Exploring Tecopa

[MJR]

The truck would not start. Mike started the diagnostics. By 10am Mike had diagnosed the problem as a bad fuel pump . My only option seemed to be to offload the camper and have the truck towed in to Pahrump on Monday morning and hope the local parts store had a new fuel pump. We did not have cel service in Tecopa. Mike drove me out to Ibex Pass and we started making phone calls. Autozone in Pahrump had a fuel pump motor but not a whole assembly. None of the other parts stores had any fuel pump assemblys or fuel pump motors. Mike drove me into Pahrump (70 miles round trip from Tecopa) and we discussed options along the way. I had never replaced a fuel pump before but Mike had. Mike offered to help me out if Autozone did have the correct fuel pump motor. I bought the motor and we headed back to Tecopa to start the process of removing the fuel tank. I had filled up with fuel in Baker and the tank had approx 30 gallons of fuel. We tried a few different methods of draining/siphoning the fuel with no luck. We decided to drop the tank with the fuel in it. We got the tank dropped and dug a trench to get it out from under the truck. Both vent hoses broke while getting the tank out. Once the tank was out we removed the fuel pump and drained the fuel into cans. Mike rebuilt the fuel pump assembly with the new fuel pump motor. We re-installed the fuel pump into the tank. We drove back into Pahrump for new vent hoses. We re-installed the tank into the truck. We put 15 gallons of gas back into the tank and the truck started. We packed everything up and hit the road at 11pm. Home at 3am.

Mike saved me a large repair bill as well as a missed day of work on Monday. I cannot thank him enough for sticking with Tracy and I all day on Sunday to fix the truck. THANK YOU MIKE!!!!!!!!

It was certainly a fun job in the campground dirt with all that gas in there. Dropping the tank with those leveling blocks made it pretty easy actually even with that fuel in there.

I didn't make it home until 2:30am Mon morn and was at work later in the day after 4 hours of sleep. I'm recovering finally now.

I crashed 2 computers at home the weekend before I went out so I haven't done anything with my photos yet. When I do I'll post some up here too.

As always I'm glad I could help.

[karstic]

Not too much to add to Doug's report ecept for a few pictures

I did a lot of work in the Nopah Range, east of Shoshone for my BS in Geology. Everytime we came out to do field work I never had a chance to explore. It was nice to return a see some of the surrounding area.

Cool balancing rocks in Sperry Wash. How long will they stay there?


Amargosa River before Dumont




Glory hole of the Gunsight


Exiting the Gunsight


Shards of Assayers Crucibles


Cool homemade bench vise made from ore-cart rails


Finding a remote geocache in the Kingstons

[karstic]

Hangin' at the Crowbar


Sunset on the Nopahs


Happy New Year


Peek-a-boo


Inside the Noonday

[Guest]

Great pics Doug!