After being off the roads for exactly five months, Lucy rewarded my finally getting her on the road by being ornery. As I reported yesterday, my effort to drive her to work was a non-starter – literally. When I got home from work, I poured a gallon of gas into her tank. Then, instead of having to crank the engine a few seconds to fill the carbs with fuel, she fired right up and settled into a decent idle. Okay, that meant she hadn’t really been out of gas. I let her engine run a couple minutes before shutting her down with the thought, “We’ll see what’s what in the morning.”
Well, this morning it took a few minutes, but she showed me what’s what about four miles from home. While she grudgingly started in front of the house, and then again at the gas station after I filled her tank with nearly ten gallons of 87 octane, she refused when her engine died at the first stoplight after that. Her battery had hardly any charge even though I’d just driven her about ten minutes.
It took a few phone calls to home before I roused Ariel from her beauty sleep (sorry ‘bout that). She threw on some warm clothes and rescued me with the truck. I’m sure it wasn’t the situation she’d imagined when “dreaming” about her first time behind the wheel of Dad’s new Silverado :-). Nor was it the situation I’d imagined for the truck’s first foray into dragging dead Corvairs around.
I hooked one end of the tow chain around Lucy’s crossmember and the other around the truck’s hitch and had Ariel drag Lucy and I into the closest parking lot. While underway, I dropped the shifter into 4th gear and let out the clutch. Lucy’s engine came to life and settled into a troubled, yet steady, 500 rpm idle. I quickly removed the chain and tossed it into the truck bed, directed Ariel to follow me, and drove the petulant car home and straight down the driveway. The engine died again once I put the clutch in. Irrr.
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