[ihc] Story about the first big trip for my Terra

[John Hofstetter <hofs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I just made a post to Tom H. and the digest about rock crawling and 
that post reminded me of ....

When I bought my Terra from the guy that had been my IH dealer, it had 
been sitting, JUST SITTING, for 6 years. I replaced the TQ, but the 
rebuilt didn't run much better than the old one.

Because of the date when I bought it, its first big trip was to Death 
Valley on a photographic field trip that I was leading. I loaded the 
back of the Terra with photographers, most of whom were nudging 300 
pounds and headed up the legendary Hall Canyon trail, now closed.

The grades were sometimes in the 40% range, the trail was very narrow 
and falling away in many places. We were 3 to 5 thousand feet above the 
floor of the valley and the slope down to the valley looked straight 
down on much of the trip.

So, most every time I let up on the gas, the engine died, and as you 
know the vacuum booster is only good for one or two shots when the 
engine dies, the brakes had a bad leak in them, so I was getting no 
rear braking at all, plus I really need the boost for me to be able to 
get braking, and the engine was nearly impossible to restart. Those 
dummies in back had no idea of how close and how many times they came 
to having their lives end that day.

And what was Chuckwalla doing during that trip? Standing up in back 
entertaining our guests by pointing out flowers, geology, historical 
stuff.Talk about oblivious. (Chuckwalla is the desert handle for my 
wife Wanda who dove out of the Scout a couple of years ago on a severe 
trail, nearly ending her life)

Wow, I used to do some stupid things when I was still stupidly fearless.

John

John Hofstetter
Ol' Saline
www.goldrush.com/~hofs