Feed Truck

I left home at about 2:00 Saturday afternoon with a truck full of feed for our pigs that our neighbor raises for us under contract.  Before I got to the corner, the truck died.  At first I thought I ran out of gas, because the fuel gauge wasn't working (blown fuse, now changed), but after my brother brought me some gas, the truck still wouldn't run.  We worked an hour trying to start it, made some phone calls to a mechanic, and finally determined that the fuel pump had gone out of it.

Saturday afternoon, Labor Day weekend.

I called every auto parts store that was still open in the towns of Eureka, Washington, and Morton, and none of them had a fuel pump for a farm truck.

I finally found an O'Reilly's in Peoria Heights that had one.  Brother and son pulled the dead truck to his yard with a tractor.  I headed to Peoria to get the pump, but it was aftermarket and didn't look like the right one (I should have taken the old one with me).  I drove back home to check to see if it would work (I should have brought the new one home with me), and realized that it would.  I drove back to Peoria to buy the new one, and by the time I got it home and grabbed a bite to eat, it was getting dark and was raining.  Lying on our backs in the grass under the truck in the dark with rain on our legs and oil and dirt dropping in our faces, we tried for an hour to get the new pump installed.  For some reason it didn't want to go on correctly, and finally the cast base cracked and we gave up and went home.  In the shop, I used J-B Weld and "glued" it back together.

This morning I hauled feed to the neighbor's with a tractor and feed wagon to get the hungry pigs by until we could get another pump on Tuesday.  In the afternoon we decided to try to install the "glued" pump (I was very skeptical that the J-B Weld would hold). 
In about ten minutes the pump was installed, the truck started, and no oil or gas leaks!  The "weld" is holding!

I'm still not sure why we had so much trouble Saturday night, but all is well for now.  We will still buy a new pump as soon as we can to have a spare in case the other one fails.

We have a lot of feed to haul before the big weekend coming up.

And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding.
Matthew 8:30