That’s a GOES sat photo image of the area covering WA/ID/MT… notice the fires in the Blue Mountains in WA, and throughout central Idaho. I see a few fires in Montana too… could be a smoky week.
Day One: Arlington to Missoula
In Missoula MT at the moment. Had a great drive, over Stevens Pass on US2, then WA SR28 to Quincy, then 281 to I-90. Then 60-some miles of I-90 to Ritzville, then through a hazy, smoky Palouse along WA SR 261 to US 12. Lunch in Pomerory, where the haze and smoke from a nearby fire was astounding. We left the smoke when we climbed to the Alpowa summit west of Clarkson. In Lewiston I stopped for gas and noted that I had seen 20 MPG on the last tank. Not bad for the E-type! The next 50 miles were spent trying to get at the head of the car queue to get free for the best of US-12 through Idaho.
It was even better than that map looks! 77 miles of never-ending curves. I counted the 1/10ths of a mile when the steering wheel was slack, and it totalled about 5 of those 77 miles, and never more than 3/10ths of a mile was it ever continuously straight… I was always tugging the wheel left or right. It was heavenly. 🙂
Oh, and I only saw three other cars on that stretch.
There was some smoke in the air and it was also getting towards the end of the day… a sort of early and long-lasting dusk. As such, I was not confident enough to push the car to “Ludicrous Speed”… Instead I was driving aggressively, but not anywhere near the limits of the machine. Why? I really did NOT want to have a close encounter with a deer… or an elk, or a moose, or even a bear (this road skirts the northern edge of one of the largest Grizzly bear habitats on the planet. Part of it was on fire, so who knows what was wandering over the road!)
Even with my eyes playing “scanner” it was still a very enjoyable ride. I averaged 60-80 MPH at all times, and probably touched the brakes fewer than a dozen times. Two of those times were for some rather large deer prancing across my path. Thankfully I saw both with plenty of time to slow to a stop without any panic.
After I scraped all the bugs off my windscreen at the top of Lolo Pass, the road lost some altitude and had some long straights where I was able to get it up to a ton and just hold. it. almost. Forever.
Truly wonderful.
My parents are tagging along as well. They spent the past week visiting friends on Vancouver Island. They drove. Dad alternated between driving or riding with mom, and coming along with me. I took this montage on I-90 somewhere in central Washington:
We’re rolling!
We’re off! If I can get online tonight, I’ll update the site, if not, be patient.
–chuck
Car Picture of the Day: Happy Driver
My Dad took this photo in June 2000. That’s me behind the wheel of his 1954 Jaguar XK 120.
We were on the 3rd day of the La Carrera Nevada, which was some inspired lunacy involving pre-1955 cars and a whole lot of open (and some that should have been closed) roads. At this point, if I recall correctly we had just left the pavement and were travelling along at 60+ MPH on a pretty nice gravel road. We were travelling through yet another huge and virtually empty, uninhabited Nevada valley. I had turned to my father a few moments before and said “I don’t think this is what Sir William had in mind when he built this car.” 😉
Ye Olde XK was not designed to be an off-road vehicle, but it held up admirably that week, finishing the rally that killed many more supposedly rugged machines (big “Yank Tanks” of the early 50s.) You can read the full story in the “goolsbee.org content links” to the right. Six years later and we haven’t changed a bit, off again to participate in another bit of inspired lunacy. We leave in one day. I can barely contain myself.
Winding Road
I love the magazine Winding Road. It is an online, PDF distributed magazine for car enthusiasts. They have a very driver focussed view, with an open mind about things like Diesel fuelled passenger cars, and an appreciation for automotive history. Sound familiar? 😉
Anyway, they had a mention in last month’s issue’s editorial that covered both Brock Yates (his recent firing from Car and Driver) and the Going To The Sun Rally. I wrote a letter to them mentioning Mr. Yates and my experiences with him, and the fact that we’re attending the GTTSR too. They printed it – along with a photo of my car, from my diary of the Mille Autunno two years ago. Always cool to see your name in “print”.
Kudos to Steve Mielnicki (MINI driver) for turning me onto Winding Road in April ’05!
Vanishing Point
T-minus 2 days before I point the bonnet of the 65E east and head for Montana.
This photo was taken in Idaho, in the Lemhi valley if I recall correctly due south of Salmon. I’ll be cutting across the horizon left to right a good ways north of here on Highway 12 late afternoon Saturday, or maybe early Sunday as we make our way to Missoula, then on to Red Lodge for the Going To The Sun rally. Should be a blast. The car is all ready to go, and I can barely keep my mind on work. 😉
Purrrring once again…
apoligies for the crappy cell-cam image… I left my good camera at home by mistake!)
I took yesterday off work, with the specific purpose of finishing the prep work for the Going To The Sun Rally (and the nearly 1800 mile round trip there and back.)
At the crack of dawn I drove the 65E, in overcast skies and light mist, up to Chilliwack BC, to visit Geoff Pickard at English Classic Cars. Geoff rebuilt my engine last summer and it had developed a rattle in the head since then. He had also fixed one of my rear hubs in the spring and we wanted to have a look at the opposite one to make sure it had not suffered the same fate as its twin.
The drive was uneventful, and I arrived promtly at 8:45 AM. We went to work on a list of things as the engined cooled. Geoff went into the hubs and I started on my list of things to do.
If you recall, my driver’s side rear hub did not get properly looked at in the post-flood resto by Classic Jaguar and had seen the bronze bushings disintegrate under the lubrication of a fine paste of bayou mud and rainwater. The passenger side hub was just the same, though with less damage. Geoff replaced the chewed up bronze bushings with stock needle bearings and his witches brew of lubricating slippery goo.
I replaced a tie rod gaiter on the passenger-side front wheel. In my winter lubrication routine in March I found a torn gaiter there (a “TeamCJ” mechanic had bent the safety wire back on itself when they snipped it off, eventually causing the wire to puncture the boot), replaced it with a temporary one, and finally had a proper one from SNG to replace it. So Geoff was futzing with the rear hub, I was futzing up front. He finished a full hub rebuild in the time it took me to replace a tie rod gaiter (Geoff is as fast as an F1 pit crew, I’m the world’s slowest mechanic!) so he checked the opposite front wheel and found a significant amount of free play in the ball joint of the top wishbone. He had that apart in no time and found the ball joint was improperly shimmed. We had that sorted out by the time I had my wheel back on.
I then got a bunch of lightbulbs replaced, and my right turn signal working again. As I was sitting on the floor Geoff nearly had an aneurysm when he saw the screws I had pulled out of the signal lamp cover of the car. At first I didn’t know what he was going on about, but he pointed to the three completely different sized, shaped, and colored screws I just had removed from the car and shouted “Those are NOT proper!” (Have I ever mentioned that Geoff is a bit picky about Jaguars?) He rushed off to a parts bin, brought back a box of screws and pulled one out: “This is a proper screw. Find two more and then toss *those three* (he sneered that point) over there on the bench.” I dutifully followed his direction, not wanting to insult him. 😉
A few more minor tasks complete, we took a break for lunch. After lunch the engine had cooled sufficiently to have a look at the head. Not wanting to be in Geoff’s way, I went about the task of changing the oil in the differential. It is the only part of my car that consistently leaks. No matter where I park, it never fails to leave a SINGLE drop of oil. It never leaves two, but I figured one drop here, and one drop there eventually leads to not enough left behind. I crawled under the car and opened it up, to be pleasantly surprised to find a NOT empty diff. 😉 While I was under the car, making unhappy noises (anyone who has ever re-filled an E-type diff knows what I mean by “unhappy noises”), Geoff was above the engine, making happy noises.
Based on the noise the engine was making we both suspected a tappet or tappet shim being loose. As it turns out the tappets were fine, and it fact all still within .0001″ of where they were originally set last summer. The noise was found to be a loose top timing chain on the exhaust side of the bottom chain drive. An easy fix! That was all sorted out by the time I had the diff refilled. While down there I also fixed a broken exhaust hanger. We then flushed and refilled the radiator since my belt-throwing adventure earlier this summer had boiled off quite a bit of coolant and I was unsure of my mixture. Better safe than sorry.
All buttoned up, we took it for a test drive. I insisted Geoff drive since I already know the car but wanted him to get a sense for it. The engine sounded *wonderful!* I haven’t had much time in the passenger seat of the 65E the past few years, but it was fun to be there with Geoff driving. He damn near broke my spine a few times, punching the loud button and snapping my head back!
On the way back he went to honk the horn (at a driver backing an SUV out of a blind parking space) and found it inoperative. So we fixed that when we arrived back at the shop. Troubleshooting from the horns back to the steering column, where we finally found the fault in the contact between the button and the inside metal of the steering wheel hub… literally the last place we could have looked! I climbed back behind the wheel and pointed the car south towards home around 3pm.
The fine US customs people at Sumas decided to inspect every fricking nook at cranny of the car! =\ I have never had a problem with the Jag at the border, but I must have fallen on the random “search this car” number this time. They looked in the boot, under the boot, though my toolbox, the interior of the car, etc. What a PITA!
In Sedro-Woolley, an oddly named town in Skagit county, I nearly had an accident when a person in a complete beater pulled out in front of me making a left turn out of a grocery store onto SR 20/9, where I was driving along at 45 MPH or so. I came within inches of hitting them, the brakes locked and me skidding in a cloud of smoke. The experience shook me up pretty bad and I had to pull off into a gas station and try to calm myself down.
I was hoping for an uneventful rest of my ride, but it was not to be… as I approached Arlington the skies opened up and I found myself in a downpour! I had nowhere to pull over and raise the top, but the tonneau cover was on, at least covering the passenger side. I just kept on driving. Unfortunately as I arrived in town, the traffic thickened up to where the speed-effect of the OTS shape no longer kept me out of the rain. 🙁 I called home and asked my son to have the barn door open for me when I arrived so I could at least get under cover swiftly.
After my arrival, I did a quick oil and filter change, along with replacing my temporary fuel pump with the native-pressure