Using A Truck To Do Truck Things Just Feels Good

A while back, I changed out the starter in the 1989 Ford F-150 (which came with the name “The Marshal”) that David gave me, and it seemed just fine. I mean, it started and that’s really the most we can ask from a starter, isn’t it? Unfortunately, though, while returning from a day of canoeing with my kid, I stalled it while backing into my driveway, and somehow in the process of trying to start it again, I managed to break five teeth off the flywheel. Crap. I haven’t been using the truck as much since then, but I did yesterday, and, dammit, it felt good.

I’m appalled to realize that the teeth-breaking incident happened last July, but if I think about it, I’m not too shocked the truck has been mostly sitting. I mean, about four or so months after the Flywheel Incident, I had a pretty significant mechanical problem of my own, when my main hose from my heart tore apart. That definitely slowed down my truck usage for a good while, and then after that I just got swamped with other cars and work and all the detritus of life that the truck ended up sitting for much longer than I’d have liked.

I’d pulled it out a few times, but I think it’d been sitting for at least like four months in this current stretch. I would have driven it more, but I know every time I start it, it’s sort of a gamble if I’ll be able to start it again, easily, because of those missing flywheel teeth.

I mean, I keep a big wrench in the car so I can just turn the engine if the starter ends up in the gap, but that’s a pain. Then again, the odds are in my favor. In fact, let’s calculate them!

I have the legendarily-robust 300 cubic inch (4.9 liter) inline-six engine, which means I have a 164-tooth flywheel. If we take away five teeth from the flywheel, that leaves us with 159 teeth still, so that means I still have 96.9512195% – let’s call it 97% – of the flywheel teeth! So, really, there’s only a 3% chance that the starter will be in the wrong place! Those are pretty damn good odds!

I mean, sure, I should replace that flywheel soon, but I think it’s an acceptable level of risk, starting-wise.

I charged the battery up the night before, then went out to the leaf-strewn part of the driveway where the Marshal sat, patiently. Inside the cab, I was disheartened and annoyed to find some mold or mildew or whatever attempting to colonize the vinyl bench seat. I licked off all that I could, savoring the smoky, earthy, loamy flavors of the fungus (I kid! I wiped it with a rag, jeez) and set to starting the truck.

I had to fight all of my carbureted-car instincts, and just pressed the throttle to the floor once, then let go, as this ’89 F-150 is fuel injected. I twisted the key, was relieved to hear the starter actually engage the flywheel with a few of those 159 remaining teeth, and the engine spun and growled and groaned, slowly being shaken awoke from its coma, but then spluttered and coughed itself into wakefulness.

Good truck.

I revved it a bit to blow out any nesting voles or whatever, then shoved it into reverse. The wheels didn’t want to move at first, having been sitting so long. I put it in the ultra-low first gear and lurched forward, then back into reverse, rocking it back and forth a few times to let those axles know I mean business, and soon they relented, and out of the driveway we rolled.

I drove it Italian Tune-Up style for a bit, with the likely idiotic idea that I could blow away months of stagnation with enthusiasm, but it did sort of work, The brakes needed a bit of loosening up, but after a few wheel-locking, skidding stops, the system seemed to resign itself that it would be going back to work, and the braking calmed down to normal levels.

All in all, the perfect time to load a ton of rocks in the thing, right?

See, the thing that got me off my ass was that my next-door neighbors needed to get a literal ton of gravel and pavers for a backyard project, and it was either have me help them with the use of the truck or they would make, as I was told, “two trips” in their Tesla Model Y, which seemed like a pretty bad idea. Messy, too. I don’t think that Model Y would have been happy with 1,000 pounds of loose gravel in the back.

There’s something satisfying about that first drive in a freshly-awoken car or truck. You can feel the car waking up, the parts shaking off the dirt and grime of disuse and remembering what they were made for. In the half-hour drive to the quarry, I could feel the truck waking back up, and to its credit, the engine felt great, and ran smoother than I remembered. It even shifted with relative ease. It felt good to have the old crusty boy back.

While still pretty filthy and leaf-covered, the Marshal still maintains a certain amount of workhorse dignity; I’ve discussed this in detail before, how a worn and battered old truck somehow isn’t embarrassing the way a sedan of the same vintage and in the same condition would be. A 1989 Ford Taurus with the same brushed-on purple paint and the same level of grime and wear would suggest an owner that hasn’t made a good decision in decades; but on a truck? It just looks like it’s owned by someone who likes to do things.

I’m not saying it’s fair, but that is how it is.

Anyway, it just felt good to be driving that thing again. And it felt good to put it to real use. Watching the guy in the bucket-bulldozer dump about a half-ton of gravel into the bed was satisfying.

The gravel looked a lot like Grape-Nuts, and had about as much flavor and perhaps a better mouth feel. And I like Grape-Nuts.

From a distance, it looks like it could be corn, too. Maybe deer corn, which I see advertised all over the place, and may have rolled around in piles of, but never have eaten, not being a deer, or at least never having been invited to lunch by a deer.

Then, we loaded in 1,020 pounds of whatever mineral these flat paving stones are, and, as always, I’m amazed how little room a full ton of rocks takes up in the bed of a truck:

This was actually a bit over a ton, about 2,100 pounds or so, and it never seems to take up as much room as you’d expect. But rocks are dense! Dense and heavy. I think if I filled ip that whole bed with similar rocks and gravel, it would weigh about 6,000 pounds or so? Three tons? Something like that.

On the drive back I could definitely feel the weight back there; the way it handled felt more like driving my old Beetle than the truck normally does, as I think the weight bias had migrated very rearward. The old F-150 handled it great, though, accelerating not really all that worse than when empty, and stopping just fine, though I was a lot more careful with how much room I accounted for when slowing down.

I realize that nothing that I did here is a big deal. I got a truck that had been sitting a bit started, and then took it to a place, and then had a ton of rock dumped into it, and took it back. That’s it! An errand, basically, if a heavy one. And yet it felt great to do it, in some peculiar and basic way, the joy that comes from using a tool in the way it was intended. It’s really not all that different than using an X-acto knife to make a really straight cut in a piece of mat board, or the way it feels when you draw just the right line with a really nice Rapidograph pen, or lay a nice bead while welding.

I promised the Marshal that I’d be better about driving it more regularly, and not letting it sit for months. I hope I keep that promise. Though a perverse part of me does kind of wish I saw 1,000 pounds of gravel in the back of that Model Y.

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My Extremely Reliable 1989 Ford F-150 Had Another Problem And It Involves Broken Teeth

The Marshal To The Rescue: Cold Start