So, yesterday November 7 at 1:00PM in Casa Grande AZ, I was posting about the TBRRD sliding door sill refresh done in the desert on the 6th outside Yuma.
Today it is 10:30AM November 8, and I am outside Fort Stockton TX at a McDonalds with ATT Wifi that does not allow me to upload all these pretty pictures to Photobucket, I HATE WAYPORT/ATT HOSTED BY McDONALDS!
It was a chilly 57* when I stepped out of the Casa Grande Starbucks on E Florence Blvd, so I said to heck with replacing the spring plate bushings, hardly any sun left anyhow (and I was embarrassed by how I had dropped their average daytime temperature by 22* just by my presence).
I merged onto I-10 E and found a decent tailwind propelling me along at 62mph with head temps right around 390-410*, cain't beat that. Drove to Tucson in the afternoon light and filled up. 15.9mpg. Hmmm, head temps aren't too bad, let's put the original German carburetor back on.
Mountains to the east of me ... :
Mountains to the west ... :
... and here I am, stuck in the middle with you:
15 minutes later after a wind-whipped carburetor replacement (a passing pick-up driver queried me, "having problems?" "naw, it's time to swap carburetors again", drives off still querulous), I am on the interstate again at 62mph with head temps now consistently at 410-420* with a 424* up the hill to Benson AZ. "Too bad for you!" I snap at the exhaust valves, "I like the heater output." And I did, too.
The Most Gorgeous Sight I Have Ever Seen was mangled into piss-poor-postcard-print by this long laboring WalMart Kodak EZShare camera now in its eighth year. But try to imagine a dusk of lavender with silver grey cloud bank above the most handsome beige brown grass speckled by blue grey silver bushes, it was absolutely color-perfect. Thanks anyway, camera .... :
The downhill past Benson showed head temps in the low 300*s, this cooling system is fine, it's just the generation of heat I have to track down. The sun sets and the chill starts to bite this overtan baldy heat-seeking missile as he irritably fills the gas tank in the gale of icy air molecules.
But the heat in the car is so lovely, so snug, so warm, I vow to never leave the driver's seat again, and I will not shut off the engine neither, so there. Do a quick fill-up in Willcox (had to leave the driver's seat to do that, so much for my vows)), 18 mpg nice, and drive into the dark chilly night with a moon overhead and trucks thundering up on me one after the other. Let's shoot for El Paso, it's only 380 miles or something.
A nice little generator whine harmonic drills through the ambient unsynchronized diesel locomotive team sounds of the failing right and left front tires (yeah that was the other thing I dealt with at pj's, the camber was so badly adjusted full-tilt-negative that the inner treads are gone on both front tires), and I keep it there as probably the most accurate cruise control I have ever had. For fun, I check the mile posts as I enter New Mexico and discover that, averaged over the next thirty miles, my "62" is a dead nuts 60 and the generator whine happens to harmonize perfectly for a true mile per minute at what the impaled trouper Volvo tachometer calls 3,600 rpm. On the downhills, I avail myself of the plummeting head temps to build up a head of steam so I can sail up the next hill a while before the inexorable 424 comes up again, oops, 428*. Too bad! The heat's great! Onwards!
I check the oil in Deming where they offended me with $3.89/gallon gas ("we're out in the boonies" NO YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO EL PASO WHERE GAS IS $3.16 WHY??), and find the dipstick is hardly warm to the touch. Come on engine, it is freezing out here, can't you give me at least a nice hot dipstick? Makes me wonder about these head temps all over again, with Westy78's suggestion to check its calibration.
Came upon Las Cruces in the night, a jewel of sparkle and a halo of glow over the hills to my right. El Paso 57 miles. That's El Paso. I will make it. This car is disarming. Give me a little heat and a little generator whine atop the flat four purr, and I am good for miles and miles. Came upon El Paso and looked hard for Juarez to my right, across the Rio. There are some shanties perched on dirt hills glared up by streetlights over dirt streets. I wonder if El Paso people feel all American-superior. Look at our shiny billboards and malls and freeways. Hey lookie there, there's a shanty with e-l-e-c-t-r-i-c-i-t-y.
Stupid me.
As I-10 hooks around to head east, I see an amazing, hitherto unknown-to-me sight to behold. Juarez is friggen HUGE! I never knew that it extended across such a vast bowl. Holy good grief, I have held this parochial vision of Juarez as ONLY the shanties stuck on the dirt hill across the river, but here on my first cold dry night traverse of this metro, it is a field of lightbulb flowers to the south as far as you can see, on and on, I was transfixed. Way up to the horizon, a petri dish of luminescence glowing like gold. Juarez, no boasting neon garishness, just street lamps for 1.4 million people. Drove east never thinking that Juarez has THREE times the population of El Paso. All that light. Finally hit the 48 mile marker and the lights of Juarez to my right are dying down to a ribbon of glowing beads. Huge! Drive east on I-10 over hills and down in valleys and at mile marker 72, there's the lights of Juarez in the rear view mirror! Finally settle down to ponder the limits of my assumptions and am driving along and there's a hill again. CHTs jump up to 428 (who cares?! the heat's great!) and I am up and up and up and there's mile marker 94. Do you really really think the lights of Juarez are going to show themselves really, actual lights at the horizon I left an hour and a half ago? Sure enough.
Warm car, no problem at this here 3rd checkpoint in the middle of nowhere,
"what are those things in the back?" "tires." "for this car?" "yes" . . . . . (?) . . . . Drove to wind-whipped Van Horn TX, and I-10 to the I-20 split. I am going south.
It is sunny! I must hit the road and find a wifi spot that allows me to upload. I am heading south until it is warm enough to do the badly needed undercarriage rust eradication/undercoating.
Nice car.
Brown cow always placidly staring even as it walks across the country unperturbably, my hot-headed brown cow with the bad front hooves.
Colin
