Vetteman61

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Once again, the pictures cannot do justice to the amount of time and work that went into the progress made below. It was all very tedious and time consuming.



I ran another bead of caulk strip on the backside of the rubber gasket. Getting the box to fit back in place around all the obstacles takes a lot of practice.





This is the blend door rod for the hot and cold air. The shop manual says that this is supposed to self adjust by putting the threaded rod in the nylon clip and then moving the temperature selector from hot to cold and it will allow the nylon clip to slide over the threads until it auto-adjusts. Because these old plastic parts are get brittle with age I found where the rod should be located through trial and error, popped it into place and then marked its location with a marker for future reference.





I hadn't taken a picture of how this vacuum hose retainer clip fit because I thought it would be obvious how it went back on. It turns out it wasn't that obvious to me and I had trouble trying to figure out how to get it back on. It seems pretty simple looking at it now.





The picture below, before the windo-weld was applied, shows how the top of the fiberglass box is warped. I ran a liberal amount of windo-weld over this area like I had done before. This time of year Saturday is the only day I have to work on the car in the daylight. I used windo-weld to seal around the entire box. That day it decided to rain so I had to throw tarps over the entire car and work under them, holding them up with my head and having shop lights underneath so I could see. It was far from optimal, but I was finally able to get it completely sealed. Unfortunately, the windo-weld tube had hardened from the previous days work and wouldn't work in the caulk gun anymore. The caulk gun allows for a much easier application of the sealer. I had to cut the tube with a hacksaw and use my fingers to spread it around. This caused me to go through a lot of latex gloves and paper towels.





I had noticed when I was installing the wiring earlier in the project that someone had removed all but one of the steering column plate bolts. I took the one bolt and tested all of the holes and they were not stripped out. I have no idea why someone would have left them out, or why they were even taken out. I've owned this car for 22 years and my father used it as a loaner car for his dealership for years before that and I don't recall a reason as to why this would be this way. I had a lot of trouble finding out what kind of bolt was in the firewall. I kept trying to match it up to a body bolt and even resorted to measuring the thread pitch with a caliper. Eventually I found that it was a sheet metal bolt. I was able to find the correct size and order them online.





A while back the tire shop told me my wheels were bent so I ordered new 8" rally wheels. I would like to have had 3.5" backspacing and or 9" wheels, but I could only find those in custom made applications, which were too expensive. I ordered a new set of Wheel Vintiques' regular 8" Corvette rallies with 4" backspacing and trim rings. I should be able to reuse the center caps. These wheels are not hub-centric like the old ones but the lugnuts are cone shaped, so they will keep the wheels centered.





After getting the heater box reinstalled I tested it with a garden hose and then fortunately had a few good days of rain. I was really let down to find that though the leak was much smaller than before, there was still water coming into the floorboard. I knew that the top of the box was sealed well, and that the water could be coming in from anywhere and running around the edges of the box. Also, there were some internal seals within the heater box I had tried to seal after installing it by reaching my hand inside. There were just too many possible areas to try to troubleshoot and I knew I had to remove the heater box and start all over. I have a deadline of when I need to have the car finished and drivable again, so that was another layer of why this was so frustrating. Another issue is that the next several days were supposed to have rain and then tornado like weather was projected for the weekend. I was very fortunate in that my friend Brian recently went to work for himself after years of working for dealerships and he built his own shop. He let me bring my car over Friday night before the storms came in and work on it there during the bad weather. Saturday was a 12 hour day, followed up by more work on Sunday and Monday after work. I don't even have the words to describe how nice it was to be able to work in a garage for a change, especially as the storm raged outside.

Vetteman61

iTrader: (1)

I was able to remove the box without anything breaking, which I had been afraid of. The windo-weld came off very easily but the caulk strip was an absolute nightmare. It took a very, very long time to get it cleaned off of the box and when I thought that was bad it took even longer to get it off of the rubber gasket. After the gasket was clean we fixed some small holes and tears in the rubber gasket with super glue gel.





An absolute mess.





I took the box apart and slowly worked my way around, cleaning all the areas that had caulking.





The box comes apart into five pieces. It was only necessary for me to break it down into four parts. I thoroughly cleaned each piece and put sealer between the necessary mating surfaces as it went back together.





Last time I installed the box I used 3M's windo-weld and caulk strip. I used caulk strip on the front and back of the gasket and then sealed the outside of the box to the firewall with the windo-weld. Windo-weld is 3M part # 08609. This time I did a lot of reading on the internet and decided to go with 3M part # 08509 - Auto Bedding and Glazing Compound. It is a similar product, and both are used for sealing windows, but the 08509 is a different consistency. Both do not fully harden, but it seems the 08509 is a softer product. A lot of the descriptions online are similar or confusing so I called 3M. Unfortunately their representative is basically just reading from a script and doesn't really seem to have experience with the product so it was a bit of a gamble of what sealer to use.



While all of these parts were removed from the car I was able to get a better view on the exhaust manifold clearance to the frame on the passenger side, or the lack thereof. From this angle it was very clear to see that the manifold and pipe were resting on the frame. There wasn't enough room to trim the exhaust pipe because it would have caused the gasket to leak.







We ended up notching the frame. The area is actually the support for the lower control arm, which is welded to the frame and wraps under the frame as well, so fortunately this could be trimmed without any fear of compromising the structure of the frame or support.





Here is the final result.





I had to order the first tube of 08509 and ended up using it all to seal the pieces of the box back together and the lower part of the box to the firewall, but didn't have enough to permanently install the upper box. I removed the transmission dipstick tube and re-routed some of the wiring which gave more clearance for the box and allowed it to be placed directly against the firewall without any smearing of the sealer. I bolted the lower box in place and then bolted the top of the box in place to push the sealer against the firewall and allow it to setup. It really helped to have a second person guiding the box from inside the car. I ordered a new tube of 08509 and the next day came back and finished up installing the rest of the components and fully installed the top box with sealer. In the picture below you can see how the 08509 has squished out around the entire edge of the box. I used a very liberal amount of sealer because I really want this thing to seal.





In testing the sealer the next day it was still pliable and had not hardened. I believe if I ever need to remove it that the sealer will not give me any problems like the caulk strip did.





One area that I believe was giving me trouble before was a seam inside the heater box. Brian and I were both really amazed at how poorly this entire box was designed. From the way it mounts to the firewall to the way the pieces fit together it was destined to cause problems, and this is proved by talking to people who own these cars. All of these heater boxes leak and cause rust issues. The picture below is right below the windshield looking down into the air intake of the heater box on the cowl. Not only is this where all of the air comes in, it is where all of the water from the windshield and cowl is channeled. This area has four seams where different parts of the box comes together. Even the part of the box that mounts to the firewall is three separate pieces of the boxes that come together to fit up against the firewall. The hole below empties directly into the area shown in the picture above and the drain hole above (with the rubber flap over it) is supposed to let all of the water that goes into the hole below drain out. One problem, and I stress this is only one problem, is that the seam at the bottom of the hole shown below is right where all of the water drains down on top of, and that seam is placed inside the cab. If it leaks it dumps water right into the floorboard. And the seam is placed right in an area where the box is warped and does not seal well. I put a whole lot of sealer in this area. I have now brought the car back to my house and hope to test for leaks in the upcoming days. There is supposed to be rain this week so I'm hoping for some good hard rain and some very dry floorboards.

JoshHefnerX

Every time this thread comes up I miss my old 79 coupe. I have to resist the urge to go hunting for another.

Project GatTagO

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I'm pretty sure my next build will be a 4 door box Chevy.

Andrew

Vetteman61

iTrader: (1)

I also have a '79 4 door. I think it has around 60-70K original miles. When the owner, who was an elderly close family friend, passed away his widow sold it to me for very cheap. If I were going to build a 4 door cruiser of this generation I've always thought it would be cool to get a 1980 or so Oldsmobile 98, first year of the fender skirts if I remember right.

Project GatTagO

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Sent you a PM

Vetteman61

iTrader: (1)

I had plans, and I needed The Caprice to be finished. I was running out of time and the weather was not cooperating at all. It was very cold and it rained a lot, and also on every Saturday for at least a month. I was very frustrated to find that although the heater box was not leaking anymore, there were other leaks in the same area. Exasperated, I broke down and bought a portable garage from Harbor Freight and, with April's help, erected it in the rain. It turned out to be a great thing, because not only did it rain a lot after that, the walls kept the freezing wind away and made it almost tolerable. I worked on the car every available waking moment I had. I didn't take many pictures because I was really in a hurry trying to get everything done. The following pictures represent several weeks of work and unfortunately only hit on some of the main highlights of a lot of the things I did, like having to have new AC hoses made, which still turned out to be the wrong size.















Knowing the neighborhood would not be happy about the structure, I tried to hide it as best as I could. Also, I had to use the Suburban to ratchet strap the structure to so it wouldn't blow away in the strong winds and storms.





I had to take the fender off to access the leak. If I had only known this earlier it would have made working on the heater box much easier.





One of the leaks was coming from between two body panels. The sheetmetal on the firewall was pulled away from the other inner structure and there was some type of sealer between them. The sealer was in bad shape and it didn't appear to be seam sealer or something that came from the factory so my guess was this was a previous attempt to fix this issue from many years ago. After a lot of testing with the hose I determined this was one source of a leak. My father-in-law was down one weekend and he was able to run the hose while I had my head in the floorboard with a flashlight. I was able to get C-clamps and pliers and hammers and access the metal in order to flatten it back together. In the picture below I have flattened the top part of the lip but not yet the bottom part.





After getting all of that done, I chipped away a lot of the old and cracked seam sealer in other places as well. I cleaned everything, taped it off, painted it and then applied new seam sealer. I did this not only on the inside firewall area, but also on the outside. After all of this dried I found yet another leak while testing. In the picture below, right at the bottom of the A-pillar, you will notice a hole. This is not a rust hole. This is where, from the factory, when the panels didn't line up, they just filled the area with seam sealer. It was all brittle and cracked. The hole shown below is after I've chipped away all of the old seam sealer but before resealing it. After this photo I resealed the area with new seam sealer.





I also needed to install the new cruise control. I had prepared for this much earlier and left the wires taped up under the dash because I knew this project was down the road. Though I had the wiring figured out then and had labeled the wires well, I had forgotten some of technical side of how to wire it and it was challenging for a while, but with help form the forum I got it figured out. Taking the wheel off and putting it back on turned out to be a huge issue. Getting the stalk installed and the wires run wasn't as bad as I had feared, but the bearing and race for the steering column had become slightly bent and wouldn't go back together correctly, causing the steering wheel internals to not seat back in far enough. I fought it for what seemed like forever. It was freezing cold each night after work and dark, and between the seemingly endless leaks I kept finding and the the steering wheel problems and my deadline looming my frustration level reached higher points than any other time in the entire project. Fortunately, Brian was able to stop by one Saturday and help me get the steering column bearing situation fixed and I was able to get everything put back together. The only problem after that was that a small piece of the old plastic chipped and caused my horn to no longer work. I'll have to go remove that piece from the parts car when I get time so I can get my horn working again. The picture below shows the new stalk with cruise control.





At this point it sometimes felt like I have spent more time in this position than driving the car.





At long last it was time to install the new insulation and carpet. This is the only picture I have of the entire process. The insulation was not preformed and turned out to be very time consuming to get a correct fit. Also, the preformed carpet had a very thick, rubber backing, and though it is a quality piece that insulates well, it made the many test fits and trimming to be tedious and time consuming.

Vetteman61

iTrader: (1)

I had vacation days that had to be taken before a certain date or I would lose them. Knowing this was coming up I had decided to take a cross country trip in The Caprice. With the date looming I had a lot of work to do before the car would be ready. The fast pace of getting ready in time meant I didn't document much of the work that was done and it seemed as though there wasn't possibly going to be enough time. About three weeks before the trip I sat down and looked at how much time I had left and what had to be done and came up with a plan and in the end I was able to make it, just barely.



I didn't have a set plan of exactly where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do, and I didn't want to plan anything specifically so that I could change routes if I took the notion. In the end I ended up going 4012 miles in 5 days and averaged 20 mpg, which I thought was pretty good considering the type of driving that was involved. I didn't use any electronics, which wasn't a big deal anyway since I don't use social media, but I did take the GPS to accompany my new 2020 roadmap and Route 66 guide. I like how a GPS can zoom in and reveal a lot of old stretches of highway that have been bypassed and aren't always noticeable from the road. Also, you can take divergent routes and not get lost for hours on small back roads. I ended up installing an MP3 player and new speakers. I installed the new speakers in a thunder and lightening storm one night after work in the pouring rain with a tarp thrown over the open trunk while I laid in the wet trunk with a flashlight and what was funny is that after halfway through the first day I didn't use the radio, MP3 players or anything else the rest of the way. I took this trip by myself. My goal was visit a lot of places in the short time I had. I often like to take my time and explore areas, but for a litany of reasons the motivation for this trip was not that. I knew I would have to push hard to get to some of the places I wanted to go and so the pictures I took were not meant to be good photography, but were more representative of me jumping out of the car and taking them as quickly as I good just to have a reference to remember some of the more interesting parts of the trip.



My tentative plan was to hit Route 66 and take it west. I found out that Route 66 is now defunct and in some parts is impossible to find without a travel guide. I really only found out the necessity for this guide the day before I left and I tried to find one at local bookstores but they weren't in stock. I ended up printing one in .PDF file from the internet. My friend at work was able to then take the printed pages and use one of the machines in that department to turn it into a spiral bound notebook which ended up being super helpful. I found that west of Oklahoma, Route 66 is pretty easy to spot, but east of that section it is less celebrated. A random assortment of roads and turns that were once the highway are now bits and pieces of other roadways, some with very little to no markings at all. Many people in the area are unaware of what it is or its history, however further west it becomes much more evident, with signage and eponymous signage. I started by heading to Springfield, Missouri and began my Route 66 journey there. If I knew then what I know now, I probably would have headed further west before taking the time to travel the old route, as navigating the many turns and streets via the guide was time consuming and didn't really have the nostalgic feel I was looking for that would later turn up in the western states. I found that the Route 66 guide was very useful for pointing out the landmarks and their significance that I would have otherwise overlooked or not have understood the importance.



My very first encounter with anything Route 66 related was this sign at a gas station shortly after getting to Springfield. I asked the people inside for some info on direction but, despite the art out front, none of them even knew where the road was or that they were currently on it.





Eventually I began to encounter small tributes or indicators of The Mother Road.





Long stretches of road began to string out for miles, and though impressive, they would be nothing in comparison to what would lie ahead. On one straight away I noticed a small, single engine airplane flying very close to the ground, directly in line with the road. At first I thought it was just a plane flying low to the ground or inspecting crops, but then after passing it I began to think I hadn't heard the sound of an engine. Shortly after a red Dodge truck met me going what seemed to be about 100 miles per hour. I was curious if I had just driven under an emergency landing. When I returned home after the trip I looked online to find reports of the incident but didn't find anything so I assume it was just a coincidence.



I fueled up in Carthage, Missouri. I noticed some coolant under the car. When I crawled under I saw that the spray had coated the undercarriage. I tightened all of the hose clamps and hoped that would solve the issue.





When I got to Jopin, MO I pulled over to find the coolant was still leaking. I found a nearby parking lot and right as I did the check engine light came on. I found that the radiator was leaking between the core and the tank on the passenger side, just like my first one had. This was now the second radiator with the same problem. To make a very long story short, I ended up going to one O'Reilly's and two Auto Zones to try to get all the problems fixed. The check engine light ended up being a lean code on bank 1. I put a full bottle of stop leak in the radiator and searched for vacuum leaks. In preparation for the trip I had gone to Harbor Freight and bought a portable air compressor that hooks to a car battery and a 2 ton jack. I did not, however, bring a jackstand, so I bought a jackstand and found that the exhaust bolts had come loose between the pipe and the manifold on the driver side. Not knowing if this would fix the problem I bought the cheapest scan tool I could find, tightened the exhaust and finally went to get something to eat. This was the first night of the trip and I was afraid it was all over but I found that after letting the car idle for quite a while and driving to get food that the stop leak had lived up to its name. All of this had taken up a lot of time so my first day was cut short and I ended up staying in Joplin. Some people close out bars to have a good time. I close out AutoZones.





The next day I woke before sunrise and headed out with trepidation. Along the way I spotted quite a few old relics, like this brick laden bridge from the old Route 66.





Right down the street from the brick bridge was this inoperable old drive-in theater. This picture was significant because it would be the last time I would see my front center cap. I found that Route 66, as with most old roads, went through several re-routes over the years, so if you want to travel it then at times you will have to chose which era you want to follow, and of those eras you will still have new and old versions in various states of use or repair. Shortly after this picture I entered what has to be one of the worst kept portions of the old road. It was almost laughable how bad the road conditions were, and there are still houses on that portion, so people travel this "road" daily. I had just had my new wheels mounted and the combination of the aftermarket Corvette rallies with the extreme conditions of the road meant my complete set of center caps was not long for this world.





In Amarillo, Texas I of course stopped by the Cadillac Rance.

Vetteman61

iTrader: (1)

I knew that people were allowed to spray paint the cars, but what I had never considered is how much that paint would pile up over the years. It was pretty amazing how thick the spray paint was on these old cars.











I had hoped to spent a little bit of time at the Cadillac Ranch but when I pulled up, as soon as I opened my door I heard the sound of air quickly escaping my rear tire. I knew dark wasn't too far off, and I knew I can change a tire in the dark, but I can't take pictures of The Cadillac Ranch in the dark, so I went ahead and took a hurried visit to the obtusely angled finned relics and made my way back to the flat.





My old springs and shocks were in very bad need of replacement so right before I had left I had all new springs and shocks on the car. Since the Caprice/Impala platform was essentially unchanged from 1977-1996, new springs are still available for this car, but they are only lowering springs for 94-96 Impala SS's. Stock springs are not readily available. I had spent many hours this past Thanksgiving researching exactly which springs would suit my needs the best. I had tried to replace the springs about 7 years or so before by trying to match the stock spring rates. I had failed miserably and had been living with handling and ride quality that could only be described as absurd. The new springs and shocks are good for aesthetics and handling, but bad for ground clearance and utility, like trying to get a jack under the frame with a flat tire. Also, I have yet to install limiting straps on the rear axle, so if you jack the car up the springs fall out, which requires two jacks to reinstall correctly, and I only had one jack. Fortunately I had been keeping a growing list for about two weeks before the trip of what tools I should take and had a trunk full, including cover-alls. I tried as hard as I could to plug the hole in the tire without taking the wheel off, but there just wasn't enough leverage. I even used a long pry bar I had brought with me and it just wasn't going to happen. I finally got sick of laying on the gravel and thought I remembered there being a concrete platform a way down the road where I had stopped to take a picture. I put all the tools up, pumped the tire up and threw the pump in the car and tore off to the concrete pad as quick as I could before the tire went flat, because the leak wasn't a particularly slow one.



When I got there I found that I have a very poor memory and the lot was gravel too. After a lot of messing around I finally got the car jacked up and took the tire off. It took three plugs to seal the hole, which held the rest of the trip.





I left the center cap off of the tire and put it in the trunk. Late that night, trying to make up time from my tire escapade in Amarillo, using the Texas Interstate speed limits to my advantage, I hit something that might be considered a pot hole, but I believe a pot canyon may be a better descriptor. It hit hard enough I expected the tire to blow out. It actually knocked the GPS charger out of the cigarette lighter. When I stopped for the night I discovered the hole had claimed my driver side trim ring as well as my remaining front center cap. After this, I removed my sole remaining center cap in the rear before I lost it, too.



I knew the camera wouldn't capture the grandeur of most of all I was seeing, but I took a few photos along the way regardless. One thing I can say about all of these states is that the driving is like a dream. Everyone stays in the right lane unless they pass. If you do come up behind someone, they let you over and they don't get angry about it. It was like I was living in a fantasy land.





At some point in a man's life, he needs to figuratively and literally stand on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. A gift shop was playing Eagle's music on loop and I was surprised to find that despite being a Tuesday in February, a line from a song that was, at the time of my trip, 48 years old, that wasn't even the title to the song, still brought in a steady stream of visitors the entire time I was there and while I was eating lunch at the cafe across the street. People from all over the world were trickling through. This attraction appeared to be the only thing keeping this town from disappearing.





I have owned a K5 Blazer since I was 17 years old and have always had an appreciation for them. That being the case, I think this picture in front of the Colorado River may be the coolest picture of a K5 I've ever seen. That little blue speck is The Blazer, the deep gorge behind it is the river.





When I woke up that morning I had to fight through a snow storm and almost the entire day was overcast. I was beginning to doubt I was going to make it to the Grand Canyon, or if I did, that I would be able to see anything. Shortly before I arrived the skies cleared away and the temperatures were in the high 50s. There were very few people there and in many places I was the only one around. It was perfect.





If you're looking for a place to find quite and solitude, the only thing better than the mid-west is the mid-west in February. There were very long stretches of Route 66 where you will encounter zero to few people at all. Unlike the great plains where some vegetation may grow, these areas are inexplicably enormous and there is practically nothing to block your view. It is easy to spot a single person walking 10 miles away. On one stretch during some rain my wipers quit working. No problem, you can just park in the highway and get out and fix them, and take some pictures while you're there, because you won't encounter anyone. It turned out the wipers were barely grazing the window molding and had gotten stuck. I turned one the blades over and the problem was solved.





I got to the Hoover Dam before the sun came up. The original highway used to pass over the dam, but now the dam has been bypassed by a new four lane highway which can be seen crossing the river over the new bridge in the back of the photo below. To view the dam you now must pass a security checkpoint. Other than those guards and whatever crew was inside the dam, I was the only person there. I had complete free reign to walk around and park wherever I wanted. Eventually the employees began to trickle in for work. Before the sun rose I sat my camera on the very edge of a rock wall and sat the exposure for 20 seconds. I held my finger on the strap just in case the wind blew it off. I think the result turned out pretty cool. The picture below is much lighter than it was in person. The dam was visible, but much darker in person at this point.

Vetteman61

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The parking garage was closed and the only way I was only able to get a picture of the deep side of the dam was to park in the road, again, not a problem because no one was there, and walk to the side and take a picture. All of the places I could get a good view of the deep side were closed off. Below is another view of the new bridge. I accidentally bypassed Boulder City because of the new highway and my very old and non-updated GPS didn't know the new road was there until it was too late. I didn't bother backtracking to go check it out.





I entered Las Vegas around rush hour. On the Las Vegas strip a cop got behind me and followed me the entire way through. If anyone got between us he cut them off to get back behind me. If I changed lanes he forced his way behind me again. Once car even pulled right out in front of me, slammed on the brakes and blocked half my lane, causing to officer and me to half to go around him, but the officer did not address this at all. This continued the entire length of the strip. I stopped at a store shortly after and the clerk, finding out I was from out of state, warned me that the cops there like to follow tourists around and give them tickets. I agreed with his warning. I didn't bother taking a second look through Vegas as I was pretty off-put by their authorities and I noticed that any direction beyond the strip appeared to be a nasty and a pretty bad looking part of town, so I got out a Dodge, less literally than I would later on.



It was at this point I had to make a choice. I had wanted to head to California and hit the Pacific Coast Highway, where it runs next to the Pacific Ocean. I would have had to push really hard to have completed this leg of trip in the time I had left. Also, I had met some people at gas stations that had just come from up north and they said they had encountered some pretty bad weather. Had I made that leg I would have had to hit two solid days of hard interstate just to make it back, so I decided to turn back at this point and take highways the entire way back. Looking back, I believe that was the best decision.



People who don't live in "The South," are given the idea that we have sprawling farms and fields and dirt roads everywhere. This is all a Hollywood myth, particularly after the invasion of the rest of the country moving into the area. It's difficult to throw a rock without hitting a subdivision or at least a house, so I really loved and appreciated the seemingly endless amount of land and highways that were just open for exploring. Back home anything that's not a state road with tons of driveways has a gate or blockade. Here, you were truly just free to go wherever you wanted. It was great.





At one point I was on an old highway which had been bypassed by the new highway. Though the yellow line was still visible in some parts the old road, it had ceased to be maintained. When the asphalt gave way they would just fill it with gravel. The road was very straight and long but I had to drive slow because you never knew when you would drop off into a pit and bottom out or gouge a hole in the oil pan and what pavement was there was badly broken. At one point I began to see cow manure on the road and realized the area I was in was so vast that there were no fences and the cattle were free to cross or stand in the road at any point.



I don't have an external thermometer on the car to tell me the outside temperature, but the Dakota Digital dash will tell me the temperature of the air right before it enters the throttle body. As I entered the Rocky Mountains the intake temperature showed -1 degrees. I'm not sure what the actual outside temperature was, but it was a very different type of cold than I am used to. It seemed to me to be a far less humid cold. 13 degrees here felt more like 35 degrees back home.





The speed limit in Utah is 80 miles per hour and most of the backroads and highways have a speed limit of 65-70 miles per hour, but on this day the crosswinds were so strong that you didn't want to push it much past that. It was very common for most tractor trailers to end up partially in your lane as you went by them due to the wind gusts. In the foothills of the Rockies there were a lot of twisty, two lane roads with a speed limits of 60-65 miles per hour. They were well kept, but there were some wet spots. Back home, without a doubt, there would have been black ice somewhere. Even with the new Hotchkis and Bilstein suspension I thought I was pushing it pretty hard, and then I started getting passed by women in their SUVs going 70 miles per hour around these insane turns going up and down hills with snow on both sides of the road and damp, wet road in the shade. I suppose the locals are pretty used to this sort of thing. I started following a SUV and trying to keep pace, but eventually lagged behind. Everything I've encountered on roads thus far in my life had told me I was going to be eating guardrails at any second, so I slowed down and enjoyed the scenery at a pace that was more fun. Below is approaching the top of the Rockies. The highest point on the road I was on was approximately 11 thousand feet. Again, the camera cannot capture the magnitude of what your eyes behold in person. For me, it's not everyday I'm almost as high as the clouds.





Kansas has an enormous network of gravel roads which serve as main roadways. When I was a teenager one of my favorite things to do was drive and find gravel roads. Again, another myth of the south is that there are lots of gravel roads. Almost all the gravel roads have been paved, so this would have been heaven for me growing up. If you drive through Kansas and you don't go get sideways on some gravel roads you are not a real car guy. Below is a picture of a rare ditch.





Eventually I literally got out of Dodge... City Kansas.





As I began to see the end, I took a bit more time explore things. I enjoyed seeing all the many different cities and town. It was interesting to see how many towns used to have a nice, flourishing communities but are now all but abandoned and falling apart. Often times what is left are very cool buildings and streets with no one around to care if you just park in the middle of the road and take some pictures. I headed home and as soon as I crossed the state line, literally the moment my wheels crossed the line, even though it was 8:30 pm, the interstate slowed with congestion, people began driving like idiots and the intense frustration of over population that I had so quickly forgotten about for the last five days immediately came back.

ls1nova71

iTrader: (4)

Wow! Sounds like you had an awesome trip, all mishaps aside. Glad it worked out for you! Did you figure out what you ran over to put such a big hole in the tire? I once ran over something on I40 just east of Checotah OK, and heard a loud "bang", stopped, didn't see anything, so continued on to Norman OK, where I eventually pulled out a screwdriver, so apparently the loud noise was the handle breaking off and hitting the inside of the rear fender!

bobcratch

Awesome trip thanks for sharing! Glad that you were able to enjoy the car you've been working on for so long.

sowbelle

Thanks for sharing pics of your adventure
Great car and story

Michael Yount

iTrader: (1)

Really, really enjoyed that.....glad you did too!!!

CattleAc

iTrader: (7)

Yes, me too...X1000!!

One of the top ten on my wish list is to do "Route 66" and find as much of the old road as possible...

Thanks so much for the trip report...

AAIIIC

iTrader: (19)

Fantastic road trip story with some cool pics! Thanks for sharing!

Vetteman61

iTrader: (1)

I never did find out what I ran over. At first I had attributed it to the gravel road I was on shortly before getting there but then I realized I had stopped in front of those 3 Cadillacs to take a picture just before getting to the real Cadillac Ranch. If the hole had been there then I definitely would have heard it. It must have been something on the side of the road where I pulled off at The Ranch.

One thing I meant to mention and forgot that I found noteworthy was the living conditions on a lot of the Indian Reservations. There were many small shacks or campers that were very, very small, randomly arranged in small patches in the desert. Some of them had crudely arranged wood nailed to them to add a room and it appears some where nothing more than people sleeping in truckbeds.

The old engine ran like a top the whole way. In the whole trip I used one quart of oil, which I thought was pretty decent considering I was driving between 12 and 14 hours a day, almost all driving. I would shut it off to get gas or eat lunch, but not much more than that most of the time.

Michael Yount

iTrader: (1)

Fuel mileage?

Vetteman61

iTrader: (1)

It averaged 20 mpg highway and city. Some were a little over 21 and some were high 18s or low 19s.

Mikes64

I live along the Route between St. Louis and Springfield, sometime a person takes for granted the sites along 66, thanks for the pics. Sounds like a good time.