Daily Archives: September 25, 2015

Two Down, One to Go . . .

After my Wal-Mart run this morning, and filling up with gas ($1.96/gallon) to be ready for our Anniversary trip to Shreveport  on Sunday, I headed into downtown Carthage to the NAPA Auto Parts store.


This past summer as we were heading east from our two month long blowout repair in Prescott, AZ, I noticed I needed to add some coolant to our rig’s Cummins 350 ISC engine. But when I checked my bay, the jug was almost empty. Well, I’ll just stop at the next truck stop and pick up a couple of gallons. But easier said than done.

Along the way, I checked Pilot/Flying J, TA, Love’s, etc., all with no luck. No one carried the old style green diesel antifreeze any longer. Just the new red type, and various shades of red, i.e pink and magenta. Magenta?

But since you’re not supposed to mix the two colors, I kept looking.

While we were staying in Amarillo for a couple of days, I noticed a Cummins dealership right across the road, so I stopped and picked up a couple of gallons of this.

ZEREX-NITRITE-FREE_EXTLIFE

Zerex Nitrate Free Extended Life Antifreeze

Not having used this brand before for the rig, I double-checked the label for Cummins diesel compatibility, but was really surprised to read that it’s also gasoline engine compatible as well.

Well, that’s a first. In the past there’s been diesel engine antifreeze and gasoline engine antifreeze, and never the twain shall meet. But hey, that just means I’ll only have to keep one type of antifreeze on hand for both our vehicles. Neat.

But the two gallons I bought in Amarillo didn’t last very long. In fact I never got to put any in the rig engine, because I ended up using it when we were having the leaking radiator problem on the truck. So now I needed more.

But when I checked AutoZone and O’Reilly’s, the two places along my usual route here in Carthage, I was again out of luck. They didn’t stock it and couldn’t order it. But after checking online and making some phone calls, I found that the local NAPA store could order what I needed. So I went by there today to pick up a couple of gallons of the concentrated stuff, not the 50/50. The concentrated is only about a 1/3 more for twice as much. You just have to mixed it first, yourself.

I’ve already decided that when RV Mobile Lube comes out to do my service this winter, I’m going to have them flush my system and change me over to the newer red type. That way I won’t have this problem any more.

Then on the way home I made the obligatory Whataburger stop for lunch.

Things were awfully quiet here at the frack this afternoon, and after checking with one of the company guys coming through, I confirmed that they had finished the second well and were reconfiguring to get started on the third one. And this one has 35 stages, so it’s going to be a long one.

We hope.

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Thought for the Day:

“Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates.  There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backward, or sideways” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

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