Good CARma

Amazingly, not 35 kilometers after that picture was taken, the engine of our RV wouldn’t start.  Totally awesome when you’re two days out from the race you’ve been gearing up for all winter, and have things like pro meetings and interviews to get to.  It was very strange, not even the slightest engine turnover, just a couple ‘dings’ and a sharp ‘snap’.  So, being the highly knowledgeable bike mechanics that we are, we opened up the hood and looked in.  Touched a couple things.  Jiggled a wire or two.  Talked about the battery, need for oil change, tire pressure, the automatic door locks…all the things you would expect when your engine won’t start.

Needless to say we couldn’t fix it.  We suck with engines.  Though, thanks to Chuckie V we do know how to change our own oil, and thanks to Heather’s dad we do know how to change a ruptured brake-fluid line, and thanks to cool mexican mechanic in Buelton we know how to look at the air filter.  You can fool a lot of people into thinking you know something about engines by pulling out the air filter.

By some crazy fluke.  Pure luck.  Unimaginable luck, actually, our neighbor, Frank, in spot number 89 (we’re in #90) is an engine guru.  He didn’t even need to jiggle anything, he knew exactly what it was just by listening to the ‘snap’.  By even more unimaginable luck he had the world’s most obscure tool hidden in his truck.  I swear my life, you could not find that tool at your local Napa dealer.  I didn’t even know it existed (and that says A LOT!!).

Anyway, took him about 1 minute and 35 seconds to fix the connection between battery terminal thingy and battery connection wire thingies.  I guess the ‘snap’ was a sure sign that the battery is arcing, kinda like a lightning bolt. Which I definitely know should not be happening.  Who doesn’t know that!! Gawd.  Once the connection is clean this no longer happens, in case you were wondering, and the engine starts fine.

Pre race disturbance is out of the way.  Now everything is smooth sailing, knock on wood.  If you happen to be reading this from St. George, come find us somewhere at sometime on Friday, we’ll be giving away a bunch of free First Endurance EFS drink samples, an armful of water bottles, and a few lucky T-shirts.  We’re not exactly sure what time on Friday, but we’ll be dropping off our bike and run gear along with the rest of you.  POST RACE, however, we’ll be around the finish area with some FE goodies to give away.  Nothing like EFS drink to get your post race hydration back on track.

A couple little pics: Blue Triad SL with Rolf Prima Carbon TT’s ready to roll.  And Heather’s Universal Sports/ESPN spotlight interview…literally. 

~ by trevorandheather on April 29, 2010.