The Teacher's Aide

Part 25

Saturday came, and we were at Rae's house, as Ryo brought Tristan and I over, in his Suburban. Shaun wanted to come over, but he was up to his eyeballs in his schoolwork, and to top it off, he had some weekend chores to do at home. Elisha got a good grade in his Calculus test, surpassing both Rae and Ryo even. But today, Rae had half the engine apart, since he noticed it was low on coolant, and found it had bad gaskets. He had already got his stuff from the O'Reilly's in the city below, and he was ready to take the bed off the truck, to change out the fuel pump, like we did to Sequoia's older brother's truck. Only this time, he had a hoist, and the chains were already hooked up. Rae cranked the handle, and the bed slowly lifted up out of the frame, and with Dylan helping him, they pushed the bed until it was on the ground.

"It's so much easier to do than having us kids lifting it out." He says, and even though it was a bit cool, he was wiping sweat. "Remember that kid Daniel's truck? Yeah. We don't want to do that again." He got out a hammer, and another metal rod, which was soft.

"Take that ring off with these. That's the fuel pump." Rae says, pointing to the fuel tank, with a white cap that had already been cleaned off. Just like the engine, but Dylan cleaned it after putting the bed on the ground.

"I don't know what yours looks like, but I want to do it, too." Rae says, squeezing something out of a tube, onto a gasket, and at the same time, looking at me. Then places it in the engine, before I went to remove the cap that held the fuel pump down. It's a lot harder than it looks, as I kept hammering, the tabs kept bending. Eventually, the cap started to move, and finally the taps became easier, until I can remove it with my hands. But before all that, I had to unplug the electrical connections and the gas lines. I didn't like to do the lines, since there might be some gas in them still. Dylan got out a tool, and just like that, he removed the lines with ease, as the fuel sprayed out.

"Just like that." he says, winking at me, and he pulled out the pump. "Check this out." Dylan says to Rae.

"Hold up. I'm doing the silicone stuff. I'll be there." Rae says, muffled as he was resealing the engine.

"Aren't you supposed to wait a while?" Ryo asked, peering over the truck fender, as Rae finishes the last of the silicone.

"Yeah. It has to get tacky. Put it on right now, and you will get all sorts of leaks. Learned that the hard way." Rae says, points to his Dodge truck. "It's still moist. We'll wait a bit. Then we'll put the manifold on. Check this out." Rae took an old gasket, and showed where it has holes, and the rubber separating from the factory black gasket.

"See that? This is what leads to engine failure. I've done lots of these now. He lost quite a bit of coolant." He looks through the hole. He then showed us the new one, one that was made of aluminum, and had a much thicker rubber around the openings.

"This is the upgrade. This is what you want to get." He looks at me. "Don't get the black one, as this is made of plastic." He then started talking about Kim's truck, and how he had to do the entire heads to change the lifters.

"They don't make 'em like this. See how easy they are to get to? It's all about money, but then again, it keeps me busy. But for kids like that new kid and Kim, I don't charge anything." Rae says, then goes to Dylan.

"Oooh. That's not good. We're going to have to drop the tank." Rae put his hand down into the hole, and on his fingers it looked some sort of white powdery substance, and it was on the bottom of the tank. Rae put it to his tongue.

"Sugar. This tank's coming down. I'll get the power washer." Rae says, while Dylan ran to get another tank to drain the contaminated gas in.

It was a lot of work, but now, everything was almost ready go back together now. Except the tank, which had been rinsed out, and that won't be back in the truck until tomorrow. I knew how to read spark plugs, and in this case, they were not too black, and no trace of white. You don't want to see white, that means, its burning coolant. Either bad head gasket, cracked block or head could be the culprit. But right now, we totally lucked out, and Ryo was putting the new shiny ones back in.