So after two months of research and watching auctions I finally started bidding on trucks that I thought I might be able to buy in my budget. The truck I won was actually the 3rd truck that I bid on and I have no idea why I got the deal I did. The only issues the truck had listed was inoperable Warning lights and a missing headlight. Turned out the only inoperable Warning light was for the parking brake....the bulb is missing 
My wife was not nearly as excited about my good deal as I was It took a little convincing to get her to make the 7 hour drive to Barstow from Reno but luckily once we got on the road she got into the adventure of the trip and actually got some cool pictures along the way which I will have to add as soon as I can download them from her camera, the ones below are from my phone. We hit snow on the way down but avoided it on the way home.
We drove down Sunday, stayed the night and got to the base at about 8am Monday morning. After background checks and paperwork we got our passes and headed in to the Iron Planet office. Everyone with Iron Planet were really nice and once we got out in the yard, the vehicle handler was great! Gave us as much time as we wanted to check the fluids, put the new headlight in etc and then gave us a jump start with the HUMMV he was driving around. They hadn't told him about the trailer that we were picking up so he had to get his forklift and go find the trailer. I think we got off the base about 10:30.
We made it about a 1/2 mile down the road and steam started to fill the cab and antifreeze starting running down the firewall to the floorboard.....bad heater core. So I pulled off the side of the road and saw that it was pretty easy to bypass the heater core so that's what I did. Of the course the batteries hadn't charged enough to start the truck so I had to break out the 2 new 12v batteries and jumper cables. Peace of cake, except the truck wouldn't fire....turned over great but wouldn't start. So I broke out the laptop and opened the TM's that I had downloaded from this great website and after 30 minutes found the troubleshooting section I was looking for. !st thing on the list, "be sure emergency stop switch is pushed all the way in". Well it was in the proper position but I remember seeing a loose looking cable in the engine bay so I check the engine bay and found that the plunger on the emergency stop system was sticking out like it had been tripped. I manually reset it and like magic, the truck fired right up!
We drove the rest of the way into town, stopped in a big parking lot and decided to check the transfer case oil after the IP vehicle handler told me about a guy who had just burned one up driving it home to LA. It was low so my wife headed to the auto parts store for gear oil and trans oil. Once we got all that done and grabbed a burger, it was almost 12:00.
We finally got on the highway and cruising out of town about a 1/2 hour when I noticed all the lights were flashing on the CTIS panel. I pulled over and checked everything out but couldn't find an obvious problem. I dug through the TM's but couldn't seem to find the right section so I decided to disconnect the panel and see if it would reset. That did the trick and it never gave me another problem....still not sure why it was flashing.
The next thing I noticed was the **** accelerator pedal was so **** stiff that I was steering with my left hand and pushing down on my knee with my right hand to keep the truck at 55mph. I pulled over 3 separate times to get the feeling back in my toes before deciding to disconnect the secondary return spring on the throttle linkage! Wow, what a world of difference...and I actually was able to get WOT, which I realized that I had not been getting.
We finished up our first day of driving in Bishop about 5pm that evening, got a room and crashed feeling pretty good about how things were going.
Tuesday morning we found out the batteries had not held their charge so had to jump start her again. Got on the road about 8am and decided to take the longer route up Hwy 6 to Hwy 95 through Hawthorne to avoid the big grades on 395 over the Easter Sierras. The trip from Bishop to Reno was pretty uneventful and found the sweet spot was around 60 to 62mph.
As we rolled into Reno, there was a sign about a wreck ahead to expect delays, I decided to exit and take the business loop but so had everyone else so we ended up in stop and go traffic, just to get off the freeway. It was then that the air brakes quit releasing....had to power through and they would release only to stick again every time I had to stop. The engine temp started to climb, as did the trans temp. By the time I got off the freeway the engine was at 220 and the trans at 200. I pulled into a parking lot to let it cool down but found that the clutch fan was not turning on. I let it idle about 15 minutes and felt all the drums in the rear. One was cool, one was warm, one was hot and one was too hot to hold my hand on. After 15 minutes the engine temp had barely come down but the brakes were free so I decided to get back on the highway, which had cleared up. We made it the last 15 miles to home without further incident and the temps dropped back to normal with some air running through the radiator.
All told, the trip ended up being 485 miles. I checked fuel mileage from Bishop to Fallon and used about 33 gallons over 200 miles....so 6.06 mpg.
Today I checked all the fluids again and realized that I had over filled the engine by probably a gallon....I guess it takes a really long time to show on the dipstick after you dump it in the the top of the engine....It originally wasn't registering on the dipstick so I added about 2 qts, waited a few minutes. Still not registering so I added 2 more, waited a few minutes and it was barely registering so I added 2 more. After a couple minutes it was registering between the add and full mark so I added 1 more quart for a total of 7 quarts. Well today it is reading about 4" above the full mark and oil splashes out of the dipstick tube with the engine running.....oops.
All in all it was a great adventure that turned out well thanks in no small part to the contributors of this great website. Thank you.
James
My wife was not nearly as excited about my good deal as I was
It took a little convincing to get her to make the 7 hour drive to Barstow from Reno but luckily once we got on the road she got into the adventure of the trip and actually got some cool pictures along the way which I will have to add as soon as I can download them from her camera, the ones below are from my phone. We hit snow on the way down but avoided it on the way home.We drove down Sunday, stayed the night and got to the base at about 8am Monday morning. After background checks and paperwork we got our passes and headed in to the Iron Planet office. Everyone with Iron Planet were really nice and once we got out in the yard, the vehicle handler was great! Gave us as much time as we wanted to check the fluids, put the new headlight in etc and then gave us a jump start with the HUMMV he was driving around. They hadn't told him about the trailer that we were picking up so he had to get his forklift and go find the trailer. I think we got off the base about 10:30.
We made it about a 1/2 mile down the road and steam started to fill the cab and antifreeze starting running down the firewall to the floorboard.....bad heater core. So I pulled off the side of the road and saw that it was pretty easy to bypass the heater core so that's what I did. Of the course the batteries hadn't charged enough to start the truck so I had to break out the 2 new 12v batteries and jumper cables. Peace of cake, except the truck wouldn't fire....turned over great but wouldn't start. So I broke out the laptop and opened the TM's that I had downloaded from this great website and after 30 minutes found the troubleshooting section I was looking for. !st thing on the list, "be sure emergency stop switch is pushed all the way in". Well it was in the proper position but I remember seeing a loose looking cable in the engine bay so I check the engine bay and found that the plunger on the emergency stop system was sticking out like it had been tripped. I manually reset it and like magic, the truck fired right up!
We drove the rest of the way into town, stopped in a big parking lot and decided to check the transfer case oil after the IP vehicle handler told me about a guy who had just burned one up driving it home to LA. It was low so my wife headed to the auto parts store for gear oil and trans oil. Once we got all that done and grabbed a burger, it was almost 12:00.
We finally got on the highway and cruising out of town about a 1/2 hour when I noticed all the lights were flashing on the CTIS panel. I pulled over and checked everything out but couldn't find an obvious problem. I dug through the TM's but couldn't seem to find the right section so I decided to disconnect the panel and see if it would reset. That did the trick and it never gave me another problem....still not sure why it was flashing.
The next thing I noticed was the **** accelerator pedal was so **** stiff that I was steering with my left hand and pushing down on my knee with my right hand to keep the truck at 55mph. I pulled over 3 separate times to get the feeling back in my toes before deciding to disconnect the secondary return spring on the throttle linkage! Wow, what a world of difference...and I actually was able to get WOT, which I realized that I had not been getting.
We finished up our first day of driving in Bishop about 5pm that evening, got a room and crashed feeling pretty good about how things were going.
Tuesday morning we found out the batteries had not held their charge so had to jump start her again. Got on the road about 8am and decided to take the longer route up Hwy 6 to Hwy 95 through Hawthorne to avoid the big grades on 395 over the Easter Sierras. The trip from Bishop to Reno was pretty uneventful and found the sweet spot was around 60 to 62mph.
As we rolled into Reno, there was a sign about a wreck ahead to expect delays, I decided to exit and take the business loop but so had everyone else so we ended up in stop and go traffic, just to get off the freeway. It was then that the air brakes quit releasing....had to power through and they would release only to stick again every time I had to stop. The engine temp started to climb, as did the trans temp. By the time I got off the freeway the engine was at 220 and the trans at 200. I pulled into a parking lot to let it cool down but found that the clutch fan was not turning on. I let it idle about 15 minutes and felt all the drums in the rear. One was cool, one was warm, one was hot and one was too hot to hold my hand on. After 15 minutes the engine temp had barely come down but the brakes were free so I decided to get back on the highway, which had cleared up. We made it the last 15 miles to home without further incident and the temps dropped back to normal with some air running through the radiator.
All told, the trip ended up being 485 miles. I checked fuel mileage from Bishop to Fallon and used about 33 gallons over 200 miles....so 6.06 mpg.
Today I checked all the fluids again and realized that I had over filled the engine by probably a gallon....I guess it takes a really long time to show on the dipstick after you dump it in the the top of the engine....It originally wasn't registering on the dipstick so I added about 2 qts, waited a few minutes. Still not registering so I added 2 more, waited a few minutes and it was barely registering so I added 2 more. After a couple minutes it was registering between the add and full mark so I added 1 more quart for a total of 7 quarts. Well today it is reading about 4" above the full mark and oil splashes out of the dipstick tube with the engine running.....oops.
All in all it was a great adventure that turned out well thanks in no small part to the contributors of this great website. Thank you.
James
