After Wally World I went and picked up my sweetie and she'd had the hotel make us breakfast burritos with turkey sausage because we don't do pork. We had a few bites and suddenly both of us felt like crap. Yep, pork sausage. This haunted us for hours.
Napa was supposed to open at 7:30. They didn't. We finally headed out to where the F450 was at. Apparently California can't figure out that 85th street should actually be a street instead of someone's gated driveway. We only found that out by spotting the truck.
The previous owner was cool. I had told him my plan on how to load a 83" wide truck between 81" wide fenders and he had a better idea. A pair of forklifts and a tractor made life much easier.
The tractor was placed behind the truck and a forklift picked up each front tire while I backed the trailer up underneath. Once we cleared the fenders we set the truck down and lifted the back up and backed the trailer up the rest of the way. Done. Easy.
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Then I needed some more air in the tires because we weren't at an empty/light load. We hit a gas station and instead of adding air it was removing it. Grrr!
I made some calls during all of this and I spoke to a young lady at Advance Auto Parts in Lancaster who actually had a PMD on the shelf! She pulled it, confirmed the part number and description. Online they showed that it wasn't available. I didn't get her name but if by chance the lady with the long black hair ever sees this, THANK YOU!!! As it turned out, right next door was Pep Boys tire center that was able to air up the tires.
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Finally ready to leave Lancaster at 11:30. The original plan was to go through Yosemite because my wife has never been there but with getting out so late and reliability questions with the truck we didn't want to take a chance.
The truck ran really well under about Modesto when the boost solenoid stuck. Half a can of brake clean and a bunch of PB Blaster freed up the solenoid for awhile.
Not long afterwards there was a big wreck right in front of us and although I haven't been happy with the brake pedal feel, it does stop. It is amazing just how hard and fast 21,000 pounds can stop when needed. Thank you Tekonsha P3 brake controller!
We finally stopped for the night in Woodland, CA and had some great Mexican food. Mmmmm. We also got to test our brakes again at every freaking stoplight in town. It took 5 minutes from the hotel to dinner and 23 back. We finally got our hot tub experience and it felt soooooo good. They didn't have towels downstairs so we dripped all of the way through the hotel and elevator back to our room.
The next morning was great. We had some good sleep, I peanut butter chocolate waffles. Great start. We hit the road and almost immediately started having a high speed miss and the boost solenoid stuck again. I cleaned the solenoid and added another ground to the injection pump and the high speed miss went away.
All was good until just North Redding. All of a sudden we were dealing with 22 mph uphill, lots of black smoke , check engine light and no boost. Scanner showed a boost sensor out of range. Cleared the code and all was well until the next hill when it happened again. Scanner data showed 26 psi which I knew dang well that wasn't the case. It was defueling and killing the boost.
We cleared the code and took off again, this time with the scanner plugged in. At the top of each hill my wife would just clear the pending code. We had to laugh about that because Pearl, out 2000 K3500 that we purchased in Florida had torque converter slip starting in Texas and we forced it into overdrive without lockup using the scanner. Our 2000 Denali lost one of the shift solenoids going through Wyoming and we had to force transmission shifts with the scanner. What is it with model year 2000 GMT400 trucks and scanner addiction???
Things were actually going perfect after Mt Shasta. No more code clearing, boost sensor reading properly, boost solenoid functional. Spirits high and close to home!
We stopped once again at our favorite crackhead market in Yreka and got our traditional celebratory ice cream!
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The truck had other ideas thoughts though because when I hit the key the starter just spun. The starter had been replaced and someone didn't put the support bracket on that keeps the starter from torquing and it sheared off one of the bolts. When it was obvious that I needed a drill I lightly snugged the bolt down and hammered a wedge shaped 2x4 between the starter and the block and cranked down the starter bolt. This got us home.
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I can't wait until we can move forward with this!