mark weber | trouble shooting

Mark Weber | Photo by Jim Gale

TROUBLE SHOOTING

It’s like my brother Brian said:
You’ll think it’s everything else but
the fuel pump, and then
it’ll turn out to be the fuel pump.

It’s cutting out, missing, (misfiring),
scattershot, like the points have cavities,
time to replace, the distributor is arcing,
or a connection has loosened or corroded,
maybe the spark plug wires have seen their day?

Maybe the voltage regulator has become demo-
cratic and is open to a variety of ideas about
voltage? or
the condenser has condensed its last spark?
or, is it bad gas?

You were canny enough to avoid using your
credit card at that fly-by-night gas station but
maybe they got you anyway, with some watered-
down gas? the carburetor is coughing, it wants
gas, unadulterated, pure octane juice

How could it be the fuel pump? the pump is
strictly mechanical, unmysterious in the main,
nothing but a piston and a rubber diaphragm rocking
off the action of a cam lobe, or, at least that’s how
they used to be, I don’t even want to

Think about replacing the fuel pump, when I wasn’t
looking some college boy decided the best place
for a fuel pump is on top of the gas tank and
on this 1990 Chevy truck of mine a person has to
drop the gas tank to get at it

And oh, that’s easy to say while hitching up your pants
and puffing out your chest talking big talk with your
cronies but “dropping the gas tank” is a pain
in the butt, and if a person is doing this procedure
in their driveway without a hoist or a floor jack

You better set aside the better part of an afternoon,
in fact, you might-as-well remove that afternoon
from the calendar and pound it with a hammer.

Mark Weber | 7&10jan11