Musings of a Farm Truck Connoisseur

Posted on Saturday 16 February 2008 at 11:33

We knew it had to happen sometime. Bearing obvious signs of having been driven by a citified idiot of a previous owner, one day our truck’s clutch began to slip like it was made of banana peels. Thankfully, I wasn’t the one driving it, or the scenes of panic would have made the national news. Dave was the one halfway home from the city with an engine that turned great and wheels that didn’t.

The Beast is a mid-nineties F-350 crew cab with a 7.3 turbo diesel. That means a dual-mass flywheel, or it did originally. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, the difference between the old clutch and the new clutch is like this. Old clutch: Like trying to stomp on something that stomps back with the force of a mildly irritated draft horse. New clutch: Like driving a classic race car, baby. Let me explain.

Dave, although he doesn’t really act like a true Mennonite a lot of the time, still owes much of his behaviour to genetics. He was told replacement parts could cost as much as $2600. So, he managed to find a secret source in the States, a guy selling brand-new single-mass flywheel kits for oodles less. Moreover, the loonie was trading high against the greenback on the day of his purchase. He called it his “Mennonite moment of the year.” Without at least one of these almost supernatural purchases in a twelve-month period, he’s left with a restless sense of non-fulfilment.

I drove the Beast for the first time after the clutch swap-out, and I was perturbed by all the odd little rattles I heard and felt. A bit of dash tappet, a small grumble of vibration in the accelerator. As I chauffeured the inevitable rug rats into town, I frowned and kept an ear open. Finally, I realised what the suspected problem was. The truck-shaking shimmy-cough-hop-bark of a dying clutch was gone forever. My tranny was saved!

I arrived at a corner and shifted. The sensation made me smile. It’s odd; in my youth, I planned to run away from rural Manitoba forever and become a refined, artsy type in a big city somewhere, probably riding a bicycle to save the earth. Thank goodness that never panned out. I never would have known the subtle joys of driving a 21-foot-long super-tuned brute of a vehicle full of hollering kids down an unplowed back road in the middle of a prairie snowstorm. Now that would have been a waste.