Oh my, what was the day to bring for us. Knowing we pulled in with a wounded soldier, there was little to do but find the needed parts and service while we were in a town that had some golden arches. We got up early and using both "Google" and the local yellow pages started looking for auto stores and garages that might be able to replace the starter.
I didn't need to do any further troubleshooting. I was 110% convinced the ole cranker was about to bite the dust. The morning research and phone calls didn't begin to look to promising. NAPA, AutoZone, and others didn't have a starter in stock. But the real trouble was finding a garage that could fit me in. It looked like we were going to lose a good two days off the vacation. Knowing we were heading further on down the Outerbanks, I took it on a wing and a prayer and started checking places in Salvo, Avon, Buxton and even Ocracoke (yeah, like the car would make it through several stop and restarts using the ferry). What was I thinking. There was a NAPA and a CarQuest in Buxton. Wow...the CarQuest had both the stock starter and mini-starter in stock. And get this, the owner also had a service center. But it was doubtful he would be able to get me in today. But what the heck, we were headed that way and no other shops could do anything for us anyhow. So if... and it was a BIG if - we could get the car started and to the shop by noon, they would try to work us in. With toes and fingers crossed, I climbed into the Barracuda and tried to get her started. God I love MoPars....with some TLC the starter finally caught and the engine roared to life. We reached the Lighthouse Service Center in Buxton just before 1130 am. Cindy (co-owner) had a car coming out of the bay from an inspection within five minutes of our arrival. Bingo - we didn't even need to shut the engine down. So, I pulled the fish into the bay, popped the hood and let Brian (mechanic) take his first look. Well if looks could kill, I'd been fish bait. He saw the headers on this A-Body and looked at me to say: "You got to be (@$#^*!) kidding me". With a light pat on the back, I started to show him that it wasn't as bad as it looked. I won't go into all the details, but suffice to say after some convincing he took on the task of replacing the starter. Also need to say thanks to nephew Jason who got me the part number for the mini-starter. The manager at this car-quest (John) and the mechanic (Brian) had a hard time believing me that this new mini-hi-torque starter would be a plug and play replacment for the stock (big) starter. Linda and I left the premises to get a bite to eat at the Diamond Shoals Restraunt. We took our time thinking it was going to be an all afternoon affair, but two hours later, we were back on the road. Talk about some awesome folks who knew they could have really taken advantage of our situation. It's really nice to know there are some honorable people still out in this world. (guess that's one reason I love the south).
If you think about how bad this could have been for us, we are really counting our blessings. We didn't need a 70 mile tow. We didn't have to wait for 2 days for service. And I got a new (mini-starter) installed on the car without getting my hands greasy. (I was planning on changing out the starter at some point anyway).
PS: The sky's opened up and it rained like crazy. This was our only day with bad weather. It couldn't have all happened at a better time so that the vacation wasn't ruined.
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| Yes, that's the starter behind the header pipes. |
