Smooth Starting

Anybody know what that little curly thing is?

It's a "Choke Thermostat Spring", and that one is broken.

When the weather turned cold, the slow-starting truck turned into a no-starting truck. At any temperature under 20, I had to spray starting fluid into the carb just to get the engine to fire up. As you might guess, in Northern Vermont, the temperature stays below 20 a whole lot during Winter. I've been through two bottles of starting fluid in a month and a half. 

A little investigative sleuthing found two problems: the choke linkage was incorrectly assembled, and the choke spring was broken. The linkage was a free fix. The spring - which was used on just about every vehicle for decades - was only a few dollars, but took a week to arrive at the parts store. No doubt that such a rare part had to be special ordered in from Outer Mongolia....

Now, the truck fires up with just three taps on the gas pedal and a twist of the key. No starting fluid needed, in any weather. (Except that -22 morning. That took a whole lot of cranking...)

I like the cheap fixes.....

Lock the Doors? You Must Be Kidding...

I never lock the doors on the truck. Not because we live in an idyllic neighborhood with no crime, but because the lock cylinders won't turn. I'm not even sure I have the correct key. So, the doors never get locked, and I will never be able to say that I got locked out of this truck. Great, right? It's great unless you find yourself wanting to go some place like work or a store where you don't want to carry all of your possessions inside with you. If your vehicle doesn't lock, you kind of have to carry everything with you or risk theft (the easy kind, where the thief doesn't even have to work at it by smashing a window).

I think I've come up with a good solution. I found a small gun safe on sale at Tractor Supply and bolted that thing under the seat (and through the floorboards of the truck). Cover it with a old rag, and you'd never know it was there.

Covered up.

Ready for code entry.

Now, I've got a fairly safe place to store a phone, some cash, or anything else I need to secure.