Road trips

[gogmorgo]

Well it's not exactly a road trip, but earlier this week I did a bit of a dumb that could have ended a LOT worse than it did. 

Somehow my battery was dead when I got in the MJ to drive to work on Monday, so I hopped into the ZJ and drove that. Odd, because from what I could tell there was nothing left on, but whatever. When I got home from work instead of pulling the battery and charging it, I decided to boost it and go for a drive. Took the scenic route south, up towards the continental divide. Not much traffic, especially this time of year and late in the day, roughly 60 miles to the top of the pass, and I was just going to turn around and come back, so I didn't even have a jacket with me. No cell service either. It wasn't warm out either, with light drizzle that switched to snowflakes at altitude.

Roughly 50 miles in, coming up to a long steep uphill section, I notice the oil pressure gauge is dropping out and bouncing back. I don't really think too much of this because I've been through a few used sending units, exhausting the ones in my hoard before buying new. But then going up the hill, I start hearing some noises. So I pull off, and down at idle it's doing the death rattle. I shut it off, check the oil and sure enough there's nothing on the dipstick. I moved earlier this month, and part of moving the garage was consolidating or getting rid of all the partial bottles of fluids I've got kicking around, and I grabbed stuff out of the vehicles at the same time, and guess who never put anything back into the daily driver.  I did have a can of Seafoam I'd picked up for another project so I put the whole can in, figuring it had to be better than air, and I turned around and started heading back. Fortunately it's mostly downhill and I was able to coast with the engine off for quite a bit of the drive back, keeping an eye on the pressure gauge when I did need the engine. I made it back home, and put another 2.5L of oil into it.

Fortunately this engine is already a write off due to a crack in the block so I don't feel too bad about it, and I already had a replacement lined up for it. I'm just kicking myself for having let the oil level drop so far. And for having been so wildly unprepared.