps grinned and yelled ....not a chance Wilber knows he could never get us stopped on the 9 % down grade with the old D9 on the back of this wreck.........

 

Such was the state of truck air conditioning in the late 50's ............

 

Drive on.........(don't fall off the battery box)