Francine Part 6 — More Cleaning, Beating, and Bashing

Come summer of 2005, Nick and I decided to bring ol' Francine back to life. Her image had become slightly marred after sitting in the field unused for over a year. Not the least of which was the fact the the goat bashed most of the body panels with his horns. More importantly though, the fuel pump needed replaced because it was leaking badly.

Step 1 of this little adventure was to get out the sledge hammer and bang on the few remaining body panels. It proved to be all but completely useless, so the next day we decided to dig the truck out of the hole it was in.

The llama says, "Hey, where's my feeding troph going!?"

Because Francine was stuck pretty good, we replaced the fuel pump. It was easy as cheese, except for the fact that we broke a little metal spacer. It took a some looking to find a replacement spacer.

Good old mechanical fuel pump found under the hood.

After the new fuel pump was on, Francine started right up! Amazingly, that truck runs just as good as the day it was parked in the mud. With that issue solved, we decided to get her unstuck. Unfortunately, this was easier said than done. The rear passenger-side tire wasn't on the rim anymore and the front one was rather flat. After some jacking, jumping, kicking, and pumping we were able to get air in the rear tire.

Francine started up with little more than a jump-start, but she was still stuck!

Well, once Francine was finally out of the muddy hole she was in, we took her for spin in the yard. After a few minutes of playing, we parked the trusty truck in the battle-ready stance for tomorrow's adventures.

Francine strikes a pose on the goat hill.

The next day we realized just how incredibly stinky the bed of the truck was. Thanks to a certain someone who won't be mentioned, the truck had been used as a really big hay feeding troph. After a few weeks of this treatment, it started to become slimey underneath.

It smelled a lot worse than it looks.

Finally, we added some radiator stop-leak because there were some pinhole leaks up at the top of the radiator.

Magic-dust

Sooooooooo, Nick had this really great idea to try and drive Francine over to the other side of the field where there was more room. The only problem was the 30 foot strip of mud in the way. Before I could protest, we were in the middle of it and then ... stuck!

Heheh, woopsey...

Nick and I got the chain and come-along out. About 2 and a half hours later, we were back on dry ground.

Yo, yo, punkadillydiaperfoo.

It was pretty dark by the time we had finished winching the truck out, but the next day, we made some good sized ruts in the field.

Play time

Unfortunately, our battery cables were getting knocked loose all the time. Beating them with a hammer only helped to make look like mashed potatoes... or mashed metal, at least. Cody and I replaced the negative terminal with one we found under Suri.

Our great battery terminals

Nick got crazy with the driving again, so we got high-centered on a pile of dirt. It took a 4-wheeler and some pushing to get it off, but it was all in good fun.

Stuck again

We quickly got distracted with our Suriboka adventure, so Francine once again was left alone in the field, so very alone... What happens next? Only time and Toyotean fate can tell!