It was time for the annual Holiday Lights parade and I had decided that I wasn’t going to wait until the last minute to deck out the ’48 Truck for the parade. I started getting the rig together - I went and borrowed a battery from my garage guy and started putting the lights on the truck. It went well - the weather was fairly warm and the tape was holding the light strings on the truck nicely.
I had the lights finished except for the net lights on the hood and I decided to do a light test to see how long the battery was going to run the lights - it only needed to last 45-minutes or so. I turned things on and within 15-minutes the battery was so dead the inverter shut down. So much for the borrowed battery! But - I still had a day or so before the event so I just decided to go and buy an relatively inexpensive battery - I don’t have a standby battery anyway, so what the heck. Now I have a new battery with 135 minutes of reserve power - plenty to run my lights.
By Thanksgiving day it had gotten cold (about 22-degrees with 20 MPH west winds), so I started the truck every day to make sure I didn’t get into a no-go on parade day. Parade day came - Friday afternoon. About 1:00 I started the truck and decided to let it get good and warm. I let it run and after a bit, when I came back out to the car barn- the truck was sitting in a steaming puddle of coolant.
Aw Pooh!
So, off come the net lights, up goes hood and I start looking at the usual suspects for a coolant leak. There is nothing leaking out of the upper radiator hose, the little bypass hose or anything from under the thermostat housing. Nothing out of the water pump. Hmmm, so I get down and crawl under the truck - nothing leaking from the lower hoses or clamps. And, of course, since the truck isn’t running, it isn’t leaking now.
So I start the truck again and it quickly develops a drip and a dribble. SO, I crawl back underneath and look around. My first fear was that I had a radiator problem - but this time I found it! The stinking radiator drain petcock (one of the cheap plastic ones with an o-ring seal) had loosened about a full turn somehow. I tightened it a turn and a half for good measure and the drip stopped. No more hot coolant running down my arm and up my jacket sleeve.
So, we were ready for the big show. Parade time was 5:40, form up at 4:30 so I went early and set up the tree in the back of the truck, no - no inflatable Grinch! Becky wanted to ride in the parade, but she didn’t want to sit in the cold for an hour so she decided to join me later. By this time it was getting really cold and really windy and her comment was; “You had better have a good heater in that truck”. As you guys know, I don’t just have a good heater I have the GOAT heater.
There were a group of local Jeep Ladies in the with their decorated new Jeeps and they “Ooohed” and “Aaahed” over the truck and marveled that it was my Dad’s truck after all these years. Becky came over to the parade about 5:20 or so and we made our way through beautiful downtown New Haven, a wondrous sight to behold if I do say so myself.
And, in her Facebook post about the parade, Becky did indeed say that the truck had a great heater - but she didn’t say GOAT.
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Originally Posted by gmwillys
