Well, camping plans went the way of plans. I got about 80% of the way to where I'd planned to camp tonight when the throttle started to stick. This was right before where the really bad road got worse and became a single-rig-wide, tightly winding shelf road with about 1,200' of drop-off on one side. Not really where I want to be driving a rig that might decide to stick at full throttle at any time.
I turned back and got to where the really bad road ended and the just bad road began. Stopped for a smoke and a beer and to crawl under the rig to see why the throttle had decided to not only start sticking open, but getting harder to get open to begin with. Not good with a serious canyon to drive out of.
After removing the gear from the back so I could get into the engine compartment--nothing wrong there--and then repacking that area and laying out the old sleeping pad I carry just for this, crawling under the front of the Brick to check that end of the throttle cable (where I was able to dislodge a short ton of caked mud and dirt right into my eyes)--no problem there either--cable might be a little sticky in the housing. Finally looked at the most obvious and simplest part of the whole system--the pedal. Sure enough, the lever that connects the pedal to the bell crank had come unclipped from the pedal. One minute and fixed.
But that was what was causing the pedal to be hard to push--not why it was sticking. I concluded that discretion was the better part of valor, tucked my tail between my legs and headed home. Had a nice snack of fried chicken gizzards and an excellent red ale--Sockeye--at the Imnaha Store and Tavern and got back to town just in time to have beer at the TG pub before it closed.
But I did get to try to recreate a picture I took back in June of '05 purely from memory.
3/6/'05.
Today. Where the hell did my **** go?
Not horrible for working from memory--in the original, the Van, Ol' Blue, was parked about fifteen feet further up the road and the camera was placed a little higher and a little further down the road, but still, not bad.
I think I have video of most of the drive if I just get around to editing it and getting it posted--but, of course, as soon as I got back into cell range, my phone lit up with **** I need to fix. Damn, it was nice being out of cell reception for most of a day! Need to do that more often....
Tomorrow, I'll have to re-plumb the new water heater I installed the other day and apparently plumbed backwards and then replace the throttle cable to be ready for the next shake-down cruise.
