Well, actually, it’s really one adventure after a bit of background. In 2003 I began shopping for a small truck. I wanted a Toyota, but every one of those I saw was either too beat up, or cost way too much money. Then I found two Chevy S10 LS pickups on a lot in Milford, about ten miles from our home on Lake Tippecanoe. They were identical in every detail except one was bright red and the other was dark red. The dark red one was priced at $4,000 and the other was $6,000. I couldn’t understand the difference so I asked the dealer. He said it didn’t make much sense to him either, but the bright one was a 1998, two years newer than the dark one. A funny thing, the dark one had only 55,000 miles while the 98 had almost 80,000. It did not take me long to realize that the older one was a great buy. I could care less about the model year, important to most car buyers.
On our last RV trip to Florida for the winter of 2004-5 we loaded our little pickup into a 30 ft cargo trailer I had converted into a combination office, craft den, and wood shop with room to carry the S10. Barb and I towed it to Florida behind our Winnebago motor home, Buford. We used it all winter at our RV park at Zolfo Springs. The S10 was our local transportation. Before the next winter, I lost my sweet Barbara.
Fast forward a number of years during which I left the S10 at the lake and only used it in the summer. We came north to the lake for a time and had family reunions there. The summer of 2011 we couldn’t go to the lake so the S10 remained there unused until July 2012. When we arrived in July, the engine would not turn over. It was frozen. An examination at a local shop found out that the cylinders were full of antifreeze, a very bad sign. After a couple of guesses of from $500 to $2500 as the cost to fix it, I tried unsuccessfully to sell it as is. I also investigated the possibility of finding a used motor. Neither effort was successful. Finally I decided to bite the bullet and let a trustworthy repair man find out what was wrong.
I asked Roger, who owns Roger’s Auto Shop across the lake on Armstrong Road to tear it down and estimate the repairs. It turned out that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, just a leaky head gasket, the least expensive of all the possibilities. All that needed to be done was to remove the head and send it out to a machine shop to be planed. After cleaning up the block and pistons, the repaired head was replaced with new gaskets, and then started up, to check things out. All was copacetic. My little red truck was running again.
During his thorough examination Roger found that the brakes were also in bad shape and needed major repairs. I already knew that so it was no surprise. In addition, the AC had not worked for years, and if I was going to drive it in Florida, a good AC is a must. Needless to say, repairing all that cost a bundle of money, but not nearly as much as a used S10 of the same vintage. Besides, I would have all those new parts, almost a new truck.
A week later I had my new truck which I promptly drove to Ft Wayne to catch my flight to Florida at 5:30 a.m., Tuesday. Three weeks later, after a return flight to Ft Wayne last Wednesday, I drove the S10 out of the long-term parking lot a hundred bucks poorer. I was planning for a final estate sale Friday and Saturday. It was unsuccessful—wrong time of year. On my drive to the lake I noticed a vibration that started at about fifty and then smoothed out around seventy. As I was planning to drive the S10 to Florida in a few days, I did not like that one little bit.
The next day I took it back to Roger and had him take it for a test drive. We both felt the vibration was harmonic and coming from something in the drive train, maybe the drive shaft. Roger crawled under and examined the drive shaft, U-joints, and transmission and rear motor mounts. In Roger’s opinion, nothing seemed loose enough to cause the vibration.
“It’s possible you’ve hit a rock or something that has dinged the drive shaft and made it very slightly out of balance. I can’t see any other likely possibility.” he reported.
“What I need to know is, will it be safe to drive 1100 miles to Florida? I plan to leave early Sunday morning.”
“Howard, you know I can’t say that because I just don’t know. Most likely it will be OK, but I can’t guarantee it.”
“If you were me, would you drive it?”
“Honestly, I would. You’ll probably be OK, but I would not haul a heavy load. You’re not planning on pulling a trailer, are you?”
“No trailer.” I replied. I didn’t tell him I would probably be overloading the truck.
Venus shined brightly in the still pitch black eastern sky as I headed east on US 30. The vibration began as I passed fifty and persisted. With the speed limit of sixty and then fifty-five when I started south on SR 9, the vibration continued. I figured that if the problem got any worse, the vibration would increase enough that I would notice it. Of course, if it increased incrementally over a long time, I might not notice. I was concerned, but not really worried. I considered what I would do if it did get worse. Traveling on Sunday meant there would be no repair shops open. Fortunately I am not a worry wart so I pressed on regardless.
When I finally turned south on I-69, I was able to move the speedometer above seventy. As soon as I did that the vibration reduced substantially. That’s how I knew it was a harmonic vibration—a possible slight imbalance in the drive shaft system. Between seventy and eighty there was little vibration. Since all but a small part of the trip would be on interstates, I decided the chances were good I would have no problems. When I left I-69 and went south on SR 9, the vibration persisted as long as I was over fifty. I was pleased when I reached I-74 and headed for Cincinnati. From then on I would be traveling Interstates all the way to Jacksonville.
Things went smoothly all the way to Nashville where I turned east on I-690 and then I-40. Driving suddenly became very tense and dicey. I-40 out of Nashville was jammed with trucks and cars going east. I was immediately behind, beside, or in front of one of those trucks all the way up into the mountains. To make matters worse, the sun was setting and glaring into my rear view mirrors, often blinding me until I turned away the mirror on my left. I-40 changes from a relatively straight Interstate route to constant sharp curves as it snakes its way through the mountains of North Carolina right past Smokey Mountain National Park and under Skyline Drive. This mountainous section of the road is posted at fifty-five for autos and fifty for trucks. Ha! No truck I saw was going less than sixty, and there were hundreds.
To make things even more tense, I knew my overloaded pickup could not make any quick adjustments of direction. One quick turn of the wheel could send it careening out of control. If you’ve ever driven an overloaded vehicle you know exactly what I mean. As a caution and to avoid the necessity of any such maneuver, I stayed a dozen or more car lengths behind the car in front of me for most of the trip. This did not endear me to the cars behind me in the mountains. With trucks limited to the right lane and in an almost unbroken nose-to-tail line, all cars and pickups ended up in a constant line in the left lane.
I-40 snakes through the Appalachians in tight curves without a single straight stretch for fifty miles. There is little chance to pass any vehicle in your lane and trucks are not permitted in the left lane at all. For this reason, you are linked to both the car in front and the one behind. The curves open up a bit the last ten or so miles before the turn onto I-26, so driving that stretch is not so intense.
Soon I was following tight up behind another auto in the left lane with a row of semis roaring in the right lane a few feet away. Uncomfortably close by on the left was a six-foot high concrete barrier. For about the first five miles, in the worst section, the car in front of me was a cautious Cassias who seemed afraid to chance the space between the trucks and the concrete wall. When he did, he slowed down and inched by, a most dangerous practice. I soon learned to hang back until he cleared a truck and provided a bit of clearance, then move quickly past the truck and up behind Mr. Worry Wart. The car behind me soon learned my strategy and followed suit. After one of these forays when I blasted up close behind him, Mr. Worry Wart pulled into an open space in the right lane. With all that open space in front of me in the left lane, I began passing trucks as quickly as I thought safe. The guy in the car behind me let me know I was not moving fast enough to suit him. He was right on my back bumper.
When an open space in the line of trucks appeared, I pulled into it to let the guy behind me past. At least a dozen cars roared past before I could regain a place in the left lane. The cars that passed me soon disappeared in the distance. I no longer had to keep back a dozen car lengths behind any car in my lane. They were long gone. Fortunately, by the time it was pitch dark out, the curves had opened up quite a bit and driving was more normal for an Interstate. It was then I realized my hands were partially numb from gripping the wheel so tightly. Those last forty miles had been very intense. I finally relaxed when I pulled into a Red Roof Inn near Hendersonville for the night. The odometer showed I had logged 650 miles since leaving the lake some fourteen hours earlier. The tension of driving in that tight traffic through those mountains completely wore me out. I was sound asleep by 8:30 and didn’t even stay awake for Sunday night football.
The next morning I got up about five thirty. By six-thirty I had showered, dressed, packed my few things back in the S10, eaten a leisurely continental breakfast courtesy of The Red Roof Inn, and headed out. Once more Venus greeted me from the dark eastern sky then disappeared behind clouds. It wasn’t long before the eastern sky began to lighten. Dawn of a cloudy day was breaking. I wouldn’t even need my sunglasses, a blessing as I was driving east for some time before turning south on I-95. It was a relatively uneventful trip with the speedometer clinging to around seventy-five all the way to Jacksonville. At that speed there was very little vibration. I also noticed that even at lower speeds the vibration was no worse than it had been when I started. Apparently Roger’s comment that it probably would not get worse or cause problems was on the money.
The packed rear with some items already removed.
My S10 partially unloaded in Daphne's drive
