Someone was fucking with Darin's truck. Stealing gas, someone had rummaged through the jockey box, a couple of tools behind the seat vanished.
There was a scratch on the passenger side door that was new, Darin knew he didn't put that there.
He liked that truck, inherited it from his father who bought the thing brand new. The right side tank now read 1/4 full and he had filled it two days before. He knew damn good and well that he was running on the driver's side saddle tank, and it shocked him when he flipped the switch.
He even pulled over, looked underneath for leaks. There weren't any.
Gas mileage? It didn't get any, the machine weighed two and one half tons. When his old man had brought the rig in to Darin's engine shop for a new one, Darin had tried to talk him out of it.
Hell, it only had 88,000 miles on it.
Not a damn thing wrong with it.
But the old man insisted, no way was he going to deal with any breakdowns when he and Mom were off in the warm South for the winter.
"Some more power would be nice, you can do that, can't you?" His Dad had asked with a grin, tipping his oversize stetson hat back on his head.
80 years old, his Pop still had every hair he was born with. He also still kept rubbers in the drawer alongside their bed, Darin had seen those when he needed a flashlight one evening when he was over there for a visit.
Darin had a nice grin to himself at that one, old habits are hard to break.
One of them had let go when the old man was 54, the result was Darin. 80 years old and still able to get a piece now and then, that was his Dad, no doubt about it.
And he loved that old Chevrolet truck.
+++
Darin dug out a good core 350 cubic inch engine block with the 4 bolt mains, poked around in the back room and found some parts left over from his circle track racing days.
Darin squared up and decked the block, fit a set of .030" oversize forged pistons to the bores, a shade over 10 to one compression ratio, and he also machined the main line.
That was a shade high compression for regular fuel but with the high energy ignition he replaced the old factory points setup with, and some careful tuning, it would work.
A set of aftermarket rods, plus adding a camshaft he machined himself on the old antique lobe grinder he owned would perk up the power.
That camshaft took some thinking. The truck was turning 2800 at 60 mph, so he set the power peak right in that range and upwards some by moving the cam lobe center lines to an early split duration and increasing the valve lift by quite a bit.
In the heads he installed some 2.05" inlet valves and a set of 1.60" exhausts, matched the valve springs to the cam. A few airflow tricks he learned racing hobby stock cars was easy to do. Chrome Moly push rods, he was ready to build and build he did.
It took him three long days, every single part hand fitted and balanced. Two Carter 600 CFM carbs rounded out the package.
Taking her for a drive after she had rumbled to life, then settled to a steady throb was fun. At one stoplight, he hit the throttle just a bit too hard and all four tires began to bawl. The machine set sideways for a second or two while Darin gathered her back up.
A cop was right behind him when he pulled into the shop.
"Nice truck!" Were the first words out of the man's mouth, then the policeman chewed him out some for spinning his tires.
He filled that in with the "public street, kids, endangering other drivers" lecture, a bit of a grin on his face as he kept looking at the big rig.
Next he mentioned he had a Ford F250 that could use a few more ponies, so Darin suggested a price that would be hard to resist and that was that.
His Dad had a smile on his face after driving her that made all of the effort worthwhile, and when he pulled out his checkbook to pay Darin, Darin would not take any money.
The big hug was payment enough.
+++
Just one trip was sadly all his Mom and Dad had made in the old truck, they were back for only a week when she called, sobbing.
That was a bad time, then his Mom was gone just 24 days later.
With his folks, it seemed there was no such thing as one without the other.
The estate was just under 3 million dollars counting the property, some stock holdings, odds and ends...and that truck.
Most of that was the property, a small farm out in the country.
Man, that old truck!
A 1974 model, 3/4 ton with 4 wheel continuous drive, long bed with step side? The special order one ton chassis rounded her out, there was probably not another one exactly like it on Earth.
That was because all of the other one ton trucks had duals on the back, this one didn't. That was because the driveway into the ranch was narrow and his old man was concerned about scratching the paint.
+++
There was a 50 gallon tank in the bed, that one had a padlock on it. It wasn't a fancy lock at all, which became clear when Darin realized someone had picked the lock.
Yep, someone was stealing fuel and that pissed Darin off. When the left saddle tank was suddenly low again, that really pissed Darin off.
He even tried parking the truck closer to his house but his wife Sarah griped about that, she had to walk to the other end of their porch to go somewhere.
So the tanks just got hit again. Darin was fairly sure it was the four kids that rented the old house just down the road, they were a rowdy bunch. They held parties, loud ones, that irritated Darin also but nothing he could do about it.
"Dennis is OK, he seems like a nice young man." Sarah told him when he complained about all that was going on.
That surprised Darin, Sarah knew the name of one of them?
"Which one is Dennis?" He asked her point blank.
"The cute one with the long curly brown hair." Sarah responded, then catching his expression she looked away.
Darin knew which one she meant, the one with the three color Mustang that ran on seven cylinders and had a hole in the muffler.
Big kid, maybe 24, 25 or so. He always wore a tank top style shirt which showed off tattoos of God knows what on his clearly muscular arms.
Once Darin had looked out and Sarah was out in the yard sun bathing, she had on her white bikini. That suit was not all that skimpy but it did demonstrate that her body was in very nice shape for barely 32 years old.
Darin had seen the kid walk up the hill and talk to her that day, but he beat feet when he saw Darin come out and head down there.
Darin didn't ask any questions, the young man hadn't done anything, not really.
But now Darin was fairly sure that was the one stealing his gas, especially when he looked down there one day and saw the guy pouring gas in that crappy Mustang with a jeep can.
Of course, the kid could have bought the gas but none of them seemed to ever work, they were always down there, just hanging out.
Moving out into the country was supposed to be peaceful, but his Dad had sold the acreage to the South and it became a collection of cheap houses in short order.
Darin hadn't wanted him to sell but the old man said he wanted to "kick up his heels" as he put it, so that is what he did.
What used to be a nice sloping field down to the creek was now homes, old cars parked around, piles of junk needing to be hauled off.
It didn't improve his mood any that Sarah seemed to accept the mess.
But he couldn't complain too much, Sarah was always willing in the bedroom and she kept a good house. Her one flaw was she liked nice things so Darin had to work hard to keep her in capital.
Many times he worked until late in the evening to get a job out, so he could get paid. They did have nearly $200,000.00 in the IRA account, and all of those stocks his Dad had purchased.
Darin was not going to dip into that, it was for when he and Sarah were old so maybe he could relax someday and kick up his own heels.
Sarah often mentioned that, she never understood that Darin wanted to live off of his earnings and hang onto his investments.
With around $60,000.00 in income and no house payment, things should have been comfortable for them. Darin had set a goal for himself way back when he was little. The idea was to save, live on the frugal side while he was young, then once he had enough cash he could just live in comfort for the rest of his life.
But Sarah didn't see it quite that way, and now that they were married those savings were not increasing at all.
They weren't very likely to, either.
Not with her closet full of $200.00 shoes, jewelery, expensive outfits. There was a painting she bought that cost over $2000.00. Darin looked at it, he thought he could do better with this portable paint spray gun.
There was a rather nice fight about that one. In fact, the money was the only thing they ever did fight about.
He did go along with buying the insurance policies, $500,000.00 on each of them, double for accidental death.
Sarah seemed happy for awhile after that, she even gave him a glorious hand job the night he signed up for the policies.
That took her a bit of talking, along with her playing the sex game which she was so damned good at.
"It just makes us so nice and secure." She mentioned right in the middle of moving her hand up and down on his erection. She even licked at it a couple of times although she never actually put her mouth on it.
Darin did think that it was a rather strange time to be thinking about that but then she got him distracted and he forgot about it.
Even for getting something she wanted, giving him a blow job was out of the question. She had tried that just one time, making a face.
She never minded when he did that to her, though.
Things sure could be worse. Business was pretty good, everyone for miles around came to Darin's shop, they knew he was honest to a fault and when he finished a job it was the best one he knew how to do.
The work was OK, he did it without complaint but in the back of his mind was his being able to get up when he wanted to, go where he wanted to.
Instead, his life was wrapped around that shop, and having to get up and go in to work even though he would rather not.
+++
Now someone was stealing his gas, and the stuff cost money, so Darin went and got some locking gas caps. That appeared to stop that problem for awhile.
After a couple of weeks, he forgot about that, the locks appeared to have worked.
One day at his shop he looked up and that Dennis guy came walking in, with a 302 Ford cylinder head in his hands.
"Can you fix this valve?" The man asked.
Darin pulled the spring off, the guide was completely blown, the valve tip was badly worn and a wedge was burned out of the valve head.
All the rest of the valve guides were on the loose side.
"I need to fix that guide, replace the seat and the valve. But you have more troubles here, we better clean it up and do the whole head. Are you going to take off the other one?"
"No, it only misses on this one cylinder, so that is all I need done."
