This trip is gearing up to be on the bottom of my list of favorites! It has been rush, rush, gotta go from the moment we got the dispatch. We were late before we even got started on this one since we were playing clean up for someone else.
I have been telling my husband for days that the front end of the truck was riding rough and wasn't stearing as smooth as usual. He of course didn't feel anything was different so business went on as usual. After bouncing across Missouri I had had enough and shot the front shocks with the IR Gun. Sure enough cold as ice and completely DEAD! We were just outside of Kansas City so we made a stop at the Kenworth Dealer and picked up two new shocks for a cheap $60. We have a 14600# front axle on this beast so the only place we could get the shocks locally was from the dealer. We were pleasantly suprised by the sticker for a change.
The pleasant feelings didn't last long though because when we got to Kenworth the whole area smelled like a sesspool! The parts guy told us there was a sewage treatment plant on the next block. He went on to say this wasn't bad at all, we should come back in the summer when it really smelled! Needless to say we didn't stick around for a second longer than was necessary. Instead we hightailed it down the highway to the next rest area. We figured it wouldn't be a big deal to change out the shocks there. After all it should only take 15-20 minutes...
We pulled in, got out the wrenchs, overalls went on and the first shock was changed in under 5 minutes. The second one was not so easy. It took all 6' 4" and 245 pounds of my husband balanced on the steer tire on one foot and using the other to force the bottom nut loose. The top one wouldn't budge. We kicked and pryed on it for about 10 more aminutes before I got the bright idea of getting a bigger hammer. Literally, we got out the sledge hammer. A little creative placement of the wrench, a few taps by me and then a few good hits from my husband and VIOLA! Stupid mechanics and their impact wrenchs was the topic the whole time we were wagging war on the nut. I didn't get any pictures of the actual battle, but I did get several after our victory!
All in all I think it took us just over 30 minutes to get the job done and back on the road. The difference was immediatly noticable. SOOOOO SMOOOOOTH!!!!!
It sure made for a nice smooth ride to fall asleep to......
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Seems like you sure are doing alot of work of the truck lately. Oh well it'll be just like new. You might even end up with a 2009 model! LOL
ReplyDeleteDifferent times of the year we have more time than others to do this kind of stuff. In the winter when things are slow we do some of the little things that get pushed aside the rest of the year and then Spring brings spring clean up. Besides that we have hit every single major winter storm and cold snap this year. All this severe cold is just as hard on us as the equipment!
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