For those who have been asking, I thought I’d give an update on our truck situation. As soon as we returned home, we unloaded the trailer and took the truck out to Tommy – our mechanic. He’s had it ever since. We’ve got about 400,000 miles on this rig and have never had a single major engine problem with it – we have had some brake issues but never the engine! This fall we lost that rear engine seal due to high compression…a signal that it was time to start thinking about rebuilding it. We were planning on doing that next summer but we have a fairly busy Spring 08 tour and didn’t want to take the risk of problems that might prevent us from getting to a show. So, we decided to price it out – rebuild or buy a new engine? As it turns out, it’s less expensive to buy a new engine than it is to rebuild one. We decided to buy a new one, get a better warranty, and have some peace of mind. We also decided to have Tommy install an engine brake to help me on those steep mountain grades!
I stopped by Tommy’s the other day to get something out of the truck. Here’s what I found – nothing in the front end at all! Somehow I just didn’t picture it like this – completely empty.
The old engine was sitting on the floor – the new one had just arrived from Las Vegas.
Soon, we’ll be back on the road with a new truck!