Finally! A smart engine designer!

Engineering and Design are two different disciplines that seem to rarely intersect, but I was pleasantly surprised tonight to find such a confluence in my garage. My wife has a a 2006 Jeep Liberty CRD. The time has come for its first oil and filter change, so I crawled under and found what you see above.

Finally, some engineer that designs engines actually changes their own oil! Take a look at what you see above. What a refreshing thing to find! At first I saw a huge skid plate covering the oil pan and I groaned, imagining having to remove the plate via a bunch of bolts to get at the drain plug and then dig goodness knows how deep to find the filter. But as I crawled further back I found behind the skid plate a nice tight package of the oil drain bolt and filter, sitting right next to each other.

It was a simple drain, and very clean since I could put the drain pan in one spot and get both the oil drain and filter out at one time.

This engine, though sold by Jeep, a division of Daimler-Chrysler is neither American or German engineered… it is Italian(!)

So whomever that Italian engineer might be, my hat is off to you! Thanks!

GTTSR: Arriving Home


Above: Brian Medley and myself arrive in Monroe, WA, where Brian’s wife picked him up.

The final day, September 11, 206 we woke up in Kalispell, Montana, and went to sleep in our own beds. Me in Arlington, WA, Brian in Sammamish, WA, and my Dad in Colorado. Mom & Dad drove their truck from Big Sky to their plave in Vail, while Brian & I left Montana, went through Idaho, and Washington along US Highway 2. A great road.

I woke up a couple of hours ahead of Brian and worked on some photo edits and website work while he slept. Once he woke up, we hit the road almost immediately. We decided to have breakfast in Libby, Montana, where I’d had lunch with the rally a few days before. We arrived in Libby, at breakfast at a small cafe, bought 3 quarts of Castrol for the Jaguar (which promptly drank two quarts), and motored west through Idaho, with Brian at the wheel.

Brian drove from Libby to just west of Spokane, with me catching a nap here and there, and occasionally shooting wrap-around composite photos, which I’m sure drove Brian nuts. You will note there is something unusually similar about these two pictures. 😉 My only issue with Brian was that he drove too slow, but hey, I’m sure he was just being conscientious since this was a nice car, and this section of the drive was perhaps the most densely populated.

Brian lived in Spokane for several years so knew a shortcut around the main part of the town. Highway 2 goes right through the middle of the city with a “Aurora Avenue” style string of traffic lights, so we bypassed downtown Spokane via a route around the northwest quadrant of the city and arrived back on US 2 out near the airport. We gassed up and switched drivers and I thoroughly enjoyed the run west on US 2 through central Washington. I had never driven this section of US 2 and was surprised at both the quality of the road surface and the scarcity of traffic! After I was able to work my way to the front of a pack of cars stuck behind a few slow moving vehicles, I put the hammer down and had the 65E chewing up miles like nobody’s business. The only time I dropped to the limit was approaching towns where the limit dropped to 25 MPH or so. But once out of the town and into the open road, back went the speedo to familiar territory in the upper reaches. A ways into this, I looked in my rear view and saw a black car approaching very fast. I asked Brian to keep an eye on it. When it got within a quarter mile or so I took advantage of the reverse slope of a hill to brake hard and drop us down to just above the speed limit and let the fast approaching car reveal itself. Turns out it was just a Dodge Neon with somebody in a big hurry at the wheel. They passed us and I waited until they got about a quarter mile ahead and matched their speed. A rabbit! I love that. With a good detector it is the best possible situation for high-speed runs. They take point and most of the risk, and you can run like the wind. After a bit of this my rabbit either figured out what I was doing, or lost their nerve, and slowed to 75-80 MPH. In turn I rode up behind them but did not pass. Hoping to psych them into taking off again. No dice… or at least so I thought, when a County Cop crested the hill ahead of us, radar off. Both us braked instantly down to the limit, and it is obvious that this sighting set off the “D’oh!” alarm in the Sheriff’s head. Within seconds after passing us my detector announced that he’d turned on his radar. Too late to tag us, but I also knew that he continued east, and did not turn around. The sighting did spook my rabbit however, and they completely lost courage. Emboldened by my Valentine I happily passed the Neon and took the rabbit position and once again revved the XK up to “ludicrous speed.” The road was gloriously empty, with only the occasional town to slow us to a limit. Through the Coulee and Pothole country and shortly to the Great River Of The West itself. On the downhill grade to the Columbia we ran into some traffic and managed to make some passes that left the Neon far behind. The time between Spokane and Wenatchee seemed to fly by.

We stopped for a late lunch in Leavenworth. We had burgers at Gustav’s, a great place. It was a nice leisurely lunch after a hard driving day. Only the short hop over Steven’s Pass awaited us. We both called home and informed them of our proximity. Brian arranged a pickup in Monroe, a few miles from US 2’s terminus in Everett. Monroe was a perfect departure point as it was at the edge of Pugetopolis, and easy acces to both Sammamish and Arlington. Especially goodfor me as I can take little-used back roads north from Monroe through the foothills to Arlington.

I took the wheel for the sprint over the pass, and enjoyable run up Tumwater Canyon, then up to the ski area at the summit, then plunging down to the Skykomish river and out of the mountains and to Monroe. We met Brian’s wife at the Burger King along US 2, said our goodbye’s, and I topped up the 65E’s tank with some high-octane fuel (it was still knocking from that tankful of 87 octane in Helmville, MT) and ran up my usual “back way” to Arlington and home.


Above: The 65E cooling down in my driveway after the long hard week of running all over the Northwest.

What a great week. What a wonderful vacation!

Big thanks go to:

My Dad, for getting me hooked on cars, and being my co-driver for this event.
Jim Sitton, Farnum Alston and the whole GTTSR crew for putting on a rally in the great state of Montana!
Close enough to drive too, far enough away to be a real vacation!

Brian Medley, for taking the time to come along. A great travelling companion.

Most of all to my wife and family for letting me go. 9/9/06 was my 18th wedding anniversary, and I was absent, out having fun in my old car.

The Going To The Sun Rally, 2006

I’ve always wanted a vintage car rally to happen in the northwest. In 2004 I heard about the inaugural run of the Going To The Sun Rally in Montana, and I signed up that day. Finally here was a rally that wouldn’t involve jet lag or towing. I could drive to it. Add to that Montana, one of the last true open road places in America. Sign me up.

I was all ready to go, but unfortunately the car wasn’t. The 65E’s engine was knocking, due to improperly installed wrist pin bushings by the car’s original restorer and I spent the summer of 2005 getting the engine sorted out and having a less-than-satisfactory discussion with the car’s original restorer, who it turned out had completely botched the restoration! By late September the Jaguar was back together again and running well through its break-in period, but we had missed the GTTSR 2005. As a “Miss Congeniality” prize, I was able to attend the 2005 Colorado Grand as a co-driver in my parent’s 300sl. I had a GREAT time, but I missed the inaugural run of the GTTSR. Thankfully I was able to provide a few-month’s warning to the GTTSR’s organizers, and they were able to find somebody to fill our vacancy.

I vowed that the second year would not pass me by, and signed up early for the 2006 GTTSR. I filled in all the paperwork and sat anxiously by the computer awaiting my acceptance in the rally. It arrived in early March… we were in!

By now, the car was all broken in and running well. So I planned on driving it to and from the rally as a nice book-end to the event. Arlington, WA to Red Lodge, MT is a hard single day, or two easy days worth of driving. My father, who signed on as co-driver informed me that he would assist in driving the car out, and I called a professional acquaintance, Brian Medley, who I knew as a serious gear-head (whenever we met in the context of our jobs the conversation worked its way to cars) so I know he’d be interested. Sure enough, he agreed.

The plans were set, the time crept slowly through the summer. The week before the rally I brought the car up to Canada to my trusty engine builder Geoff Pickard of English Classic Cars for one last look-see, and the car came out of it transformed! Running better than ever, we packed it up and headed east. As I have been doing since 1998, I have brought along a camera and updated my website every night along the way with words and pictures. This allows my “regular readers” to follow along in near real-time as the event occurs, and then allows for a historical record of the event after it is done.

I’ve created this page as a “table of contents” so to speak, a launching pad for navigation of the rally pages. Before you navigate, it is best to have your browser window set as wide as possible… some of the pictures are large. You can follow these links to read along chronologically with the whole rally story of the 2006 GTTSR. Clicking a picture or link will open an new window for that page. You can leave this window open behind and return to it to read the next day. I hope you enjoy reading it and seeing the pictures as much as I enjoyed creating them:

Day One: Driving from Arlington to Missoula

Day Two: Driving from Missoula to Big Sky

Day Three: Driving from Big Sky to Red Lodge via Yellowstone and the Beartooth Highway

Official Rally Day One: Driving from Red Lodge to Big Sky via the Beartooth Highway and Yellowstone (sound familiar?)

Official Rally Day Two: Big Sky to Missoula, via Virginia City and the Big Hole

Official Rally Day Three: Missoula to Whitefish, via Libby, and the “Better Than Sex Highway”

Official Rally Day Four: Whitefish to Helena, via Glacier National Park – The Going To The Sun Road

Official Rally Day Five: Helena to Red Lodge, Rally Done!

Returning Home: Red Lodge to Kalispell, via Bozeman and backroads

Home: Kalispell, to Arlington via US 2

If you prefer “blog style” backwards chronology, just use this link.

Feel free to login and provide comment on any section, photograph, etc. If I’ve misspelled somebody’s name or car, let me know.

Enjoy!

–chuck

Back Home

Arrived home fine the other day. I’ll update the blog from the rally as soon as I can find the time.

I put the car up on my lift the day after I arrived home. The purpose of which was to change the oil and oil filter, a well deserved treat for the 65E which had just torn up almost three thousand miles of road. I also wanted to have a look around and see how the car was doing, mechanically. The only things we noted during the rally were:

1. a minor vibration in the front end (the car is in need of an alignment.)
2. Some odd issues in the brakes
<  >a . We had lost some brake fluid in the front reservoir (a really odd thing!)
<  >b. It was pulling a bit to the right when braking (just barely.)

So when the car was up and draining oil, I had a look around. First I noted a small drop of brake fluid below the right front tire and looking up, sure enough found that one of the brake lines had failed. Thankfully not in a catastrophic manner, but failed nonetheless.

Here is a photo:

Note that the line, which is a stainless steel braided middle, teflon core, and some sort of tubing on the outside sheath, has swollen with brake fluid to roughly 2X its original size. Obviously the teflon core has failed in some way. Of course this is a part from “Classic Jaguar“, the very same restoration shop that bodged my cars restoration, and provided the other craptacular parts in my car that have failed.

Sigh. I feel like I am doomed to spening my life correcting all the errors Dan Mooney has perpetrated upon this car.

Car Photo of the Day

I won’t be watching any anniversary TV specials. To be honest I do not really want to re-live any of that day five years ago. Today I’ll be driving the 65E from Kalispell to Arlington, a distance of ~600 miles. My only notation of the event will be this photo. It was taken in 2003, in Vergennes, Vermont. It was on a Jaguar XJS if I recall corectly. Somehow it wasn’t in its assigned parking spot in 2001 I guess.

I’ll post an update after I arrive home.