continuing travails of Lola

So Lola has continued to ail and I've continued to get all kinds of perturbed but she's currently in the truck hospital aka shop being gone over with a fine tooth comb......errrr, wrench. Last week though she developed a new symptom...........the dreaded stop engine buzzer and light.  First time or two, I pull over, shut it down (dreading and not knowing if she would start back without persuasion), check all the fluids and various items that a person checks when you have all this obnoxious beep, beep, beep that comes with the red flashing stop sign on the dash.  Mind you, all my gauges are reading absolutely normal and nothing appears to be amiss so quick diagnosis was the egr valve going (again).  This is nothing uncommon, they tend to go out quite often sadly.

So what does an egr valve do?  Here's a link to a quick explanation of what one does on a car. Couldn't find one for a big truck but essentially very similar.

Anyway, back to last Tuesday, after the 3rd time the stop engine light came on and I had to find a safe place to pull over and shut the engine off, I told myself that the next time I was calling in and telling them the load had to be relayed once I made it back to N. Little Rock.  Sure enough, less than 20 miles down the road, I had the stop engine warning AGAIN.  I also had to wiggle the wire and cable cluster that led from the starter to get the engine to turn over (2nd time that day).  I'm dirty, greasy, and way past aggravated at this point.

Yep, call was made along with a frustrated sigh from my dispatcher.  I didn't care, no way was the truck gonna make it to Laredo and back with having to stop so much.........however I wasn't liking the thought of sitting without pay even if it was at home so I qualcommed the cranky dispatcher telling him that I would take the load on down to Laredo if HE could get me a loaner truck--I'd already tried to no avail on Monday.  Sure enough, that's what it took, 15 minutes later I had a truck number along with a note saying it was mine to use as long as needed.  Lola in the meantime continued her cantankerous ways by making me shut the engine down 3 more times before reaching the terminal.......grand total of 7 times for the day.