Tentative Peace Found

Tentative Peace Found

The short story is, I think I found my gremlin, the GMC aka Big Red has now been driven 4 days without the random stall while under idle load, no load and moving.  It appears it may have been a faulty new part that had been changed out in early August due to the component failure leading to no spark.  Ironically I had purchased the new part I just installed in North Platte Nebraska as a totem as we drove on towards Moab Ut…I just never replaced it out of stubbornness and the false faith that brand new parts work and are not faulty.

Victor and I had decided to leave early this year because as a group we were not going to ride Moab…and I’m not ready to give up Moab from my mind.  I suckered him into leaving Sunday morning so that I could get some time on the trials bike, get my sea legs back and dangled Pritchett Canyon in front of him so he could ride gnar and I could walk the motorcycle through obstacles. https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/utah/pritchett-canyon-4x4-trail  It didn’t take much more and he was in.

About 2 weeks before leaving, I was pushing my luck on the fuel tank at empty and 2 blocks from home the truck dies…I wound up turning off of 42^nd onto Longfellow to park the truck as I had the garage guy coming to take a look at the project. I’d just walk back with a gas can later that night and get the truck home was the thought.  Lisa offered to help with grabbing the gas and I said I’d be along in a bit once she dropped me off at the truck.

Rung rung rung rung….nothing.  Rung rung rung rung…nothing.  No fire.  After investigating, I have fuel but no spark.  Huh….Walk back home to do some research.  

I’m in awe of Tim’s and many of your ability to electrically test components.  I don’t have that in my brain and am not comfortable around a multi-meter.  So I do some googling on my current situation, I have fuel, air but no spark.  I have a healthy starter and battery as far as I can tell.  I have 2x weeks before I need to be a reliable truck to take a trailer of large capacity to the west and I hate “being that guy” who brings dodgy equipment that may affect someone else’s experience. I’m under the gun of personal expectation and was hoping this time would be spent getting the bikes prepped rather than chasing truck issues. 

Big Red is not remembering that I have been faithful to her and treated her with respect and proactive attention.  She is wanting more of my time and becoming needy.

After reading a bit, the ignition controller and coil are often suspect in this situation.  You can test the units or replace them for a total of about $60.  The ignition component is under the cap and rotor….the truck has 150,000 miles on it and I start looking at pricing on components and realize that for under $200 I can pretty much replace the entire ignition system, cap, rotor, plugs, plug wires....  So, let’s get busy and avoid the BS of a new part causing a weaker part to fail down the line.

If you remember, I sent an email pissed that I moved the ignition advance when replacing the oil pressure sensor which GM conveniently buried at the back fire wall under the cap plate….but Victor had given me shit about the pressure sensor for 2 trips and to show him and his stupid judgy self, I was bound to replace the damn thing to make the truck better.

The truck was close to timed correctly but still off.  I thought I had eyeballed this correctly and though I had checked it correctly with Tim a week earlier…but I was still sensing the truck was underpowered and had a stall in Northfield that was odd.  I blamed the eye balled cap and fixated on timing.

So, I ran back over to Tim’s house about a day or so before we were to leave to grab the timing light. Victor brought over his ton of trailer that we’d be towing west for a dry fit / test tow.  We quick hooked up the light, turned the cap maybe an 1/8in to the correct 0deg setting after far too much time rifling through the house looking for the Haynes manual that Paul and kindly given to me about a year earlier.  After tearing the house apart, I remembered that I placed the manual in a bag behind the seat in the truck last year for 2016’s riding trip….there it was…oh…and GM also has the timing procedure on a sticker on the front grill brace about where Tim and I had recently placed the timing light while discussing what the setting needed to be…I blame the light for obscuring the truth…not my lack of preparation, research and inventory control (book location memory)

Victor simply, calmly pointed to the sticker…and simply, calmly pointed to the plastic cover where we needed to look for the bypass wire during the procedure….I’m getting pretty sick of his simply and calmly pointing shit out.

Great.  We are ready to roll and in 20 hours we’ll be in Moab ready to sweat to death and question why we were stupid enough to come back and challenge our skills on one of the hardest jeep trails in the region.

About 30 minutes before the only turn we have to get to Moab, the turn out of Des Moines, the engine stalls….not a sputter, not a wild ride of death, just simply coasting, no load, no gas pedal response, no motor and we are cruising at 65-70 miles per hour without the engine running…..Huh….turn the key, nothing. Pull to the side of the road. Sit for a minute.  Turn the key off, put it into park, turn the key, Vroom!...Hmmm…there is a rest stop just a mile up or so, let’s go there.

We are at a decision point, do we turn back or do we keep going.  This is an oddity that I have never experienced but riding is that way…we walk around the truck.  We fiddle here, tighten the ground on the battery, fondle that, discover that odd smell a few miles back was the trailer lights fuse…put in a slightly stronger fuse…hmmm…everything seems fine.  Let’s keep driving.  We will have parts stores ahead of us and time to search a bit on the intertubes….I am thanking we live in a time where that stupid little computer in my pocket can be useful in so many ways…

As we leave the rest stop I’m a bit nervous thinking this will become a god damn death march but I want to ride and I want to keep moving.  I wasn’t thinking about the mountains yet…but if we have issues, that will be precisely the shit show location I’m assuming friendships and pickups will die in.  I think about where I keep matches in case Plan B is necessary.  I think about the trucks I had found in Montrose and Grand Junction.  I double check my current savings account total and budget.

About a half hour later we have another stall.  This time we stay in the lane, pull the transmission into neutral and turn the key to off and back to start…Vroooom!....we throw it back into drive and keep rolling.

The conversation starts to go through what has been changed, what could this be, what needs a reset, why do we need to bring the transmission to neutral and bring the key to off to reset the system….after a couple more stalls we are passing through Lincoln Nebraska and we have a vague idea that this is during down hills, no load idle and we can restart on the fly.  I look for Napa’s in North Platte.

It is Sunday and close to closing time.  We walk into Napa and I start asking for some advice.  One thought is a crank sensor…this GM motor doesn’t have one but it does have a transmission position sensor that is accessible.  They have one.  I buy it and am warned…don’t pull it from the plastic back unless you are sure…yup...and as I lay under the truck we can hear Napa shutting down and the employees heading home.

The gentlemen that helped us let Victor know that if we need to keep the truck in the lot overnight it is ok as my legs are jutting out from under the truck and I can’t get the damn sensor out of the trans….god damn thing is wonky and kicking my ass…I struggle, ask for this, ask for that and pretty fill my armpit with trans fluid as it runs down my arm…dammit. “I need a container for fluid.”  Victor hands me a measuring / mixture cup. 

Perfect.  I pull the old sensor out, place the new in.  Drain just shy of a half a cup out of the trans not to mention what is currently lubricating my right arm and start to clean up.  As I’m getting out from under the truck a little gust of wind kicked up and pushed over the cup of ATF….it isn’t Roadkill unless you’ve bleed ATF in the parking lot of the business that was helping you.  We clean up the new Super Fund site in North Platte and close up the truck and trailer.

We take a test spin around the lot, should be good, let’s go.  As Victor pulls into traffic the truck stalls again.  Not the transmission position sensor.  I point to the still open O’Riely’s. 

I had been suspect of the Oil Pressure Sensor, Ignition Control and the Coil because for some reason the Oil Pressure Sensor can turn off the fuel pump as a safety.  I have less then faith in my mechanic, me…so I start questioning the work I have done but feel that all I have really done is replaced old components with new components…so what the hell is hard about that…why question myself, yet I do.

I asked how much the computer was for the truck, $100….they happen to have one….it was a return and on the box the word “wrong” is hand written on the label…in my head I laugh at foreshadowing.  I buy another Ignition Control and Coil because they have them and I’m out of ideas.  I walk out and replace the computer in the dash.  We have now used up about 2 hours of daylight chasing this gremlin and about 3 hours total in the day diagnosing this damn thing.  As we get on the freeway and start driving…we stall again…

Transmission to Neutral, key to off, key to start, Vrooom!, Transmission to drive.  We have a fix for now and for now, it’s working.  Westward ho!

As we travel through Nebraska and the flats of Colorado this happens from time to time.  I feel like 2500 +/-100 rpm mean something, that under 2000rpm and if I can keep it at 1600-1700 rpm we are fine but more likely to stall at 2500rpm.  Still not consistent but trying to think through and build data. The rolling fix is working and we are making steady time again.  I’m concerned about being stranded in the shit void that is eastern Colorado, ethanol plants, deserted dry flats, cattle yards, Trump supporters. We overnight in Silverthorne Colorado after arriving at 3am.  No troubles in the mountains.  With the engine under load and working, no issues.  It is really only after pulling your foot off the gas or in a shallow downhill run that the engine stops.  So the midnight run up the mountain was cool, relaxing and uneventful with few cars and trucks on the road and the mountains on the mind.  The truck works well tugging through the hills.

We’re up at the crack of 8:13am and get back on the road around 9am or so.  We hop back on the freeway and expect to be in Moab mid afternoon accounting for shenanigans as need be with the truck.  It isn’t until we get to the low lands out by Fruita Colorado that we have a stall and maybe another heading into Moab…all in all we have ignored it now, we postulate on additional parts it may be. I know there is a Napa 2 blocks from our hotel from previous years.  I find a couple additional culprits that may need a reset to function and could be worn…Moab Napa has them in stock. 

We spent a morning in Moab pulling off ground leads, cleaning them, reinstalling them and Victor shows me how to place a new ground from one that is particularly corroded and a bear to reach under the motor and firewall.  We still get stalls.

We spend the next 8 days or so simply living with it and using the rolling restart fix.  It works, why change it.  Let’s ride.

We get back home and part ways.  The next day I start to fill the back of the truck with garage stuff for the storage unit because in a week or so we will be tearing down our trust little single stall.  I can’t keep the damn truck running now and it is stalling all over the place because in town, the truck basically is running at idle with very little throttle input needed to run around at 30-35mph. 

So it isn’t the trailer. I had secretly wanted Victor’s trailer and the trailer wiring to be the weird odd wrench in the works…nope…it’s the truck. 

I cry uncle, write down that I have swapped out, the timeline and the symptoms and bring it to Flanery’s http://www.flanerybrosauto.com/ across from Bakers Wife.  I know they have worked on GM products and have a few of my era trucks around from time to time.  I was hoping they had a secret that only the cool 5.7L guys knew of and hand over the keys.  I get a call a day later saying the EGR valve is suspect and that the TBI fuel injection could use a rebuild.  I had asked them to check the fuel pressure as this was part of our questions during the trip and usually the first question on all of the forums before every last “my trucks broken, how do I fix it” disintegrates into “you suck” and “gm’s suck”…. but we never lost power under load and didn’t have sputtering or surging…but let’s check anyway.  Not the fuel pressure…they changed the filter since that is where they take the test…fine.

I asked him how much for the work…he said “Oh, I thought you were working on it…I’ll write up and estimate”.  Ok, thanks.

I walk in on Friday “Do you have an estimate for me?”

“Sorry, not yet…”

“Ok, tell you what, let me pay you for what you have into it, I’ll take the truck, replace the parts you suggest and will return if it is an issue”

“I already have the parts…um…why don’t you take the parts, change them out, if it works, I’ll charge you my cost on parts….if not we can try something else”

“Really?  Thanks, I appreciate it!”

I had the parts replaced in an hour once I got home.  Took it for a spin on Saturday…no issues.  Woohoo!  Take it for a spin on Sunday….3 stalls.  DAAAAAMMMMMIITTTTT!

At the beginning of last week I returned it to Flanery’s with the update that it wasn’t the EGR and EGR controller.  Still stalling…not sure where to do from here.  They had it for the week and could not find anything else.  They were stumped.  I pulled the truck from them last Friday after paying for their time and parts used…$260…far too little for the time they had into it…frankly, Flanery’s will be getting more business from me because of this interaction even though they were unable to fix it.   They treated me more than fairly and in fact lost money on this one with time spent alone. Oddly, the truck threw no codes for this.  So it is completely a knowledge of systems and trial and error process.

I mentioned I didn’t trust the oil pressure sensor…that it was part of the shut down safety for oil starvation and can shut off the fuel pump.  So I went out on Saturday morning ready to change the pressure sensor and to replace the Ignition Control because I had one from North Platte still in the truck.

When I pulled off the cap and rotor, the GD position of the oil pressure sensor pissed me off so much that I let my brain say “test and learn, only change the Ignition Control as it is accessible and if you still get stalling, then go after the oil pressure sensor”.

Good idea brain.

4 days into the new Ignition controller I have a tentative peace with Big Red.  I have not had any stalling.  I’m hopeful the peace stands and we can begin rebuilding from here….let’s hope the Taiwanese got this controller right.

I’m still fond of Big Red.