One of the guys on the International Full-Sized Jeep Association forum posted a note about learning that he's going to be a father, and the news was, as expected, received with a chorus of congratulatory replies, and followed by a number of questions about how soon the family addition would be out offroading in the family Grand Wagoneer. Many members piped in with stories about how young their own children hit the trail with their parents in the Jeeps, and not surprisingly many children were still in diapers when they were first exposed to four-wheelin'.
I've been reflecting a bit, in the back of my head, about kids and being on the road. This thread on the forum made me finally want to put some thoughts down for the record...
Many years, decades even, ago I was on a family trip. Much like one of the Griswald adventures, this family trip involved a long journey in a funky American made chunk of steel, painted in a god-awful shade of faded metallic puke green. While this vehicle was not a faux wood paneled monstrosity of a station wagon, it was the next best thing, a Ford Econoline van of early 70's vintage, and was not part of my nuclear family's stable of cars, but a loaner from my Uncle, who to this day is my inspiration when it comes to all things mechanical. My own father may take issue to the last statement, as he was the one who actually taught me how to sync a pair of SU carbs, set the clearance on the valves of a British solid lifter motor, and handed me the keys to the old Vovlo P1800 with the caveat of having to replace the clutch, generator and other items myself before I could actually use that most classic piece of Swedish engineering. Sorry Dad, Bruce raced open wheel racecars. Bruce taught autoshop, and let me tear down transmissions in the shop before I can remember you letting me raid your toolbox. Bruce almost had as much patience with me when I was scattering his stuff all over the place, and his bachelor pad always smelled of the most glorious blend of gasoline, 10W30 engine oil, and solvent. He also had that sweet set of safety wire pliers that I coveted so much. Yes, I have my own well worn pair now. It's hard to compare with that, but you know you really are the root of the education about the mechanics, if he was just the inspiration. But I digress...
So the whole family is on this trip in the Econoline, on Interstate 5 South, taking the great roadtrip from Sacramento to Los Angeles. Ok, more correctly, Anaheim. We were making a family pilgrimage to Disneyland, and while the family Volvo was great at hauling all of us around town, and for those weekend visits to San Francisco to see the grandparents, the Ford van was just the ticket for hauling us all to Southern California along with all the gear needed. No it wasn't the fastest of rides, and it wasn't really riding in luxury, as I don't recall there being any carpet, and the vinyl seats in Summertime were borderline torturous, but there was an abundance of room, easy pass-through space for Mom to take care of any needs of those of us riding in the second row, and the panoramic view was par none. All these positives were shortly forgotten when the major malfunction occurred.
Somewhere along the way, on a stretch that had to be somewhere that the only proximity could be measured in its difference of mileage from Kettleman City was the closest point of reference, the Ford starting sputtering. Now, as children, my sister and I had little in the way of mechanical experience to add any constructive information or collaborative suggestions to the discussion going on in the front seats about our predicament, but we availed ourselves to the conversation regardless. It's just a kid's mindset to believe that we're the only ones noticing that the car isn't running well, has slowed to a snail's pace, and is blocking quite a line of traffic. It's also from this same instinct that a child has to ask about how long it will be before we get there, complains about the temperature of the back seat, always seems to want the stereo louder or quieter based on the perceived counter interest from the front seat, and always says they need to go to the bathroom or are hungry within ten minutes of leaving the last know place of said requirements for at least an hour's journey. Anyway, the van wasn't running well, and I don't seem to remember just how well my father dealt with this, but based on my own observations as a parent now, this fact must be monumental. I don't remember him losing his temper, at all. Key point there.
The first implications went unnoticed by my sister and I, I'm sure of that now. See, the fuel filter in the Econoline had become clogged. This condition can be understood by anyone with even a remotely rudimentary concept of how an internal combustion engine operates, whereby a mixture of fuel and air are combined in a combustion chamber to produce a release of energy, in the form of rapidly expanding hot gasses when this mixture is ignited by a spark, that is then turned into rotation by the downward travel of the piston in the cylinder through the connecting rod and transferred to the crankshaft. This rotational energy is transferred, through a transmission no less, to the rest of the assorted parts of the drivetrain and finally to the wheels which turn and produce forward motion. Together it's an incredible thing, deserving of all sorts of adulation, and it's just the rest of the non-car-loving population, that fails to understand this incredible phenomenon, who just don't get it. Without the free flow of gasoline to the engine, through the now constricted fuel filter, the whole works fail. Fail it did.
Once noticeable by kids under 10 years old, it's obvious to anyone that something has gone afoul with the inner workings of the motor, and it's time to address the situation. For some reason I seem to remember my father plugging along with a progressively worsening condition happening under the cowl of that Ford, and only stopping momentarily to try a quick fix a couple of times while we languished in the hot afternoon sun, moving down the highway in an exceedingly slow fashion. I seem to recall that it got to the point that we would go what appeared to be just a few hundred feet, stop, wait, restart the engine and go another few hundred feet before the motor quit, wait and repeat. I do know that at some point a tow truck finally came and yanked us to a service station where all was quickly put in order, but it was surely a time of much stress and reflection by my parents, and more particularly my father, particularly when one considers this was at a time before GPS nav, or even cell phones. Thank God there was AAA. Our trip was only delayed a short time, and Disneyland was incredible. The problems with the van are memories that my sister and I laughed about for years. It's only recently that I've taken that trip into consideration from my parent's point of view.
Present day North Carolina, and I recently bought the old, by today's standards anyway, 1989 Jeep Grand Wagoneer. I bought this rig knowing full well that I had things to do to make it a more reliable daily driver, but I had a minor malfunction of my own while on a family outing that made me appreciate my dad that much more. We took the Waggy (Go ahead, search Google with that, you'll get a majority of hits relating to Jeeps and more particularly, Grand Wagoneers) out on the North End of Carolina Beach, NC, to Freeman Park on a nice Sunday afternoon. My wife, Melanie, has a nice '08 Honda Odyssey minivan for a daily driver. What can I say, but it's a Honda, nearly new, and if a problem arises with it I'll be shocked. It doesn't have to 4x4 needed to tackle the beach, so my Jeep was bought for just that thing, getting the family out on the beach, with all the needed gear, and safely.
So, on this Sunday, we are tooling along on the sand, in 4WD Hi range, and I notice the temp gauge slowly climbing, along with the kind of sickly sweet scent of engine coolant when exposed to fresh air. I have to admit I said nothing to Melanie, let alone the kids. I kept my cool until we we found the nearest decent spot to park the truck (Yes, it is too a truck!). When we stopped I pulled the hood release to find a veritable fount of coolant springing forth from a small hole on the top of the upper radiator hose. While not alarming in its amount, it was formidable in its pressure while streaming all the way to the completely raised hood of the Jeep, a distance that seemed at least 4 feet at the time. My first thought was, "Great, now I've stranded the whole family out on the beach, miles from the nearest proper road, and hundreds of yards from the nearest porta-potti. I freaked out, momentarily, until a little bit of reflection put it all in perspective and I got back to what I went there to do, fish. Oh, and enjoy a nice egg salad sandwich and a beer.
The truly ridiculous part was just what I had at my disposal to deal with this inconvenience. I have a cell phone, and Melanie's got an iPhone. While I started rigging a pole, she started pulling up numbers for the nearest auto parts stores and calling for a new hose. I was smart enough to pack a small toolbag, and happened to have a half full container of 50/50 coolant blend in the back of the Jeep. There I was, honestly going a bit spastic inside, and there were fellow offroaders within shouting distance, the reassuring assistance of a towing/recovery service at the other end of a local cell call, and just a couple miles hike to the paved asphalt roads of Carolina Beach, NC. It wasn't but a couple moments after I took stock of the situation and my feelings shifted from ones of concern for my family to feelings of simple frustration about a broke hose. The things I took stock of were that I hadn't actually overheated the motor, so there weren't any signs or indication of catastrophic damage. I hadn't overheated the cooling system to the point of loosing more than a few cups of coolant. The truck still ran fine. All in all, I really had nothing to be more than passingly distracted by, but I was still worried.
Melanie got my Step Mother In Law on the phone, who most graciously volunteered to pick up a new hose for us, as well as another container of coolant blend. Meanwhile I was conjuring up my best MacGyver job and hatching a plan to either make a portable nuclear device, or patch up a leaky radiator hose. I got enough parts together to effect the latter, and reached for the nearly full roll of black vinyl electrical tape, my trusty Victorinox Tinkerer Swiss Army knife, and an empty Miller High Life can. After relieving the pressure of the cooling system by carefully removing the radiator cap, once the stream of fluid had subsided from the leak in the hose, I meticulously wrapped about 3 football fields worth of electrician's tape around the hose. Not satisfied that this would hold, I cut the ends off the beer can and made a nice sleeve that I proceeded to wrap around the tape covered hole, and followed up with just two football field's wort of more tape for good measure. To my surprise, this field repair not only held pressure in the cooling system until we made it off the beach, it held the following 25+ miles home. The run back to our home wasn't without anxiety, as the kids who rarely seemed to take notice of what was on the radio suddenly decided that having the stereo off was a problem, even though I just has to have things quiet for my own presence of mind. The same kids who seldom seemed to pay attention to ol' Dad, while he tried to make conversation with them in the car, now seemed dead set against any modicum peace, and I have to admit my patience was wearing mighty thin. We made it just the same. Once I pulled in the driveway I had to say I was a bit proud of my handiwork, and sat there admiring it with the hood open, engine running. I went back to the driver's seat and shut down the engine, returned to the engine bay and got a bit prouder, but only for a minute while the cooling system's temp rose a few degrees now that there was no circulation through the radiator. The fix, well, it broke. Coolant started weeping out of my patch, but I was only partly let down. It had done just what it needed.
Back to the previously mentioned escapade with my own parents, on the trip to Disneyland, I can't even begin to fathom what kind of thoughts were racing through my Dad's mind. There he was, on an isolated stretch of I5, in a borrowed van that he wasn't familiar with, in the heat of Summer, and a rapidly deteriorating mechanical situation. Aside from what guilt/concern he may have had brewing of his own accord, there were a couple young kids in the back chatting away about everything, with no DVD players or iPods to distract them. There wasn't a DC powered fridge to keep a bunch of juiceboxes cool, or Nintendo handheld gaming devices to entertain the kids instead of the heat and line of cars behind the van. It must have been hell. Wow, what clarity a bit of perspective brings!
Someday I'll have to review my memories of the return trip from Oregon, in a borrowed CA State truck with an overloaded U-Haul trailer full of law books attached to the hitch. There was some point on the downhill run from Lassen that got a bit hairy, if I recall...
