So...about three years ago, I bought a 4x4 monster truck Kelmark kit car off Ebay that was used in a pyrotechniques show and still had fully functioning 30 foot flame throwers.
"How could that possibly go wrong?" you must be asking yourself.
The day it was delivered, I was as excited as a kid on Christmas morn. The seller proudly delivered in to me in person (on a flat bed) along with his wife, who was about four-and-a-half feet tall, had a strong southern accent, and was dressed in an all-white jumpsuit with red-and-blue pin-stiping all the way from here boots up to the top of her 10 gallon hat. Sadly, I'm not making ANY of this up. I'm not even creative enough to make up the freak-show-that-was-this-moment-in-time. But all in all, the delivery went well and the vehicle arived intact and seemed to run quite well. (YouTube video will be forthcomming). My girlfriend has never seemed quite the same since that day, though, and she just refers to it as "that clown car" with a wrinkle of her nose.
Honestly, I couldn't quite believe that I had actually bought the thing. And I was feeling a little sick to my stomache over it. But what was done was done. I was now the proud owner of that clown car.
So, later that evening, I was happily test driving it around our courtyiside to confirm what a wonderful, sensible "investment" I had just made when...it bogged down and stopped. Wouldn't start at all. Couldn't even get it out of the road. So there I sat, feeling stupider and stupider and stupider.
The problem seemed to be a fuel delivery/heat/choke problem. Who knows. And the burm of a country road at dusk isn't really the best place to diagnose these things. (Oh, and I'd forgotten my cell phone because I was just going "around the block," after all.)
Anyhow... every 20 minutes I could get it started again and could drive about 1000 feet 'til it bogged down again and stopped. Great. Progress! Right(!?) (Being two miles away from your house seems like a really big distance when you can only drive 1000 feet per twenty minutes.)
When I got home, it was well after dark -- good in a way because I wasn't feeling particularly proud of my new toy right then.
As it was bogging down again, I lurched the grumbling thing around back and under a lean-to roof that extended out from the back of my garage, let it sputter to a stop, and then sat there cursing at myself for a while, trying not to throw up, trying to think up how best to justify this obvious total debacle.
But I figured I'd concentrate on the good stuff. I tried various switches to see what DID work.
The horn worked.
The headlights worked...ooh...for a moment...then on...then off. Probably just a loose wire.
I tried the radio. Nice of him to leave it at 120 db, by the way. (Shit my pants a little.)
Tried the fans. They worked. Tried some other stuff. Some things worked.
Tried the transfer case, which the owner said tended to "be a little grumpy sometimes" and "not to take it out of 'high' unless really needed to." So of course, I pulled the lever; it went out of high gear very nicely. But afterwords it couldn't be endaged in high or low gear again. It was now stuck in between. I was starting to feel very ill. *whaah*
Okay, so, for anyone keeping score, I had just bought an unbelievably ugly peice of crap that set me back a few thousand dollars and obvoiusly couldn't possibly be resold in any way or form...and it wasn't running...and I couldn't figure out why...and the friggin' headlights wouldn't even stay on...and I was tired and was trying to work up the nerve to go inside with my tail between my legs and...
And so I just turned off the ignition switch and was gearing up to start the walk-of-shame back into my house.
But after the headlights went out, there was still a little glow. Just a happy little dancing orange glow with shadows on the wall of the garage, like kittems playing...except a little more orange and ominous. And there was a sound...like a little fan or pump running.
Right about then I began to connect the dots: Although there were many redundant safeties on the "big" flame triggers, there weren't any safety contingencies for the little "primer flame" that was calibrated to spit about a two foot, constant flame out of the 5 inch tail pipes using presurized Coleman lantern fluid which, I was told, "produces the prettiest flame."
Q: Do you know what kind of flames AREN'T pretty?
ans: The ones comming out of the tailpipes of one's now-crippled monster truck Kelmark that is parked under the roof of one's garage!
I freaked out. I realized that I must have gotten the big clunky cuff of my work/army jacket caught on the rocker that controls the primer pumps and ignitors which were now burnig away like mad. I turned them off immediately, but they had already pumped up a whole lot of that lantern fluid, which was very enthusiastically benching flames out of the pipes and onto the ground.
"The garage!!! Oh Crap! I have to get this away form the garage. I have to start it and at least roll it away from the garage!!!"
I turned the key. Rurrr-rurrr-rurrr-rurrr. Nothing. Rurr-rurr-rurr-rurr. Nothing.
Fortunately, nothing outside of the pipes had caught fire yet, but there was a lot of excess lantern fuel being...um...dispensed...and it was now dripping onto the ground more.
Was it dripping onto concrete, you ask? Nope. Dirt and leaves. Ever heard the phrase "perfect storm!?" *thumbs up*
But there was hope. There was a yucky old mud puddle about ten feet behind the vehicle, and I'm no vulcanologist, but I'm pretty sure mud doesn't burn so... ...if I could just lurch it back to there, maybe the fireball would ONLY consume the #$%!ing flaming clown car, right!
"Think fast, think fast, thinck fast...okay...it doesn't have to be running. I can drive it out using the starter alone, with the transmission in reverse. Yes!"
and...No. I had taken the transfer case permanently out of high or low about two minutes before. *very frustrated*
"oh crap, oh crap, OH CRAP!!"
The flames seemed a little bigger now.
So I got out and threw all 140 pounds, 6'2" inches of my string-bean braun into the closest of those dumb-ass, 36 inch moster truck tires and strained and strained and strained and somehow....painfully....slowly rolled the entire freakin monstrosity back the requisite ten feet ...at which point it settled to rest peacefully in that big mud puddle and quietly, unceremoniously stopped burning. No damage to said garage or monstrosity.
At that point, I decided that that was about enough fun for the night and that I should go to bed. I thnk I left one of my boots in the mud puddle. Hard to say. Wasn't a big priority at the time.
And that's the story of how the Kelmark "Herkimer" came to live at my house.
*******
Now, the thing is, I told this entire story to my dad a few days later. He listened quietly, patiently, and undramatically to the entire story. And then at the end of the story, he just matter-of-factly said, "Well, those things happen." And he immediately dove into three or four stories of vehicles he'd set on fire over the years.
So apparently...these things happen. *laugh*
