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2 years ago
Setting off, across a continent
Sunday 27th September: Well I’m on my way to California, after day two of a four day drive across the US and I thought I could give you an update.
This journey began with me arriving home from a funeral in the UK, tired, around 9:30 PM on Friday, so prepping the car and packing were begun at 4 AM Saturday. I set off around 9:30 AM, headed west. I was knackered to begin with and the car had a stumble, a miss-fire coming off idle. A switch of rotors fixed that, or the Gods pitied me. Probably the latter. They made up for it later, though. Happily both I and the car found a second wind.Here’s a shot of my dash, somewhere on I70. That the two needles (speed and rpm) are not parallel is because of my overdrive.
I set off in decent, 75F weather. That lasted 45 minutes, then it began to rain. What followed over the next 12 hours isn’t adequately explained as ‘rain’ or ‘precipitation’. This is vertical river, as in waterfall. Many places had 2-3” rain as the storm passed, each of three successive days. Lucky them. I drove with it all day, through it all, with only one aquaplaning event that cost me a pair of boxers and could have been so much worse.My wipers with their rebuilt motor were great…..for about an hour. Yep, the motor is cooked. Again. I have to give up on rebuilding a 50-year-old armature and get a new ($$$) wiper motor. I had this (torrential rain, wiper failure) in the charity run last year. As Yogi Berra would say, “Deja Vous, all over again”. The rain was so bad even trucks slowed to 45 mph in the worst of it and some cars pulled over to the hard shoulder. I had NO WIPERS. Sane men would stop but I drove many miles on a motorcycle in rain with rain on my visor. Get over it. Use the information you have. It is enough to drive defensively.
Apart from visibility, all was well. Until at about 8 PM in Indiana. I had a rapid miss-fire that cut in, cut out, jerking the car. I pulled off at a random exit that I was at at that moment, cruised to a stop and the engine died. I waited a moment, 2 minutes maybe, and she started right up just fine. Crap from the tank sucked up by the pump? Did I run through a deep puddle splashing the ignition? Who can tell. I headed on another 100 miles and hit a motel.“$120 dollars foray zingle rum” (imagine heavy Pakistani accent, 30 years old). “Nothing cheaper?” “No, verrrry verry very busy”, he said. “OK, I’ll shop around”, as I turned on my heel. “No, no, I meant $65, Sir, and the internet and breakfast is totally, totally free”.
I set off on day two before dawn, in fog. Jeez, could the weather be more co-operative? About an hour of interstate at around 65 mph, my miss-fire returned. ‘Moisture stealing the spark’, methinks. All is dank and wet in this fog, after the downpour yesterday. “Introducing WD40, water dispersant extraordinaire” a voice said, as I sprayed it liberally in and around my ignition. The car then ran beautifully; I thought I was golden. For about an hour. Then the jerking miss-fire returned.
So now I’m on the hard shoulder of I70 in Indiana. “Fuel pump”, I thought. The fuel pump is one part I haven’t had my hands on yet. Hence I have with me a complete used pump that still seems to work, a pump rebuild kit, and a Facet electric pump to get me off a highway to a safe place where I can rebuild the mechanical pump (or maybe I go electric anyway), as suggested by my friend Mike Wolf. I pulled off the fuel pipe where it joins the carbs and span the starter. I was surprised to see a healthy ejaculation. It was not the fuel pump.
On to ignition. I unpacked the car to get my parts out. That is a sentence that is perversely easy to write; you have no idea. Also, two lanes of 70+mph traffic were whizzing by, so close to me. Thankfully this was a dry day. Thankfully.
I checked my points gap, and like all the ignition business-areas on the car this is on the LEFT side, near the traffic. The gap was fine. High Tension leads or dizzy cap then? I pulled off the recently-replaced spark plug leads and 2 of 4 unhelpfully left their metal cap that had been inside inside the insulated cover, locked on the spark plug tip. Oh dear. Those leads are now useless. I dug out from my spares another distributor cap and three (count ‘em one two three, not four) plug leads. Why?
I will spare you the details, but on the side of I70, deafened by passing traffic, kneeling in wet grass, I spent an hour trying to replace the metal cap into the sprung head of a long HT lead to give me 4 leads to get going again, only to the next ramp I thought, to retire this excursion. Eventually I got the cap to snap back in to place. I made up a few friendly terms while I worked on this, as you may imagine. “Is this the problem,” I wondered?
On starting up with a replacement cap and leads installed, she ran beautifully. “That was it” I thought. For about 30 miles. Then we jerked to a stop again. It had to be something that failed when it got really hot. As I had been fiddling and chasing red herrings, the failed part cooled and healed temporarily. With the engine running again, the part re-heated to the point of failure and once more had me headed to the hard shoulder, to unpack, again. So what could it be?
“Coil” I thought, as I rolled again to the hard shoulder, some miles on. I unpacked again. I replaced the coil with a spare I carried. She ran beautifully, once more. “That was it” I thought. For about 15 miles. Then we jerked to a stop again.
The points and condenser I have in the car are new parts from a reputable supplier, so I had them last on my list. There was no more than 1,000 miles on them when I left. The points gap was perfect. Yet again, I unpacked the car, then dug out some old points and condenser, reinstalled them in the distributor and tried again. “That was it,” I think. She ran beautifully for the next 600 miles, until I stopped this evening. I can’t explain it, but with these points, she even sounds like my car again. I suspect now the condenser was faulty.Can I just share that it isn’t the best feeling, despite all the joy of road trip/car stuff, to be trying to install points (aren’t those bits fiddly in your own garage let alone out here) and set the gap to 15 thou, with your arse hanging over the rumble strip on I70 with semis blasting past so close the wind from them feels like a shove sideways. Thankfully, it wasn’t raining or dark.
These little dials give me confirmation of oil pressure, amperage charging, fuel and water temperature:
Until now, in the state where I sleep tonight, the topography has been little changed from Pennsylvania. Less hilly, maybe, and less developed. It is much warmer and road kill has switched from Raccoon to Armadillo.This afternoon, I have been in a coma. An Oklacoma. Oklahoma’s roads give ‘straight’ a bad name. Jeez, with lasers, even light waves. It at least has a wiggle, a bit anyway. Not Oklahoma, No Sir.
Tomorrow, I head to Alburquerque, New Mexico; Amarillo, Texas; then Flagstaff, Arizona. Days of desert bordering mountains, then on to LA. It is forecast to be 107 degrees in Flagstaff today. That is 42C!
I’m using two GPS units: one set to a distant objective (say, 500+ miles away) and one to something closer (say 150 miles away), and set to show gas stations along the route.
In my brief travels , despite all that people say, these ‘Mercans can be quite friendly, really.
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