Sometimes a bad event turns out OK

This afternoon (tues) at about 4:30 in the afternoon my son called and told me he broke both springs on the back drive axle on his semi. He was delivering feed somewhere around Hinton on a road under construction, hit a big dip and BANG, the spring on the drivers side broke. He got out, crawled under the truck to have a look and while he was under there, BANG, the spring on the passenger side broke on the same axle. He said he darned near had a personal accident. The first spring took out an air line to a brake can so all he had was trailer brakes to boot. He limped it to the hog site and unloaded. It was then that he thought of his cousin who lived on an acreage about 25 miles away, and on this acreage was a shop his truck could fit in. So he called the cousin, he said OK, bring er over. Then he called the truck repair shop in Storm Lake, and he had the springs, U bolts, and two pins with rubber bushings that go under the slipper end of the spring. When he called me I loaded up the compressor, torch, pipe wrench, assorted other tools, air wrenches, pry bars, jacks, port-a-power, blocks and some more odds and ends. Marilyn got in the pickup with me, we headed for Storm Lake, picked up the springs and parts that were left outside the door after they closed for the day, and headed for an acreage south of LeMars, about maybe 70 miles from home.We got there at about 7:00 and by 10:30 everything was loaded back up in the pickup and he was on his way home. He jurry rigged the air fitting so he'd have brakes and it will be fixed in the morning.

So everything lined up OK to get the truck fixed in just a few hours so he could get home fairly soon. His cousin just happened to live close to where he was, the cousin just happened to have a shop big enough for a truck, and I just happened to be home and equipped with enough tools to just load up and go help him. It wouldn't have been a good situation if we would have had to lay on the gravel by a hog building in a 15 MPH wind and 40 degree temp. Sometimes we just get lucky. Jim

send some of that luck this way.......... :roll:
can't really complain tho..Got everything we could possibly need within 10 miles.. My thing is timing...nothing breaks or goes wrong until you are in a hurry/have to be somewhere........
allow yourself all day for a 30 minute job and you can work with junk... Allow an hour and new stuff breaks.....

Jim iam 50 mi east of storm lake. if he a problem over this way he can levit sit hear any time. Bob

Yeah, sometimes a plan does work out. 3.5 hrs to do the job sounds like you didn't run into any problems. I've done a lot of "1-2 hr jobs" that turn out to be all-day affairs.

I got home on Saturday nite from working a side job. Dead tired. Garage door was up. Strange. Unloaded my tools, tried to close the door. Bang! Door stopped. Took a look and a hinge had broke. Wife stuck her head out and said "Oh yeah, I've been leaving you voicemail and texting you on your cell phone. The garage door's broke". Oh. Grabbed a socket, took off the hinge, ran to Home Depot about 2 miles away, got a replacement and was back in 10 minutes, replaced the hinge. Smiling, I hit the button. Bang! door jammed again. Found out the cable had unwound off the pulley on the other side. Hour and a half later after digging out jacks and support pieces, jacking it up to level it, moving stuff to get a ladder by the pulley, removing parts, rewinding the cable, etc. I was finally able to call it a day. I was almost afraid to go in the house to find out what was broke in there.

Glad to hear things worked out. I am a retired truck mechanic so I know how those thing happen.

Thanks, Bob. Soometimes he's in your neck of the woods when he's hauling out of DFS. Jim

As they said on A-Team, " I love it when a plan comes together."

Kent