The annual Foremost Insurance
28th Street Metro-Cruise kicked off under summer skies and warm temps. The
Metro-Cruise stretches 15 miles along an east-west corridor just south of
the Grand Rapids city limits. The Metro-Cruise hosts an estimated 15,000
cars and 300,000 visitors.
Because this is home-turf for the Futurliner it has been
hosted at number of venues up-and-down the strip. This year it was hosted
at the Harvey Cadillac dealership.
Due to heavy traffic and so many places and
cars to see, the Futurliner didn't see a lot of foot traffic but it was
certainly seen by thousands and thousands that drove by.
Part of the Futurliner display is this trailer,
constructed by Del Carpenter (right), of left-over and spare components from the
Futurliner restoration project. It carries a very large generator that was originally used to
power the Parade of Progress show during evening performances, a spare
engine and transmission. At this particular show the rig was used to power a mobile
calliope from the Grand Rapids Public Museum.
After running the engine for about 10 minutes, it quit. Del was left
scratching his head but it sounded like it ran out of gas. Earlier he had
put in some gas and couldn't believe that it could have run out already but he added more because the tank
doesn't have a gas gauge.
The engine was fired up again but it didn't run but about a
minute before it quit again. After some diagnostics, it appeared that this electric fuel pump
wasn't pumping. We could see an air bubble in the tube where it runs into
the pump and when Del turned the pump on and off, not much movement of
the bubble was noted. He said that the Futurliner itself had the same problem
with this type of pump and it was replaced with a different brand. After
the show the display trailer would be
headed into the shop for the volunteers to repair before going back into
storage.
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