Late Wednesday Afternoon, via Cable from Florida --
This travel day was Saturday the 20th of June; we would go through Iowa on I-29, then through Missouri down as far as Kansas City where we would turn East and traverse the State from West to East, finally exiting into Illinois via St. Louis. This was to be another extra-long day as we were determined to make up for the 150 or so miles that we didn't achieve the first day so that our average daily mileage would equal about 750 miles (3,000 estimated total distance divided by our limit of four days for total travel time). We would achieve that average just after we passed St. Louis. But, being the Right Wing Nuts that we both are, we couldn't bear to afford young Grandson Ramiro's the glee he would have enjoyed if we had slept overnight in Obamaland. So we "just had to push on" to Kentucky!
A few miles after heading South out of Sioux Falls, we began encountering our next surprise of the trip: the engine coughed and sputtered under all but the most benign loads. We couldn't maintain even 50 miles per hour on level roadway. The problem was temporarily alleviated by switching on the fuel transfer pump, thereby increasing the total fuel pressure somewhat. Suspecting fuel starvation due to a clogged fuel filter, we stopped at a Rest Stop and removed and back-blew out the fuel filter mounted underneath the air cleaner next to the carburetor. The engine again showed the power expected of it's 460 cubic inches of displacement. Again life was good -- temporarily.
About 100 miles down to road, the engine again began it's wheezing of fuel starvation, so it was decided to stop at the next town and buy a new fuel filter. We deduced that the contamination was not all removed by our blowing backward through the filter and that the big chunks were closing the big holes in the filter and then smaller chunks were blocking the smaller holes until finally only micro-sized holes remained; not enough for this big engine hauling this big load.
Too bad, the "town" we stopped at (1.4 miles off the freeway!) was only a farming settlement with no store to be seen. However, Grumpy spotted a group of farmers working on a piece of equipment, so he pulled up nearby and walked over to inquire if they might happen to have an in-line fuel filter that he could arm-wrestle -- or even buy! -- from them. The big guy (looked like the chief of the crew) said, "he might" but, after checking out his shop, concluded that no, he didn't. But he offered that he had compressed air with which we could back-blow our filter and be able to limp along until we got to a store a few miles further down the freeway. We took him up on the offer, again removing the air filter (including all of the attached vacuum and air-pollution reduction lines!), dismounted the fuel filter, blew it out and then re-assembled everything back to working order.
Finding no fuel filters available in the next town (Rockport IA) we continued down I-29 until we got to St. Joseph MO. By keying into the GPS, which we fortuitously had on board, Grumpy was able to locate the nearest Wal*Mart, with exit and driving directions to get there! [That lady on the Garmin -- we called her "Greta" -- sure was helpful at times!]Although the rig had been functioning fine after the previous compressed air blow-out, we mutually decided to install the new, larger fuel filter. It had also stopped raining and we didn't trust what it might be like later! We had concluded that it would be only a matter of time before the old filter would again plug up and limit our engine's output. We were wise; this new filter never gave us cause for further delays.
But other things can happen!
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