So, a few days ago I'm going thru WV on US-19, going from I-79 down to I-77. It was getting on towards evening, and as it gradually got darker I could tell something wasn't quite right. Took me a bit, but I finally noticed - it was hard to spot with the light fading so gradually - there wasn't as much light on the road ahead of me as there should have been. By flipping the headlights on and off a few times I realized the low beams were only giving me a small patch of light directly in front of the truck. The high beams seemed to still be working, but I am *not* going to go along blinding everyone coming towards me.
It was only about 6PM when I got to the Tamarack service plaza near Beckley, but as I'd only gotten 4 hours or so sleep the night before, plus with (apparently) malfunctioning headlights, I decided to go ahead and pull in. Besides, I had plenty of time to get where I needed to go. So I found a parking place, set the brakes, and got out to see what was going on with the lights.
I was fully expecting to see something broken, and so was quite surprised when I walked around front of the truck and found both headlights apparently working. I looked a bit closer and realized what had happened - the *thickest* coating of road grime I've ever seen accumulate on a set of headlights. I mean this crap was layered on so thick it was coming off in flakes. So, after a few minutes with a bottle of glass cleaner and a bunch of paper towels I had properly working headlights again. I've seen the headlights get dirty before, but never anything even remotely this thick.
18 January 2010
13 January 2010
A long absence
It's been so long, I'd actually forgotten about this blog. :) Well, I finally remembered it. So, an up date.
As I suspected in my first posting, I've not done well in keeping up to date with this blog. Ah well.
I'm still with Schneider, still doing tankers. It's been an adventure at times. When 45000 pounds of product starts sloshing around driving can get *very* interesting. Especially on slick roads. But after 4.5 years of it, I've pretty well gotten used to it.
Had a bit of a rough spot Monday night. I'd had the weekend off. We were told to leave our trucks running because of how cold it was over the weekend. But when I got back to the truck Monday night, I found it had shut itself down. And since no one had noticed, the key was still on, leaving the accessory equipment on, resulting in dead batteries. Fortunately I remembered I has jumper cables in my car and was able to get the truck started.
Then there was a matter of figuring *why* the truck had shut itself off. This was, however, readily apparent, as the indicators on the dash were quite insistent. The newer trucks have a particulate filter installed in the exhaust system, as a method to reduce emissions. When the truck gets itself up to operating temps and highway speeds, it's supposed to burn out the soot and such that has built up. But when just idling that process doesn't happen. And when the filter fills up the system senses that and will shut down the engine.
There is what's called a manual regeneration, which will run the cleaning process while parked. This means the engine runs itself up to almost red line and stays there a while. As cold as it was, "a while" came to most of an hour. But that's an hour with the engine *howling* loud. But in the end I had a driveable truck, so it was worth it. I guess. :)
As I suspected in my first posting, I've not done well in keeping up to date with this blog. Ah well.
I'm still with Schneider, still doing tankers. It's been an adventure at times. When 45000 pounds of product starts sloshing around driving can get *very* interesting. Especially on slick roads. But after 4.5 years of it, I've pretty well gotten used to it.
Had a bit of a rough spot Monday night. I'd had the weekend off. We were told to leave our trucks running because of how cold it was over the weekend. But when I got back to the truck Monday night, I found it had shut itself down. And since no one had noticed, the key was still on, leaving the accessory equipment on, resulting in dead batteries. Fortunately I remembered I has jumper cables in my car and was able to get the truck started.
Then there was a matter of figuring *why* the truck had shut itself off. This was, however, readily apparent, as the indicators on the dash were quite insistent. The newer trucks have a particulate filter installed in the exhaust system, as a method to reduce emissions. When the truck gets itself up to operating temps and highway speeds, it's supposed to burn out the soot and such that has built up. But when just idling that process doesn't happen. And when the filter fills up the system senses that and will shut down the engine.
There is what's called a manual regeneration, which will run the cleaning process while parked. This means the engine runs itself up to almost red line and stays there a while. As cold as it was, "a while" came to most of an hour. But that's an hour with the engine *howling* loud. But in the end I had a driveable truck, so it was worth it. I guess. :)
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