Travels with BillyBob Log

WHAT'S NEW is a chronological listing of updates to the BillyBob site.

TRUCK LINKS including vendor sites for old parts, custom parts, and tools as well as sites for classic car and truck organizations

STORE Operating in association with Amazon.com, books, recordings and tools can be purchased.

PLANNING for the restoration including project schedule and cost estimates.

TRAVELS WITH BILLYBOB With apologies to Steinbeck, this area of BillyBob's Garage will be used to log the trips BillyBob and I make together.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS is the restoration of parts of BillyBob that I can accomplish without a garage.

PRE-RESTORATION includes log entries of minor repairs and and adventures between time of purchase and the time when I started restoration, a piece at a time.

JR'S KORNER JR's Korner is the history of BillyBob before I got him authored by my brother, Wm. C. Kephart.

BILLYBOB MAINTENANCE Ever changing detailing, oil change, lube, etc. maintenance routines specifically developed for BillyBob, including required tools, materials and procedures.

PARTS SHOP The Parts Shop is a repository of How-To articles. Things that I have done over and over enough times to have developed a procedure. This gives me a checklist and saves brain cells.

STEALTH SHOP Urban residence design with large integrated shop and separate living quarters for a relative or renter.

6. Old GMC Truck Summit at Yeehaw Junction

Bill Miles of Old GMC Truck Service Manager fame (and Owner/restorer of this '53 GMC Hydromatic Longbed) sent me an e-mail back in March. Bill and his family were going to be in Florida on vacation and he wondered if we could meet somewhere to talk trucks. This was to be a stealth event of a prankster nature. Pulling a prank on a prankster hooked me like a five pound bass.

I proposed meeting about halfway between our locations at the "Desert Inn and Restaurant", a famous brothel on the Historic Register, located in Yeehaw Junction, Florida. Regrettably, but probably good for us, it is no longer stocked with sweet cream ladies.

We both got in touch separately with Pat Kroeger (Dunfire) of Palm Harbor, Florida. Pat is pretty close to where Bill will be staying and he has the ability to actually bring a GMC truck to the old GMC truck summit. I also sent an e-mail to John Ray to find out if he could come along.

SITREP

Unfortunately, John Ray is already committed to other things this weekend so, BillyBob and I will be making the trek solo. There is a slight misting of rain as I load the last few items in BillyBob and I make the mistake of starting to fill the gas jerry can with water. ~!@#$% Not good signs.

I'm treating this excursion as "sea trials" for the Macungie run in June. During that trip I expect to cover 250 to 300 miles a day. Round trip to Yeehaw Junction and back will be about 260 miles, all driven during daylight hours, I hope. With the sea trials in mind, I have loaded up my "Roadtrip Supplies" to date. I haven't gathered everything I plan to take on the Macungie journey yet but I have about ninety percent packed in the ammo boxes. The list of items is in a separate "inventory" adobe acrobat PDF file below.

PRE Check

1.	Date and Time	April 21, 2007 8:00 AM
2.	Odometer	19,314
3.	Emergency Supplies	Cellphone, AAA+ membership, battery jumper, reading glasses, fire extinguisher, my lucky WWII Army Air Corps mechanics cap
4.	Roadtrip Supplies	Inventory
5.	Prep	fill water can, mount navigator, gas up

Engage

Got the wheels spinnin' at eight am and made a stop at a gas station a block away from the Krash Lab to top off BillyBob and fill the jerry can (with gas this time). Gas prices are up again but it's not a crisis as before because the media has concerned themselves with other issues. Different scenery on this jaunt. We're going inland instead of hugging the coast this time. This first scene is in the Boynton Beach area on Military Trail. This road was built during WWII for the bases in the area. In Boca Raton, it zig-zags quite a bit so that German planes would not have a straight strafing run. Seems a bit funny now perhaps but, at the time, there was no knowing if we were going to have to fight them on home ground or not.

Many people outside of Florida do not know that it is a big agricultural state. Most of the mileage today will be traveled thru cattle farms and citris groves. This particular stretch brought back many memories of my paternal Grandfather's farm. The air was heavy with ammonia alternating with oranges and other fruit trees on other segments of road.

When I got to the Desert Inn, I was a hour early for the noon meet up with Bill and Pat. I settled in and smoked a cigar while watching the rain and listening to the roosters crow. After awhile, one of the roosters came over to BillyBob to pick a fight with his image in the hubcap. Nothing on the AM radio dial that BillyBob's radio could pick up.

Bill called me on his cell when they were about fifteen minutes out. The rain had slacked off to a drizzle by the time they arrived. Pat drove his late model Jimmy and now we could officially call it the old (BillyBob) GMC (Pat's truck) truck summit. I look like I belong in this place. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

I wuz gonna ask the Service Manager to don his coveralls and crawl under BillyBob for an inspection but thought better of it when I saw his Florida vacation duds. A few minutes after Pat and Bill arrived, Bill's cell rang. Bill said "Speak of the devil". A few seconds passed and then "Is he a nice guy?" followed by "I can't tell you. He's standing right here." It was the Kookster inquiring about Pat. He was at the Hard Rock in Orlando and had decided not to venture down to meet Bill and Pat in some obscure place called Yeehaw Junction. Rob did not know about BillyBob and I and that was the prank. We retired inside to eat and let the rain slack off a bit more (hopefully).

After lunch, but before food poisoning set in, we ventured back outside. Bill had more camera gear, including a mini tripod for a group shot, and he took most of the Desert Inn pics. This is the "group photo" for the Yeehaw Junction summit.

The beginning of the BillyBob technical review. I don't remember what I'm telling Pat here but it could be about why BillyBob doesn't look as good in real life as he does in photos and, hoping at the same time, that the door doesn't fall off and smash Pat's foot.

Something caught our attention. This is a very busy crossroads with only stop signs and one red flashing overhead traffic signal. We are probably watching one of the big citris rigs skidding to a stop. That happened on a regular basis while we were there.

Here, the long motor guys are watching me explain the proper startup procedures for BillyBob to make him fire up on the first engine turn. If he's hot or the starter can't catch a tooth on the ring gear, all bets are off.

"Eat what you want and die like a man!" is the title of Steve Graham's cookbook, and we ate in a manly fashion this day. This place is drippin' with atmosphere. Our waitress hobbled over to us with a full leg cast and brushed the crumbs off our table with her hand before sitting down at another table and taking our orders remotely. We were in a corner booth and Bill and Pat had their backs against the wall. I had mine against a big woman in the adjoining booth and, everytime she laughed, she rocked my world. Pat warned us not to talk in the restroom as it used to be piped to a speaker in the bar and still may be. Bill got a bumper sticker when we left that poses the question "Where the hell is Yeehaw Junction?".

We said our goodbyes and headed off in our separate directions. Pat had some more peculiar Florida attractions to show Bill on the way back. I had more rain for about half the return trip and BillyBob performed better than I expected. The Rain-X treatment takes pretty good care of visibility problems and I only use the vacuum wipers at the end of a stretch of rain to clear the windshield.

A fuzzy shot of the St. Lucie Canal. I had my hands full getting the camera turned on and botched the shot. Made it back to the Krash Lab by five-thirty in the afternoon without incident. I did experience some clutch slippage in twenty-five miles of stop-and-go traffic at the end. I've noticed this before but it was so slight in the past that I wasn't sure if I might be imagining things. Looks like I better think about pulling the clutch to have a look see. Think I'll try adjustment first, tho'.

POST Check

1.	Date and Time	April 21, 2007 5:30 PM
2.	Odometer	19,562
3.	Odo Mileage	248
4.	Elapsed Time	9.5 hrs
5.	Navigator Stats	243.6 mi Overall Avg 41.3 mph Moving Avg 45.8 mph Max Speed 59.6 mph Total Time 5.53 Moving Time 5.18

Well, I had a capital time that the rain could not dampen. It was great to meet Bill and Pat and I look forward to seeing them both again down the road.

This excursion is BillyBob's longest to date and it convinced me that my plan to make 250 to 300 miles per day on the Macungie trip is a good way to go. Long, grueling endurance runs between motel stops would take the fun out of it for me.

This roadtrip log entry is dedicated to a friend of mine who reached the end of his run last week. My friend was a GM engineer, so speaking of him here is not too far off-topic. Robert Neal Scott was a retired mechanical engineer who spent the last half of his career with the Saginaw Division of General Motors where he held two patents. The first was for a constant velocity universal joint (think early Tornado/Eldorado front wheel drive). The second was for a suspension activated self-leveling system. He also worked on their early telescoping steering columns. I found this out at Bob's memorial service. I knew he had worked for GM but he never wanted to talk about anything but personal computers (His first was a Comodore 64). Bob was a spry 91 years young. He passed on last sunday but had been dancing friday night. I hope I do as well. Last time I saw him was Christmas in Stuart. He was the maternal grandfather of Kim Labelle Clark. Kim left us too soon. I hope the two of them are catching up on old times.

You can email me at  webmaster@laroke.com

Issued Sunday April 22, 2007

Updated Wednesday January 11, 2017

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