Aside from the handful of times I've run out of gas, in all my years of driving, I have never had a car simply conk out on me. That was until this past Friday afternoon on a routine if not mundane trip to Walmart for cat food, when my 2002 Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS decided to give up the ghost.
No check engine light on, no noise from under the hood or a loss of power prior. Nope. Just a simultaneous brief kick-up of the tach-o-meter, a momentary herky-jerky surge and then.... oblivion. Good thing I was doing forty-miles-per-hour or so to give me enough momentum to coast into the parking lot of the Longhorn Steak House up the street from the Walmart. If it wasn't so cold out, I would have stopped in for some Firecracker Chicken Wings with Avocado Lime Sauce before calling AAA for a tow.
I knew the engine hadn't seized because the starter was able to crank it freely and there was no tell-tale "knocking rod" noise or any ominous sounds or smoke ahead of it stalling out. There was plenty of heat too, always a good thing. The only thing that's been giving me trouble had been the fuel pump; when warm and then shut off, it needed up to four tries to stay running. I had mentioned the problem to my mechanic recently and he said it sounded like the fuel pump was having trouble maintaining pressure when it was warm. The multiple start thing manageable as long as the engine finally lit for good. And it always did. Of course, I didn't expect it to just go kaput like it did. On a google search of symptoms of a bad fuel pump, "sudden death" wasn't on the list. All that said, all things pointed to the fuel pump.
It could have been so much worse. This past week I had to make two, two-hundred-plus mile traipses to the office, and I shudder to think what it would have been like had this happened on the Ohio Turnpike. In the not too recent past as well, my wife and I used "The Dale" on trips to New York City, Long Island and Washington D.C. from our home here outside Cleveland, Ohio. There was second guessing our decision, my wife's mostly, to take a car with more than a quarter-million-miles on it on such long trips, but there was nary a problem, not that there was any hint of an issue in the moments on Friday before my car stalled out.
That this breakdown happened four miles from my home was again, truly a blessing. Had it happened halfway between my home and my office, I might have been forced to have it towed to a mechanic who would have salivated at an easy thousand-dollar repair I would have had no choice but to pay. Worse yet, what if the pump had gone out when we were in New York or D.C.? Same thing, of course, plus I'd have to be concerned about extending the trip as we waited for my car to have work done, work I could easily do. And save hundreds and hundreds of dollars doing it myself.
Swapping the pump was straight forward. I put the pump in that failed several years and more than 150,000 miles ago when the gas gauge started going wonky. Luckily, there's an access panel behind the fold-down rear seat that gave me access to it; all cars with fuel pumps in gas tanks should have such access. I've replaced fuel pumps where I had to drop the tank to get at it and that's no fun, especially on pumps where the fuel lines on the pump are metal. Take off those eight, ten-millimeters, disconnect the fuel lines and electrical connectors, pop the retaining ring, rinse and repeat. The only issue I had was some gunk got into the gas tank when I was pulling the old pump out. Quick suck on my wet-dry vac and I was good to go to.
Now, granted, there was every possibility that what made my car stop running might not have been the fuel pump - and that was in the back of my mind the whole time. With no check engine light on, "no-starts" like this can be hard to decipher. You go with what you think it might be and hope for the best. After I installed the new pump, I silently prayed to St. Christopher for engine to turn over and...it did. Whew. The Dale lives on.
I'm planning a big road trip for my birthday at the end of March to Nashville, Chattanooga, Washington D.C. and Brooklyn, New York. If I do it all, I'm looking at more than two-thousand miles. Prior to this past Friday, I wouldn't think twice about taking The Dale on such a long trip, but sudden break downs do tend to make you think twice about things you used to take for granted. Who knows what I'll do. More than likely, I'll roll the dice and take my good old boy. He's only let me down this one time and I think he deserves another chance to be taken for granted.
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