Setesh: The Backstory Part Deuce
I didn’t get much sleep the night before my group of friends and I went to pick up the truck. After waiting more than a month since wining the auction I was itching to see my truck. John, Christina, Kathi, Daniel, and I woke up and started our drive to Portsmouth Virginia at 8am on July 28th, 2009.
After around 4 hours on the road we reached the military base and headed to the DRMO area. On our way to the sign-in station we passed by the storage yard and we got our first distant look at the truck. Even standing relatively isolated in the yard it looked impressive. As luck would have it we arrived at the beginning of the lunch break for the personnel. After some time we were able to sign in and go back to get the truck. My heart fluttered as we made our final approach. “Oh S*@&” I thought to myself, “What have I gotten myself into?”
We all began to investigate the truck, except for my younger brother, Daniel, who had to stay behind in the office because he was under 18. Go figure. After checking the fluids and getting familiar with the truck we made our first attempt to start it. I flipped on the main power switch and pressed the starter lever. All I received in response was a loud “THUNK” from the engine. The batteries were dead. After further inspection we found that someone had left the low powered set of lights on, draining the batteries. One of the contractors from Government Liquidation reminded us that we had less than two hours to get the truck out of there at that point. We got out the jumper cables and tried charging each battery individually for about 15 minutes each. I tried to start the truck again and this time got a slightly more encouraging “THUNK thunk thunk.” John and I determined that the batteries were too far gone to save and we needed to get some new ones.
We made a quick run to an auto parts store just a mile out from the base to get some new batteries. When we got to the counter we asked the attendant for the strongest battery they carried. We briefly explained that we were getting the batteries for a large truck. The man took us to the back shelves where he showed us their selection. After he told us about their 1000CCA battery John said “Great. We’ll take two.” The man looked at us with an astonished look on his face. We responded with “It’s a big truck.”
Once we got back we signed back in and installed the batteries. The management was hesitant to let us preform “work” on the truck in their lot, but eventually let us go about our business. I tried starting the truck once the new batteries were in place. “Third time’s the charm.” And with that the truck roared to life. It was a understandably running a little rough at first; it hadn’t been started for many months at this point. We checked over everything one last time before we began our journey home. I gave John the honor of the first drive because of the help he was giving me with the project. We crossed the scale at the exit yard and weighed in at 17,800 Lbs.
After a slow drive through town we arrived at our first check point (Christina’s friend Katie’s house). We had a quick diner from burger king and began on our journey home at around 5pm. We forgot to turn the drive lights on so our break and turn signal lights weren’t working at first. Luckily we had radios linking us to our tail car so we were warned about that. I turned the knob for John and we were good to go. We got a little turned around on the freeway ramps during rush hour, but we figured things out eventually. When we left the area we had a brief scare as we were approaching the bridge and tunnel leading out of town. “How tall are we?” John asked. I quickly did the math and figured that we had around a foot of clearance for the tunnel. Phew.
Approximately 70 miles down the road we John and I, riding in the Deuce followed by our tail vehicle, decided to take a break at a rest stop. At this point the fuel gauge was still reading ¾ of a tank. We had added 5 gallons of fresh diesel before we started and just assumed that there was around 25 gallons of fuel in the 50 gallon tank (slightly under what the gauge indicated). The engine sputtered and died as we literally pulled into our parking space. I thought he cut it off on purpose while John simply thought that he had stalled it while he was parking.
After resting for a little less than half an hour we headed back to the truck, got in, and tried to start it. I let the engine spin for about twenty seconds before we determined that we were out of fuel. We looked in the tank and sure enough, it was dry. We had planned ahead for technical problems which is why we had a tail vehicle behind us. We sent Kathi, Christina, and Daniel out to bring back 5 gallons of diesel. Once they returned we transferred the fuel to the tank and started off again. I stalled the deuce for the first time as I was maneuvering into the civilian fuel pumps at a gas station a little ways down the road. The deuce doesn’t have power steering so it is difficult to do a hard turn and shift gears at the same time. I let the truck in gear to long while slowing to a crawl and the engine stalled before I shifted out of 2nd. The rest of the drive went smoothly. There was a little rain and some traffic, but no other problems. By the time we got back it was 10PM. It was a tiring but very fun adventure.