The Franken-shifter was super mushy to shift, but cut most of the transmission noise coming through the stick. Once we dropped out of the mountains, I hit the cruise control ( yes, it has working cruise control! 💪), and we ate up the freeway at 78 miles an hour, towing a trailer, and rocking out to The Cars on the rather nice sound system Ol Yeller has. 🤘
Our destination was Havascrew, and the first order of business was breakfast at Rustys.
This picture of Ol Yeller with Advantage boats in the background was fitting-back in the day, I did a fair amount of electrical work for Advantage, and Ol Yeller had been the truck that I ran a lot of service calls there with.
After getting some breakfast down the hatch, our next stop was Main Stitch, where we were dropping off our venerable old Polaris off for some much needed love.
The Sunbrella top on the Polaris had finally given up after 15 years of being run through trees and brush and sitting out in the sun for most of that time. We can’t complain, that top lasted way longer than we had any right to expect.
Next, it was off to a car wash-this time to actually wash cars!!😄😄
A quick wipe down had Ol Yeller ready for the weekend’s main event, but then, as I went to shift into reverse to leave, the seemingly inevitable happened:
Yes, the Franken-shifter gave up. 😄😄
I wasn’t too surprised, it’s a lot of stress for the design I cobbled together, and that transmission really requires a lot of stick effort. I wasn’t too surprised just happy it happened in a parking lot and not an intersection.
Luckily, I came prepared for this, and in just a few minutes had the solid shifter re-installed and we were back in business with firmer, easier shifts, and a bit more cab noise.
Next stop?
Stay tuned!!