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other thoughts

Back in Mississippi

[Today’s run: 4 miles]

We arrived back home from our trip to Germany just before midnight on Wednesday.  We had started out from the hotel about 7 AM, and arrived home 24 hours later after three flights and a three hour drive.  Getting back into a normal sleep pattern has been harder coming home than going out.  I was told that westward travel was a harder adjustment.

Today we drove up to Olive Branch and took possession of my government surplus pickup truck.  It is a 1994 Ford F-150.  It had some engine problems, so a local shop in Olive Branch towed it in for me and fixed it up.  Today we drove it 150 miles back from Olive Branch.

The only problem on the drive was that the right front shock absorber is completely shot, so we had bad tire-hop at speeds over 60 MPH.  It took a bit longer getting home because of that.  But we got home around 3 pm.  I spent some time cleaning up the interior.  Judging by the parts and junk in the back, I’d say this truck was used by the water department.

Overall, the truck looks OK.  The interior is dirty.  The radio is broken and the antenna is broken off.  The passenger side door handle is broken.  The knobs for climate control are missing.  The seat is in pretty good shape for a ’94.  The tires look almost new.  The truck has 155k miles on it.

The engine problem was interesting.  The man at the shop discovered that 2 of the cylinders in the in-line 6 were not firing.  The previous owner (City of Olive Branch) had done some patchwork to try to get them working.  It turned out that there was a problem with the positioning of a valve push rod.  I think that means the valve never closed completely.  Oil was getting in to the combustion chambers and generally things were not running right.  I’m not sure how a push rod would get displaced like that.  Maybe somebody over-revved the engine and the  rod out-ran the valve return spring?  Anyway, the thing also has no catalytic converter.  I suspect the steady diet of burning engine oil probably ruined it.  And they replaced exhaust system with a “glass pack”  (a cheap high-flow, noisy muffler).

Anyway, the guy at the shop in Olive Branch took the valve cover off and evidently figured out the valve problem.  The thing ran fine for 150 miles on the way home.  I have ordered shock absorbers for the front, to put on tomorrow.  I’m hoping that will solve the tire hop problem and then I’ll have  pretty good full size truck.