I posted this on the Hot Rod Inlines while I was waiting for this board to resurface. I was expecting Ray to show up sometime Friday and maybe spend the night. He should be on his way back to Australia with tons of US parts.
About 8:30 AM on Friday the 11th I got a phone call from Ray Bell who was broken down about 100 miles away. Ray is an Aussy Inliner here on a bit of a walk about or drive about in this case. He has crossed the country twice on this trip ocean to ocean, Canada to pretty far south. He has been in 38 states and several provinces. His problem was that the Dodge pickup he bought to fill with parts had been fitted with Ford wheels. The center hole was too small to fit over the axle hub. He noticed this when he broke a wheel stud and decided not to drive further without some repairs.
He said he needed a hammer, a file, a jack and some lug nuts. He had plenty of studs from the collection of rear ends in the truck. I filled his list plus water and beer and headed out. Two hours later upon my arrival I was delighted to learn that he does not drink beer. More for me!
We jacked up one side and I crawled under,hammered a wheel off and proceeded to enlarge the center hole while Ray replaced the stud using a couple of "spanners" , a lug wrench, a length of jack handle and a much stressed ratchet to draw the stud into place. We decided not to replace more than the broken one though neither of us were comfortable with that. It seemed like a better Idea than to break the ratchet with a stud part way in. I knew more tools are better and the right tools better yet. Remember I had beer and he was driving the Dodge. We got one side done so while I jacked up the other side and beat the wheel off Ray started making another hole bigger. While checking his progress and trying to find where more filing was needed he got the extra axle we were using hopelessly stuck in the wheel. We could not drive it out. Well, I probably could have but Ray wanted to be able to use them again. Oh well we had plenty of others and still some beer left. We just did the rear because the front seemed to be OK. When we got four wheels on the ground and picked up the mess we'd made we hit the road.
Ray was hungry so we stopped in Lovelock to eat. Back on the road after not getting much rest the night before, the heat, the sun, and a full stomach Ray was having some trouble staying awake.
We pulled off at a rest stop to let him walk around and we iced him down and headed for Dayton. We got to the East 50 Bar about 5:30 and met my friend Leroy. We decided to haul the stuck axle and wheel up the canyon to Virginia City where Leroy works in the Virginia & Truckee Railroad Shop. The owner Tom Gray let us use the big press in the shop. We separated the wheel and axle in short order with rain falling on the tin roof and steam engines cooling down from their days work. We took Ray on a drive through Virginia City and crammed as much Comstock history in him as he could hold.
Back at the 50 bar we swapped out that wheel for one of the others so the rear tres matched and Ray said he wanted to see my big 413 Dodge flathead 6. So we piled in my car and headed up to my house. He took lots of pictures and was somewhat surprised that one guy could haul so much junk in only 40 years. It stated to get dark so we headed down through the deer and wild horses back to Ray's truck. We could not talk him into staying the nigh as he wanted to get farther down the road while it was cooler.I got out the map and showed him how to get to the back side of Yosemite. We said goodbye as Ray drove away and Leroy and I went into the bar and had "just one more" beer over and over till the bar closed.
I couldn't get ahold of him on Saturday but He called Sunday Morning.
7/11 I talked to Ray on the phone an hour or so ago. He made it to the SF Bay area via Yosemite and all was well. He has a few more stops to make before heading back home in a couple of days. All in all a great time!
I just realized that Ray is using a drill with a stone in the pictures. That was run by a 12vDC to 120 AC inverter that quickly over heated in the sun and under load. It was files from there on.
Ray's Rescue
