Once removed and lifted into the back of Scott's pickup truck, the new (to us) parts are on their way down the road for the two hour trip from Watson Lake to the gold mine.
A motor this size weighs a lot - so it weighed down the one-ton four wheel drive pickup that serves as the heavy mover between town and the mine property. With the big engine taking up all of the payload of the big truck, Christina's lighter-duty pickup was also pressed into action to haul some of the other supplies needed to open up the mine property for the season.
The motor arrived on the highway side of the river just in time for high water - so things were delayed for a few weeks until the water had dropped enough to get the motor across safely. In the meantime, the original Emma still had a few hours of pumping left in her - so she was kept in duty for a bit of June and July mining while waiting for the meltwater to finish rushing past on its journey to the Arctic.
Once the new motor was across, it was time to move the pump back to camp where she could be prepared for her powerplant transplant. She's pumped her last McDame Creek water and fed the Wizard for the last time in this form. When she comes back later in the season, she'll be bigger and better than ever - if everything goes according to plan.
Her motor will be removed intact - ready for a rebuild and another life, maybe on another gold mine. But, she comes complete with a powerflex coupling, ready to hook to anything with a 1 3/4" input shaft.
The new motor, while running, isn't anywhere near ready for her new job. This is where the real work will start - and where the faint of heart will not tread...
What's next is a major fabrication job. You've probably seen TV shows like Monster Garage, where they turn a mild-mannered car into some kind of beast. We're not building a beast - but we are going to turn plain old Emma into "Emma the Holloway Bar Pump Queen". .
This is the real world version of that show. Scott, a journeyman autobody technician and master fabricator among other things, is totally up to the task. He single-handedly built The Wizard - the Holloway Bar gold machine - so while this motor transplant isn't going to be a piece of cake at all, it is possible, and it will happen. All it takes is a man, a welder, and a vision (and the support of a good woman!)...
