It seems like this is becoming a trend: I end up stuck in Iowa during a period where the temperature drops to -5°F or colder. This time, though, I'm parked at the Iowa 80 truck stop for the weekend. Apparently every shipper we work with between Des Moines and Chicago has closed for the weekend, as there are a grand total of four loads in the entire region until Monday. I was "lucky" enough to get one of those: a load picking up anytime after 9 PM Sunday and going 250 miles due north into western Wisconsin. I just have to get it there sometime on the fourth, so I may just wait until the following morning to fetch it. Beyond that, there's really no telling what I'll be doing next, but I definitely need to get the truck by a shop to get it looked at.
The hardest part about getting here to Iowa was simply leaving Indianapolis. I'd taken a 34 hour break there for New Year's, then tried starting the truck after having it parked for a day and a half. It was very slow to crank, though it caught after turning over twice. That's about when things started to go badly. A large plume of white smoke came up the stack. The cab started shaking, which got even worse as time progressed. Ultimately I turned the engine off for fear that something was going to shake itself loose and I'd be stuck. I waited about half an hour before trying again, during which time I looked under the hood for anything out of the ordinary, but found nothing: all the fluids were normal and there was no visible damage to components.
I tried starting the truck a second time, which worked... for about half a minute. It then died out completely. With the third attempt, I got nothing. It would almost start, but then fall back to just being turned over by the starter. At this point the battery was down to only 11.7 volts, well below the normal 12.2 volt cutoff, as something is slowly draining power from the batteries while my rig is parked. I walked to the shop, explained the situation; they sent someone over expecting to change the fuel filter and/or give the rig a jump start. Before anything, though, the guy sprayed ether into intake, which was enough to help the engine start up. The first time it died out after about twenty seconds, but the second attempt was successful, as long as I kept my foot to the floor. Another problem then arose though: the check engine light suddenly came on and the engine refused to rev past 1400, far below the normal limit of 1800. Due to a problem with the replaced brake switch, we had no way of reading the long diagnostic code, but shutting the engine off let us read a blinking light code: vehicle speed sensor fault. Neither I nor the mechanic could figure out why the vehicle speed sensor would have anything to do with the engine speed though; he suggested I go through express bay and hope that a fuel filter fixed the problem.
During all this, I called operations several times to explain what was going on and look for a solution. They had lined up a loaner truck for me, as there was no time to find someone to relay the load I had (it was due for delivery 375 miles away in nine hours). I'd left the truck idling during all this; the temperature was finally up to around 140 and the voltmeter had reached the usual 14 volts. So I shut the truck off to tell the shop estimator what we'd decided to do and make sure the loaner truck I'd been assigned was ready to go. Everything checked out, so I went back to my cab, started it up.. and everything worked. The check engine light went out. I could rev the thing to 1800. The speedometer - which previously failed to work due to that sensor fault - was reading corectly. I once again went inside and told the mechanic what happened; he hypothesized that the sensor was acting up because there wasn't enough voltage going to it when the truck started up.
Net result of all this? I delivered that load before I came here to the Iowa 80. I'm supposed to go through an OC - most likely Gary - to get this looked at as soon as practical, but the load I'm hauling next doesn't take me anywhere near a shop. The mechanics advised me to keep the engine running if I'm parked for anything more than a ten hour break, just to ensure the voltage doesn't drop off again, but in this cold I have to keep the engine on just to keep fluids from freezing up. If I weren't worried about having the thing break down on the road due to the combination of faults, I'd just leave everything until I go for vacation in two weeks. Having a break down before that trip, though, would be a disaster.
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