[samael9]

It's been a hectic couple of days, but my move into Bertha is almost complete. I should be ready for dispatch tomorrow at 10:00 hours.

I have a lot to say, but the first thing has to do with my feelings about driving this W9. OooooWeeee.......

What a machine she is! I will go in to much more detail over the next few days. But man..... what a friggin' ride this thing is..... 8)

I am seriously swooning.....

[Cyanide]

Ah, the joys a KW brings forth! Here's my personal favorite, though I haven't been in it for over nine months now :cry: :lol:



Now I'm in a 13-letter s*** spreader! Wish I could bring ol' 886 over here to Superior with me, though she'd need a PTO air compressor, PTO pump, and in-transient heat connections. I better stop while I'm ahead...lol :roll:.

Good luck on your venture Samael9. :wink: You have a very interesting and informative post here, and I hope you keep it going for a long time with much success ...

[samael9]

Well, as you all must know, switching tractors is a major ordeal. Switching flatbed tractors is a bigger ordeal yet. Had I gotten dispatched yesterday, I would have left the yard with everything in boxes and done the organization thing while out on the road. Having an extra day really gave me some extra time to get it all “dialed”.

My headache rack is a sight to behold. Everything has its place. The rack I purchased used for $350.00 is a Merrit. It came with two locking chain racks and sway guards. The person who had it before me mounted two mud flaps on it to keep the noise from clanging chains to a minimum. And I must say, it was a cool bit of rigging. I removed the airline slider from the back of the cab in the interest of keeping the headache rack as far forward to the cab as possible. And now I have lots of room for toys without the fear of having the nose of the trailer clean everything off the catwalk when the trailer is jacked.

I modified and mounted an old tarp shelf out in the Home Depot parking lot under the warm PHX sun this afternoon. Instead of the typical Swift mounting plan (which is to have the shelf protruding forward}, I mounted it so the overhang is toward the rear. Much, much more efficient usage of space. All in all, the headache rack is about 3” off the back of the cab, which is ideal. I’ll have pictures up tomorrow.

I traded back the roof cap. For a flatbed truck, it isn’t really necessary, and having done so will cut down on drag through the air. Plus, it makes the tractor look more flatbed-like. To tie it all in, I am going to have the turn-outs of the stacks cut off and the ends mitered at just above the new roof-line. Bertha will look pretty cool when it is done.

Driving this thing feels like driving an old pick up truck in some ways. The hood jiggles a bit over bumps, but the visual from the driver’s seat is very noble. Yeah, the turning radius is a bit wide, but she maneuvers well enough. The gears float unlike any other box that I have shifted. It’s almost like she sucks in the next gear as if to say, “let’s go”. She sounds like a freight train under throttle, yet mellows to a hearty rumble out on the highway. Given the wheelbase, it’s no great surprise that she goes down the highway in a straight line. The Volvo, by contrast, always needed steering input to coax a straight line. The W9 is bay far the most steady and linear truck I’ve had the pleasure of running.

I got all my antenna wires fed into the cab today and much of the electronica connected. The Bose Companion 3’s are the last item on the to-do list, but I will have my XM up and running tomorrow. Once all my gizmos settle into their new homes, I will then get my inverter hooked up to the batteries and continue to wire and dial.

I took Bertha to get a bath today as well. The good folks at Danny’s Truck Spa did a marvelous job of cleaning her up. She absolutely sparkles now. Soon, I’ll get her waxed and have the tanks and wheels polished too. The last little issue with the body is the brackets on the roof for the roof cap. I’ve been engineering an ideal for a polished 3”-4” band to cover up the brackets and compliment the roofline. Meanwhile, she looks very official.

I got my first dispatch today. An 1800 mile run up to someplace in Ohio. What a nice way to get started!

I’ll keep everyone posted as to how things go. I’m looking forward to embarking on tomorrow’s run, just so I can relax again.

And yes, Cyanide. While I am new to KW, the love for this machine, and the engineers and people who made it, is blooming exponentially. And tomorrow, I get to pull my first load with it. BTW: That’s a nice T-800 you have there!
Thanks for uploading the photo! And thanks for your comments as well. They are greatly appreciated.

[samael9]

Well, this is getting interesting.

I bobtailed around while in PHX, just to get a feel for the truck, get used to the transmission, and do some running around in the interest of getting set up to go.

At one point while heading back to the yard, the truck quit running. I thought it might be low on fuel as the gage read close to empty. And being unfamiliar with how the gage reads, I was afraid I had run out of fuel. But after sitting for about 5 minutes, she started back up. So I made a bee
line for the yard and filled it as soon as I got in. Wheew.

Next morning, I got up and called my pickup. Two coils with a combined weight of 45,600 lb. This is my heaviest load to date. Cool, thinks I. We’ll see what ol’ Bertha can do. The load is headed for Ohio, so I’ll get a really good trip in to see how she does. I just love this truck, BTW.

I get loaded and tarped and start heading up I-17 towards Flagstaff. When I started climbing the steeper grades, I noticed that the temperature gage was climbing up towards the 200-degree mark. Yeah, it was sure hot outside, but all the other trucks were climbing just fine. Something was wrong. As the ascents became steeper and the altitude grew higher, the overheat warning came on along with the check engine light. Yikes. I couldn’t hear the cooling fan cycling either, which concerned me too. I had to pull over and let her cool down.

I checked the belts, the fuses, everything I could imagine to try and diagnose the problem. I called in to the Kenworth dealer in Albuquerque to see if there was anything else that I could check. Nope, the ECM controls it all.
So I managed to move along a little farther and the same thing happened again. Rats. I looked back under the hood to see if I could find anything to cause the problem. Sure enough, the hood pad had become unglued and fell down in front of the radiator.

I pulled it out of the way and wrapped it up, figuring I would glue it back up when I hit Albuquerque. So back on the road and everything is delightful. The temp is holding steady, all systems go. Fine.

Bertha pulls the hills with much more authority than Betty. Even though the ISX mill is set to its lowest power output, it still has more torque than Betty’s 12-liter Volvo engine. The ride is so sweet. Bertha runs straight as an arrow with very little steering input. Nothing rattles or shakes in Bertha either. It just feels so good. As if you couldn’t tell, I am head over heals in love. This…. is a rig.

I made Albuquerque on Thursday night without any further problems. I spoke to the man in charge of the O/O fleet at Swift while I was parked on the side of I-17. He was very cool about the problem I was having. The truck is still covered under warrantee and they have an extended warrantee on it as well. He was very helpful and also extended an apology regarding my breakdown after just having taken delivery of the truck. I know from experience that these things can and do happen.

Today I caught up on some extra sleep. The trip out to NM was a bit stressful. Today was spent getting everything buffed out inside the cab. My drop isn’t until Monday morning, so I had time at the yard to put the final touches on the living space, which I will have for the next few years.

Everything is hooked up now. My XM, my iPod, etc. Getting the mirrors set correctly was quite a project as well. There is so much bracketry holding the west coasts and the convexes, and it all needs to be done with ratchets and wrenches. No biggie, I carry a good tool kit, so on we go with it. But, all the work is worth it, because by the end of the afternoon, I had everything the way I wanted it.

So, out the yard one more time. I needed to run north to Best Buy for one last widget. Then I planned to get some dinner, head back to the yard, grab my load and continue running towards Ohio.

Out of Best Buy and heading south on Coors Blvd, and pfft, Bertha quits running. I had just enough momentum to get her off to the side of the road, and now I am waiting for a wrecker. This has to be an easy one to diagnose. No sputtering, no nothing. Like a fuel supply issue of some kind. Fortunately, the KW shop is open until midnight, so the service manager said that they would plug it right in and see what’s up.

I guess that I should be upset, but I’m not. The problem will get fixed and I’ll be on my merry…. Yeah, being stuck is a drag, but there isn’t much I can do about it. It seems like I’m off to a rough start, but so what. They don’t actually start deducting payments until 16 days into the lease, just because of situations like this one. It will get resolved.

If it weren’t for the fact of my love for the truck, I might feel differently.

So I’ll let ya’ll know how the happy ending works out, and even if I have to run a little harder, I am still betting on my Monday drop. Finger crossed…….

[devildice]

It's great that you're maintaining a positive attitude after these little hiccups .....good for you!!!! I certainly hope KW gets everything worked out and she runs smooth for you.

[Orangetxguy]

Hey...at least you kept Swifty informed of your breakdowns!!

[samael9]

Chillin’ at Inland KW in Albuquerque and waiting to get busy.

The diagnosis is low fuel pressure. The fault codes indicated that the truck died from lack of juice. After looking around, the technician pointed out that the fuel tank on the left side rolled in its saddle and the both the return and supply lines were crimped. Apparently, this is a problem, which occurs with some regularity. And now that I know about it, I can keep an eye on it. If it happens again, I can fix it easily enough when I am close to empty.

So they will pump out the left tank, re-situate it and then throw some new filters on it just to be safe. The job shouldn’t take long; it’s just a matter of getting a free technician to start on it. I could do most of it myself, but I don’t want to piss off the service manager.

If I get out of here by noon, I will still be able to make my drop on time.

So I am using the time to copy my iTunes library of an external drive and onto my MacBook Pro. Much to my surprise, my old iPod, which I thought was dead, is working again. I didn’t necessarily want to fill my internal drive with 40 gigs of music, but with the iPod back in action, I can load it out of iTunes. Yippee! Jerry and the boys will be belting once again…

[heavyhaulerss]

this almost sounds like a recruiter working for swift ?????? just wondering ??

[geomon]

Yo Clint...

Just checking out your latest adventures...nice to know the problems were minor and you'll be rolling shortly. The company I (still) work for is out of Albq so I'm there frequently....nice country and you can see for freakin ever out there.
So fire up Jerry 'n the boys, hit the road, and "Ramble On Rose"....

[samael9]

Originally Posted by heavyhaulerss

this almost sounds like a recruiter working for swift ?????? just wondering ??

LOL. Yeah, I can see how you might think that :lol: Actually, I am Sheepdancer in disguise and I switched from JB Hunt to Swift <hehe>

Nope, HH. I am not a recruiter for Swift. I am just a very happy Swifty with a propensity for BS.......

Ramble on Rose? Which show, Geo? 8) Yes, it is gorgeous out here. Not a cloud to be seen, nice temps, beautiful. Can't wait to get jammin'..... Soon.