Musings of a Farm Truck Connoisseur

Posted on Saturday 16 February 2008 at 11:33

We knew it had to happen sometime. Bearing obvious signs of having been driven by a citified idiot of a previous owner, one day our truck’s clutch began to slip like it was made of banana peels. Thankfully, I wasn’t the one driving it, or the scenes of panic would have made the national news. Dave was the one halfway home from the city with an engine that turned great and wheels that didn’t.

The Beast is a mid-nineties F-350 crew cab with a 7.3 turbo diesel. That means a dual-mass flywheel, or it did originally. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, the difference between the old clutch and the new clutch is like this. Old clutch: Like trying to stomp on something that stomps back with the force of a mildly irritated draft horse. New clutch: Like driving a classic race car, baby. Let me explain.

Dave, although he doesn’t really act like a true Mennonite a lot of the time, still owes much of his behaviour to genetics. He was told replacement parts could cost as much as $2600. So, he managed to find a secret source in the States, a guy selling brand-new single-mass flywheel kits for oodles less. Moreover, the loonie was trading high against the greenback on the day of his purchase. He called it his “Mennonite moment of the year.” Without at least one of these almost supernatural purchases in a twelve-month period, he’s left with a restless sense of non-fulfilment.

I drove the Beast for the first time after the clutch swap-out, and I was perturbed by all the odd little rattles I heard and felt. A bit of dash tappet, a small grumble of vibration in the accelerator. As I chauffeured the inevitable rug rats into town, I frowned and kept an ear open. Finally, I realised what the suspected problem was. The truck-shaking shimmy-cough-hop-bark of a dying clutch was gone forever. My tranny was saved!

I arrived at a corner and shifted. The sensation made me smile. It’s odd; in my youth, I planned to run away from rural Manitoba forever and become a refined, artsy type in a big city somewhere, probably riding a bicycle to save the earth. Thank goodness that never panned out. I never would have known the subtle joys of driving a 21-foot-long super-tuned brute of a vehicle full of hollering kids down an unplowed back road in the middle of a prairie snowstorm. Now that would have been a waste.

Homebrew Revolution

Posted on Thursday 19 April 2007 at 08:24

Can biodiesel work? Is it hard to make? Will it wreck your injectors? Will it encrust your engine and fry your system when the weather gets cold? Isn't it expensive to set up?

Yes, it does work. We've gone biofuel for the summer already. Dave has been dragging home oil and processing it in the barn, and our truck has been flying along the highways smelling like a week-old deep-fryer. Which is far better than the acrid, carcinogenic sting of petro-fuel.

The best place to start your biodiesel journey? Well, we think it's Journey to Forever. That's where Dave learned how to build a processor out of an old hot water tank, some excess plumbing materials and a bit of garden hose. That's also where he learned how to perform such arcane operations as titration and the mixing of chemicals needed to convert waste oil to biofuel.

We had heard the dire warnings about injectors and biofuel, and Dave hesitated over them initially. What he's since learned is that the warning applies to running unconverted waste vegetable oil (WVO), because it must be heated adequately in order to burn properly. Otherwise it will coat the injectors. Biodiesel doesn't have this issue.

The issue we have found with biodiesel is that it needs to be "washed." Some folks don't, but we had problems with it not being separated enough into fuel and waste product. "Washing" is what it sounds like - a light spray with warm water which causes any excess lye to precipitate out of the reaction. The fuel is then left to separate into layers of glycerin/methanol waste, water and fuel. Washing results in a cleaner, better fuel.

As to temperature, we feel safe running B-100 (100% biodiesel) down to freezing. Below that, we've found it can begin to cloud. Dave's next conversion is to set up a heated slip-tank, the way WVO users do, that will allow us to extend our season. Biodiesel has two transition points well-known to its users - cloud-point, when it begins to develop fine crystals, and gel-point, when it begins to turn into butter. These temps depend on what type of fats are used in making the bio-D. Lard and tallow cloud at higher temps than canola.

Dave didn't take any fancy courses, buy any special equipment or books. He learned what he needed to know off the internet, went to the dump and put some old materials into re-use. The total cost of his processor was $50-$60.

A couple of biofuel resources, for starters:

www.journeytoforever.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Biodiesel/

Mechanical Nemeses of the Country Variety

Posted on Thursday 18 January 2007 at 01:51

Let me open with this: Augh!!! Potatoes???? Denise, good grief. Don't you know what temperature it is out there (in my world)? 

That, by the way, is what I look like lately. It was a crazy day today, without water, and with coal. Yes, coal. May I introduce you to our nemesis, the Outdoor Coal Boiler. This delicate (not!!) handmade contraption, courtesy of an old neighbour of Dave's parents, has been our lifeline and bane for the last couple of years.

Breakneck simply didn't have time to keep with woodcutting for our two woodstoves - one at each end of the house, and much-needed, I tell you. So he installed this thing, which sits back of the house and puffs out smoke while heating a fine mix of antifreeze and water that runs through the 1960s-ish hot water rads throughout the house.

Unless it's, say, minus 40. Then it is time for something on said contraption to seize, break, foul up, fall apart, run out of fuel, or otherwise give up the ghost. At that time, Dave will spend two or three of the coldest days of the year repairing, cursing (hopefully out of the kids' earshot) and stressing about how he's going to get the wretched thing running when he has to go to work right away.

January has traditionally been the month when we run out of coal and have to get a new load while waiting several of those coldest days before arrangements can be made. So Breakneck decided that this year, thanks to a tip from one of his loyal work buddies, he was going to get ahead of the game.

He found coal for half price, and ordered two years' worth. Oh, yes. That should fix everything, right? Even counting in the Coldest Day Factor.

Yeah, right. The truck took all day to get loaded, no fault of the driver's, and didn't make it back in time. Then, of course, Dave had missed the one-day window he had between shifts - that game has now gone into overtime, and he won't be back for a week. But they could bring it the next day, in fact, they would have to, because they kinda need that trailer emptied.

So, today, the unsuspecting Cat woke up to the tune of, "Mom, there's no water again!" (Sidebar explanation: The groundwater here sucks, so we're on a municipal pipeline. Our branch, like our coal-fired boiler, has a hallowed tradition of inconvenient breakdowns at least three times a year.)

We sat around till 10 a.m., because usually our Intrepid Water Guy gets some kind of jury-rig or actual fix in place pretty quickly. I mean, he's done it how many times? But, nope. So Cat calls the coal people, and gets this response from the trucker's cell phone: "Um, I'm stuck, and I haven't even got the first guy's half unloaded."

Cat Saddles Up. We go to town, whereupon I walk into the Municipal Office and ask what's up with the water situation. They inform me it's at least an all-day fix. Gag. I confirm my plans to run home to Mommy, who conveniently lives just at the other end of my road and is on a different part of the water system that doesn't suffer regular breakdowns.

We go to the store to get some lunch to take with us, and in the middle of the street...

Okay. You have to know my town. This is just so my-town. There, in the middle of the street, I see the Two Town Goofs, who are of my generation but slightly older. They are standing there with a pickaxe. They are using it to hammer on the road.

Intrepid Water Guy is there as well. You have to know, this is not an out-of-place pairing, really. Small-town bonds run deep, and all that stuff.

I go in, get my stuff, and ask Checkout Girl, "So, what're they doing to the road?"

"The water main broke," she says, just as the Intrepid Water Guy strides in for a nose-blowing break. (I didn't think government labour regulations covered those, but whatever.)

"You're havin' a day," I say to him.

"Yeah, I still have no idea where my electrician is," he replies with great long-suffering. This relates to the all-day fix out my way. The missing electrician is the core of the problem, really. A conversation ensues debating when precisely the water up my way (and Checkout Girl's way) quit, based on morning showers, and Water Guy says he'd rather be called at 6 a.m. on a Saturday than 6 p.m. on a Saturday.

Checkout Girl starts laughing. "That's 'cuz you're drinking in the Legion."

No wonder his jury-rigging works so well. He's got an advisory staff and a weekly scheduled conference.

Long story short - the kids stayed at Grandma's. I came home and verbally wrestled (in the nicest way) with an undermotivated trucker who just really didn't want to do this thing of dumping the coal. When he finally did, he spread it halfway across the yard, due to the little detail of his trailer being a belly-dump instead of an end-dump. The absentee Breakneck was not impressed with the wastage this will cause or the time it will take to make some order out of the chaos.

But, we came home this evening to improved water pressure, a house that is still warm, by the grace of God, and two thirsty cats who were disgruntled with the bathroom/bedroom ban that had been their day. Not even tap drippings in the tub.

So Intrepid Water Guy did save part of the day in the end. Must be all that good advice he gets.