tulaweb

Thanks to everyone who followed my adventure and offered help and/or good wishes, notably Rabin, andré, Joe, Jeff and Arun. I was out by the cars today and someone walked by, looked at them, and said oh look brother and sister.

Two cars with one good engine which is better than one car with no good engine.

The Fort McHenry Tunnel beneath Baltimore Harbor. This tunnel was completed in 1985 just like my cars.

The beltway around Washington, DC

Coming into Richmond, VA.

The sign says this is 55 miles into Virginia. After all night on the bus, I made frequent stops to rest. Just south of Richmond I took about a 45 minute nap which was very refreshing.

The windshield gasket was split so that corner was loose. It still seemed to be sealed OK but I knew I would be driving through a lot of very bad weather, and it looked like it might also flop around, so I taped it in place before starting out. After the rain started it would have been too late.

The Diesel fuel in North Carolina was around $4.09 - $4.15. I only needed a couple of gallons to top it off there. This was South Hill VA. Didn’t need any fuel there, just a little break. Fuel in NJ is cheaper than most states and I made it there on one tank.

Given the weather I didn't exactly have a lot of scenic views to document, but I'll post a few pictures starting with the beginning.

The EPA says your station wagon with the 4sp auto should do better than the sedan with a 3sp auto, and my 5sp should of course do better still. The EPA isn't in the ball park on any of them but I guess you can just use their numbers for relative comparison. I generally expect around 30 on a diesel and this one seems to be running particularly smoothly. Besides, the speedometer was cheating you out of a few MPG. The speedometer on my blue car (I'll have to come up with a naming convention now that I have 2 1985 TD sedans) has been right on the money compared to the GPS, but the Grey car's is significantly off. I wonder why. We've of course speculated that the instrument cluster might have been changed, given the extremely low miles on the odometer, but then there is some evidence in the service records that it might have only been driven a couple of thousand miles a year for a while so extrapolating that out, I guess it's possible those are original miles. Then that raises the question of how it got so (as Joe puts it) "crusty".

It came out to 30.8 mpg but I notice that the speedometer reads different than the GPS. When the speedometer read 70 the GPS said 63 so I think the mileage actualy comes out to 34.2. A hour of stop and go didn't help either. Though I didn't make it all the way home on one tank, I did get back to NJ before filling up.

I just got back. Round trip door to door 29 hours. Much of Maryland, Washington DC, Delaware, and New Jersey were under Tornado and Flash Flood watches as I drove through. Given how I got into this boat in the first place, you can imagine that didn't make me very happy. Around Baltimore I had stop and go traffic for about an hour which turned out to be a car fire. As soon as I passed the burned out car and all the emergency vehicles, that traffic cleared right out. For a while the rain was so heavy that most everyone was driving about 30 MPH with their flashers on. By the time I got to New Jersey the drivers side mirror was hanging by a thread and the other one wouldn't stay in a useful position but otherwise the car did fine. In the torrential rain there was a limit to how much fiddling I could do with the mirrors so I just had to look over my shoulders carefully. I'll document the trip a little more after I get something to eat and maybe a little sleep.

So far so good. I'm in Virginia now. Joe left me with most of a tank of fuel, but I stopped and topped it off so I could calculate the milage. I forgot my cup holder so I got a new one for something like $1.98. Otherwise all is going smooth. I did disover that the cruse control doesn't disengage when you hit the brake.

They did weigh my suitcase with the tools. At home it weighed 49 lbs 5oz. The guy behind me got charged $20 extra for checking a bag over 50 lbs. No charge for me. Of course I've got a ball peen hammer and an LED work light in my carry-on, which they didn't weigh. I don't think that hammer would have gotten through a TSA inspection. I got several hours sleep on the bus from NY to Richmond. Wasn't exactly the most comfortable "bed" I've ever slept in but any sleep is better than no sleep. Got into Richmond about 50 minutes early, so I had to wait about 2 hours for the connecting bus to Raleigh. Left right on time at 4:10 AM so I'm due in at 7:00 AM. Both buses have been less than half full so I'm able to spread out. Nobody behind me on this one, so I don't feel guilty putting the seat back. Hopefully if I get a little more sleep I'll be good for driving straight back, but I won't be shy about stopping if I'm too sleepy.

Made it to NYC in plenty of time. Hauling a suitcase full of tools from Penn Station to the Port Authority Bus Terminal was a chore. No more of those Peugeot cabs they had once upon a time, and it's only 10 blocks, so walking was the easiest way. The bus is less than half full and I've got the exit row to myself so I've got plenty of leg and elbow room. They have Electrical outlets at each seat and wifi as well. It's not a Peugeot seat but not bad.

I'm on the train now. It'll be a total of about 15 hours from my door to Joe's and I guess about 9 and a half hours driving back.

I'm changing Buses in Richmond on the way down with a one hour layover, but that's at 4:00 AM so I guess I won't meet Steffen at that time.

Notice I've got a can of PB Blaster packed.

46 lbs of stuff that, other than the license plates, I hopefully won't need.

I'm going to be well east of the Blue Ridge Parkway. That would be a long way out of the way. Unfortunately it looks like it's going to be raining most, if not all, of the way back so I don't know how picturesque it will be but I'll do my best to document it.

Tomorrow I'm going to NC to bring Joe's (JunktionFET) 505 STI diesel back to NJ. The engine should be identical to my hydrolocked engine so eventually the two cars will become one. I'm taking the bus down, so I can bring 50 lbs of tools with me. I first put in what I thought would be most useful and it weighed 57 lbs. I took out the clutch and transmission shop manual, keeping the engine and electrical manuals. I also removed some large sockets, and an impact wrench, and got it down to 46 lbs. I've got my bus tickets and license plates. I'll put my camera, GPS, and laptop in my carry-on. It's supposed to rain all the way back so we'll see how much I can do to document the trip, but hopefully all will go smoothly.

I think my thought is to remove the bumper and put a steel channel bar bolted to the bumper shocks, where the bumper came off and mount the tow bar brackets just inboard of the shock mounts. That assumes that the shocks would take that.

Assuming I'm not going to be towing it through deep snow or anything extreme, I'm not going to pull the bumper shocks apart am I?

Not my boat, but my friend who owns it pretty much only takes it out if I can come along. He relies on both my sailing and mechanical skills. He really is competent at both but seems to feel uncomfortable without me there. There's a lot of advantages to being able to sail a lot without having to own a boat. This is a Columbia 28.

In a few days I will have two 505s but only one good engine between them. Since I'm going to be playing musical cars I obtained a tow bar, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to attach it. Is the front bumper a safe place to attach the tow bar?