Last resort

The whole day has gone by with no word re:my truck. I've spoken with my amazing mechanic in Atlanta, Derrick, who first suggests the mechanics here in PA look at the filter in the banjo bolts - so now I know where the banjo bolts are located (on the feed line from the diesel tank to the injection pump). Then he tells me to just get the truck running and drive back to Atlanta. He is sure his shop can fix for me.

I will save this as a very, very, very last resort. 

I'm very suspicious I might have bought some bad oil. Actually, I've had almost a year and a half of veggie oil challenges - which is quite an accomplishment when you consider my RRB has been parked for at least a year of that time.

Last February, I was doing some wee hours of the moonless early morning driving thru New Mexico, seeing all the "beware: dust storm" signs so when I saw little greyish particles being buffeted against the windshield by high winds, I was preparing myself for a dust storm. Pull over. Don't put your foot on the brake. Turn off engine. Wait.

But soon, I realized the particles were way too uniform and floating when the wind ceased. I rolled down my window and realized it was fuckin snow.

Snow, ice, cold is the enemy of veggie oil. I attempted to immediately turn down the veg oil and start running on diesel but it was way too late. RRB complained vigorously, bucking, and groaning, and almost stalling out before I reached the rest stop. She did run off the freeway, onto the road leading into the rest stop and completely stalled, enabling me only to pull quickly over in between two 18 wheelers and a bank of snow.

I don't think that veggie oil ever recovered from that incident - even though I replaced the injection pump. But that first injection pump was installed wrong, with the filter at the output instead of input before the pump, allowing non-fuel particles in, destroying it yet again.

Now I'm wrestling with that same veggie oil - 300 gallons - that looked pristine when I bought it and now looks cloudy and is clogging my filters way too fast.

I'm hoping, once I get RRB on the road, my veggie oil fellow here will still be willing to pump the bad oil out, and fill me with good oil. I've never had a bad bunch of oil from him - so cross fingers.