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.

10. Hutchinson Roadtrip Day 12

SITREP

Didn't make much progress yesterday. Weather is 'sposed to be marginally better today but we're not out of the woods yet regarding storm activity. The continental breakfast here was better than usual. They had one hot dish. It was enuf to get me going.

Wednesday, May 28th 2008
Day 12 PRE Check

Checked all the fluids and topped off the diffie, steering gear box and put in the second quart of engine oil for the trip. The air in the tires is holding well. It reads about 32 psi at startup and 36 psi after a couple of hot hours on the road. Mother was directed towards Shreveport and off we went.


1.	Date and Time	May 28, 2008 9:45 AM
2.	Odometer	31,553
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	Mount navigator, setup GPS tracker

Engage

Mother started out threading us thru the pleasant residential streets of Durant, Oklahoma. Weather was good and it was cool. That's the only thing that was good yesterday too. I only had to drink two bottles of water yesterday.

Mother took us on two-lane blacktop state and county roads for awhile which is just what I wanted her to do. By mid-morning, she had us on a dirt road again. We were still in Oklahoma. With a silent curse, I kept going . . . slowly.

When I saw this "pond", I had to stop and ponder. Almost shut BillyBob down and got out a cigar to help with the thinking. After a few minutes, tho', I reasoned that due to the road base conditions up to this point, in all probability, the pond was a few inches deep with no ruts. We plunged ahead and were lucky this time.

Holy Spit! This road may be this trip's "Kelly School Road" moment. What you don't see in this pic is the group of about ten horses standing right next to BillyBob about twenty feet away. There are no fences here between the road and the horses. By the Eternal, if Mother says "There is a better route available", I'm gonna chuck her right out the window.

Mother got us back to state and U.S. routes fer awhile but not long after we entered Texas, she was up to her old tricks. This is about eight miles of hard washboard gravel road. The teeth rattling ride kept making Mother's mounting droop. I think it rattled her circuits too because she now displays a top speed in the stats of 204 mph! I thought to myself on this stretch that I was gonna find out if threadlocker blue really worked.

Every couple of gas stops, someone comes up to me to talk about the truck. In Texas, it happened at every gas station. This fella has a salvage yard next door to the gas stop. Guess it was one of the ones that Lady Bird missed. He has a rusted out Model T hi-boy that he strings with Christmas lights every year.

When I pulled into this place, there were three guys standing around their work truck on the other side of the pump. I talked with this fella mostly for some time about BillyBob. He's the only one to consent to a photo with BillyBob. The other guys were shy.

Most of this day was on the back roads and we had only gone 300 miles by late afternoon. When we were getting close to Shreveport, I redirected Mother to Jackson, MS. I was getting tired so, by the time we reached Ruston, LA, I called it a day.