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.

7. Macungie Run

Day 10 SITREP

Monday and JR and I got a leisurely start. We sashayed out to the truck mid-morning. JR and BillyBob are clearly happy to be reunited. Did the normal fluid checks first 'cept tranny and diffie since we were on a slope. Poured the first quart of oil into BillyBob for the trip. Then we pulled the plugs, one at a time. They weren't quite as tan as I would like, more like a light charcoal color, but all six were uniform with no deposits. We re-gapped three of the six. We pulled the points and JR touched them up with a file. Then we reinstalled them and and set them to 0.016". BillyBob started and ran a bit smoother.

Decided to take a run to the auto parts store for something to soak up the oil that BillyBob had seeped unto JR's driveway (so the youngun's wouldn't track it into the house). I handed JR the keys. He was clearly enjoying it. It was a eight mile round trip and BillyBob mustuv' been enjoying it too because JR wasn't square-shifting and despite that, BillyBob's shift linkage did not lockup between gears.

BillyBob was parked on the grass when we got back. We just took it easy for the rest of the day and attended a baseball game my Nephew, Sam, was in. His team won. We had steaks on the barby.

Day 11 SITREP

I got caught up on roadtrip log entries all day until the thunderstorm rolled in. After that, the whole family, 'cepting Simon the dog, went out to dinner.

Day 12 SITREP

Wanted to get on the road fairly early today. Started getting squared away soon after JR left for work. Wanted to take a family photo with BillyBob last night, but the thunderstorm intervened. My neice and nephew, Brooke and Sam, gave up their usual slumber to get up early and see me off. JR isn't here but my sister-in-law, Sandy, and the kids got dressed to pose with BillyBob in the morning dew.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Day 12 PRE Check

BillyBob had not moved since JR and I had worked on him yesterday so I dispensed with crawling around in the wet grass to check the fluids again.

1.	Date and Time	June 20, 2007 8:20 AM
2.	Odometer	22,539
3.	Comfort Supplies	Cellphone, AAA+ membership, reading glasses, my lucky WWII Army Air Corps mechanics cap, cheap aviator sunglasses, small cooler with water and trail mix
4.	Roadtrip Supplies	Inventory
5.	Prep	pack up, mount navigator

Engage

Leaving Monroeville, I messed up at this intersection and went the wrong way. I've gone thru this crossing about twenty times in the last few years and about half those times, I've fouled up. There's just something about me and this place. In this pic, I'm coming back from a u-turn to comply with Mother's directions.

Mother skirted Pittsburgh on the east side to take me over some of the worst roads I've seen so far. Every pothole jarred my teeth and elicited an expletive. Then we traveled north thru Butler and Merrcer, west thru Kent State. We had good weather the entire distance. My gas mileage to this point has dropped a bit to 17.31 mpg. No clutch slippage or third gear pop outs on this leg.

Day 12 POST Check

1.	Date and Time	June 20, 2007 3:00 PM
2.	Odometer	22,744
3.	Mileage	205
4.	Elapsed Time	6 hrs, 40 minutes

Checked in to my hotel in Medina and then traveled the few miles to my Aunt Marcella and Uncle Corky's place in Wadsworth, Ohio. My cousin Kathy Beth had traveled in from the Detroit area with her sons, Phillip and Nathan for this meetup. Her husband, Jeff, is working in Houston and couldn't make it. I always enjoy gettogethers with Jeff. This is Aunt Marcella and Kathy.

Everyone in my family are into crafts or mechanical tinkering to some degree or another, in our hobbies if not our professions. We enjoy making things with our hands. Perhaps the master tinkerer of the group is my Uncle Corky (John). He's been at it a long time now and his interests are too numerous to list. I learn a lot everytime I see him. We disappeared into his shop shortly after this pic was taken. Kathy took it upon herself to push a sandwich and beer in my direction while uncle Corky and I got up to date. Nobody else can get a word in edgewise until this process is complete.

Corky's neighbors from across the road came over to give BillyBob the once over. They are brothers into circle track racing and engine building. They have a stovebolt project starting but do not have previous inline experience. Tom, the machinist, impressed me with his quick study. He's been burning up the internet the last two weeks with his research and he's already there with a firm knowledge of the subject. He gave me some engine health tips for the remainder of the roadtrip that I'm going to follow too.

Corky took me across the road to his other neighbor who has a 1914 Ford Model T touring car in his garage. This is an original, unrestored specimen and everything including paint, brass and leather is in remarkably good shape. I forgot to take the camera. Damnation!

Another cousin (Kathy's brother, Jack, son of Marcella and Corky) was preparing a cookout at his and his wife, Julie's place in Akron. I wanted to demonstrate Mother's abilities to Uncle Corky so we let the navigator take us there. Corky rode with me in BillyBob while Kathy, Marcella, Phillip and Nathan followed in Kathy's SUV. Mother took us directly thru Akron's gritty inner city. Having survived that, we decided to turn Mother off durning the return trip and let Kathy lead the way.

My cousin, Jack, is a master brewer for a Akron microbrewery and he brought samples of four of their brews for us to try. I went for their IPA. I prefer stouts but enjoy the variety of a strong IPA from time to time. Very good. I left a bottle od JR's "Crank Case Stout" with him for his professional opinion. That's him, happily sampling his own wares beside Julie. They're flanked by Aunt Marcella and Cousin Phillip. I am not up on the first cousin, second cousin, etc. nomenclature, so I'm happy to call Phillip "Cousin" without the lineage tags.

We made it back to the Wadsworth homestead a little after ten. Talked awhile longer and made our farewells. I got back to the hotel and started documentating the day. But, while not impaired, the IPA and Killian's before that made it slow going. I started nodding off at the keyboard. I gave it up and got a few hours sleep.

I'm at it again now. It's almost 9 am and when I finish here, I'm heading off for my Aunt Jane and Uncle Glaydon's place in Penfield, Pennsylvania. The weather looks good at the moment.

You can email me at  webmaster@laroke.com

Issued Thursday June 21, 2007

Updated Thursday February 9, 2017

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