Road Trip in a '74 Standard

[andrewlandon67]

I've kind of been putting this off for a little while, mostly due to a lack of free time coupled with a distinct deficit of creative energy, but I think I'm ready to get started on a bit of it, so get ready!

As shown in the other, older thread from a while ago, my little brother bought a '74 from an old co-worker of mine last September with the intention of taking it out to Chicago to use as his daily driver. Our dad and I spent about 6 weekends straight working on the car, doing various little jobs here and there such as replacing the drop spindles with stockers, fitting correct tin and rear fenders, and generally getting it into what we considered decent shape. The plan was for the two of us, and two of our good friends, to take the car and spend a Saturday and Sunday driving, then have a full day in Chicago to recuperate before the two buddies and I got into a rental car and drove home. We'd be driving a very familiar stretch of road to us, I-80 through Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois, stopping at my in-laws home on Saturday night to make Sunday a much easier day on us and the car. Then the weekend came, and in mid October, my brother flew out to come get his ride. He and I spent a few hours that Friday changing the oil, checking the valves, and adjusting the carb and timing settings, mostly so he could learn. That night, as I drove the 65 miles back to my house in my own bug, I kept going over the checklist my dad and I had made up, thinking of things we might have missed, and each time I came up empty-handed. There were few parts of the car we hadn't touched to some extent, and we'd both driven the car enough to feel confident in its abilities.

Saturday morning my brother Tanner, and the other two guys Wolfgang and Logan, hopped in the bug and began to make the same drive I'd made the night before, with all their stuff tied tightly on the new roof rack Tanner had purchased. The hour and a half it took them to get to my apartment went fairly smoothly, with only a couple of minor hiccups befitting a new car-driver pairing. Our dad had followed them up to my place to see us off, but he'd not checked over much, especially as far as our equipment went. We shortly realized that my brother had missed the large, plastic filing box that my dad and I have used for VW spare parts on many road trips, and had left it in the garage at our mom's house. We called her and arranged a meeting at a point that would add at least half an hour to our drive, and cut off one of my favorite drives across the loneliest part of Colorado, the Pawnee Grasslands. Resigning ourselves instead to a drive through the countless feed lots and ranches of lower Weld County, we set off only to find our rearranging of the items on the roof had left a long portion of ratchet strap open to catch the wind and reverberate on the roof, making the most ungodly racket I've ever heard from a car, but somehow Wolfie managed to fall asleep through it.



There's plenty more to come, but here are some pictures of us before we set off.



My dad's the guy on the near side of the car, with L-R Me, Wolfie, Logan, and Tanner on the other side.



Tanner and I, and our two bugs, talking about something stupid probably.

[andrewlandon67]

The first morning slogged on as we drove out of our way to meet up with our mom, and the spares box that I'd carefully packed full the day before, Wolfie's head now propped up by a pillow and the ratchet strap still reverberating against the roof like the loudest snare drum in the world. There wasn't much to see or report by that point, the car was running and driving well and we were looking forward to getting a move on in the correct direction. I'd given Tanner my mother-in-law's contact information so at least one of us could keep her up-to-date with our arrival time, which was now looking more like 8 p.m. with the delay over the spares box. Eventually we met up with mom, and spent a few minutes on the side of a road re-packing the roof rack and being careful to wind the straps around the slats of the rack to avoid any more noise from the roof, and after we each took a break behind some bushes, we were finally headed northeast.

The rest of the morning passed without much hassle, the gearbox whining away and the fuel gauge working intermittently, until we stopped for fuel at the town of Julesberg, just a few miles from the state line with Nebraska. We each went into the store and got some more supplies as the gas tank got refilled, and I went back to check the engine oil and temp. Upon opening the decklid, I noticed an abnormal amount of black dust coating the fuel pump and carburetor, and then noticed the belt had been worn to a sharp point along the inside. I knew the car had shredded a belt once before, with the previous owner, but I figured that I had been careful enough when putting the shroud back on a few weeks prior to have kept the pulleys aligned.



Nuts. We only had one spare belt, and the nearest auto parts store with one was in Ogallala, Nebraska, a mere 30 miles away. The oil level was good, as was the temp, so I sprayed the dirtiest parts off with some cleaner and shut the decklid. As we took off, the mood in the car was considerably less enthusiastic than it'd been an hour earlier, with yet another delay, and the discovery that between the optimistic speedometer and the roughly 17 mpg we were achieving, our day was beginning to look much longer than we'd feared. We crossed into Nebraska and merged onto I-80 fairly smoothly, but upon accelerating up to speed in 4th gear, there was a loud bang from the engine compartment and the generator light on the dash was on. We'd made about 20 miles of the 30 or so to the shop, and the fan belt, already worn well beyond any hope of longevity had finally let go.



In its death throes, it shredded the preheat hose running to the air cleaner too, so we had to hope the generic parts store had some decent replacement hose for us, along with an adequate belt. Installing the new belt as quickly as possible, we got back on the highway and very carefully made our way into Ogallala, where the parts store clerk not only helped us by having the hose and belt ready, but also loaning a puller so I could fix the issue at its source, by spacing the generator pulley out by a few millimeters. I achieved this by taking an electrical terminal connector and cutting it into a very fine "C" shape that was just big enough to fit around the generator shaft without removing the keyway, but not so large that it would be easily spun off the first time we got the engine up to speed. Between this and the stop for the spares box, we were now at least an hour and a half behind schedule, with Iowa still 330 miles away, and the in-laws house a solid 140 beyond that, we got piled in and solemnly got back onto the interstate, not knowing what we'd have to face next beyond hours of monotonous interstate driving.

[brewsy]

and???

 

[karl h]

i love it! want more!

[andrewlandon67]

Sorry for the delays in posting, this is the first time I've actually been able to see the Lounge in nearly two weeks!

So before I get too far, I'd like to introduce my companions a bit, starting with my younger brother Tanner. We both spent several years attending an alternative public school outside of Denver, with a full K-12 program that prioritized personal development and growth over general test scores, it's not much of a surprise that the friends we met there still play such large roles in our adult lives. Growing up, he never had much of an interest in cars, or at least not like I did. He'd driven the same old To#¤ta pickup that I had in high school for his junior year, and for his senior year he bought a very nice Subaru Legacy that wound up hanging around for longer than anyone expected, but his heart was more aimed at motorcycles for several years. Not to say that there was nothing there, he'd driven our grandma's '70 Westy to his senior prom, and expressed some interest in various malaise-era American cars, but there were much more interesting and pressing things for him for a long time. Sometime in early 2018, a year or so after he'd graduated from college with a degree in fashion design and begun making racing leathers for motorcyclists, that car interest finally bloomed and he traded his old Legacy for a 1995 Buick Roadmaster wagon with the LT1 engine similar to the C4 Corvette's. Not to get too in depth, but he had it for a year of good fun and shenanigans before a long mechanical update project turned into a small tragedy in the garage, with the nose of the crankshaft bent. After that debacle, plus a few more work-related issues he moved to Chicago with only his bicycle for transportation in the fall of 2019, which is about where we picked the story up with the '74. Tanner's generally a much more creative, abstract, and strong-willed person than I am, but he's extremely honest and straightforward with people. He's the type of guy who can go from casually working behind a bar at a brewery to working as the head of maintenance at a factory in nearly the blink of an eye, and excel at both jobs, while still keeping a level head and keeping his interests alive.

Logan is Tanner's closest and oldest friend, having been in classes together from 2nd grade onwards. Logan is also one of my very close friends as growing up our circle was fairly close-knit and there was eventual overlap of interest in things like skateboarding, punk rock, and old cars. Logan had helped my dad and I get my '67 running back in 2013, and that experience inspired him to buy a clapped-out '49 Chevy sedan as his first car after a few years of 50cc motorscooters and a 250cc Suzuki mini-cruiser bike, which lasted about a year before he realized something with wipers and a reliable heater would be better, and since then he's had a span of ever-better variants of Subaru Legacys. He'd also had some mechanical experience with his own motorcycles and helping Tanner and I with various car projects over the years, but his area of expertise has always been in aesthetic details and sweating the little stuff. With a fanatical attention span and incredible willpower, he's always been one to make sure that not only do things get done, but they get done right. He's the guy who will put in as much effort as me into any of my projects, sometimes even more, and is about as reliable as anyone could possibly be. This willpower does occasionally lead to some rather animated arguments about various things, most of which go nowhere but leave the people around us confused as to what we were even talking about to begin with.

Wolfie is another friend from elementary school, being part of our wider circle of friends from around then, but he and his little sister were around often since they grew up near us and our moms both got along. Throughout high school some of his project mopeds lived in my mom's garage, and he helped us with various handyman jobs for my grandmother throughout the years. He and Tanner lived together in a house with a handful of other friends for a while after they both finished college, likely our last good party house, where Wolfie's car enthusiasm began to really blossom. He's always had a fondness for pretty oddball cars and crappy Italian mopeds, having owned in this order a late '60s Plymouth Valiant, a hand-me-down New Beetle, an '80s Acura Integra, an early '80's Datsun 720, an absolute turd of a '90s Celica convertible, a mid '00s Infinity M45, and currently he switches off between his '89 Nissan Skyline GTS-T sedan and an '84ish Mercedes 300TD Wagon. Wolfie's deadpan sense of humor and generally lighthearted approaches to things are often needed when Tanner and I get too serious about any issues that have arisen, and can lend a very different point of view to help get things fixed.

To sum up our motley crew, we're a quartet of dorks with wide breadth of mechanical interests and varying levels of experience, but a very strong bond shared and grown over the course of roughly twenty years of late nights driving around or watching cartoons and playing video games, and days spent camping, snowboarding, skateboarding, working on cars or various yard work projects. We've all helped each other with all sorts of things from cars to computers, and know we'll continue to spend time together doing what we all enjoy. While there are lots of other people I hope to do similar trips with in the future, there couldn't have been a better trio of guys with me in that little bug that was now putting its way across Nebraska, keeping us plenty warm while impressing us with its competence at passing semi trucks.

More to come, hopefully sooner than two weeks if the Lounge can hold out.

[andrewlandon67]

As I said in my last post, once we'd rectified the fan belt/pulley issue, the rest of the day went considerably more smoothly, or at least as smoothly as it could, given that our ETA had gone from 8 p.m. to around  11 p.m. with our delays and lower than expected pace. We traded off driving every couple of hours, since we'd realized that the day might be considerably longer than expected, we each wanted a reasonable degree of rest. Around 6 in the evening we were towards the east end of the longest and straightest stretch of I-80 yet, the 75 mile slog between Grand Island and Lincoln, Nebraska. We'd had our lights on a handful of times for some short flurries earlier in the day, but as the sun began to get closer to the horizon behind us, we noticed that we weren't really seeing much of the road illuminated by our lights, and our turn signals were acting weird again.



If you look at the road, you'll notice the driver's side light was barely doing anything. At our next stop on the western edge of Lincoln, after we'd filled the tank again, we pulled out of the way of the pumps and diagnosed that almost none of the turn signal or taillight bulbs were making consistent contact with their grounded housings, so with the help of some pliers, dielectric grease, and patient hands, we had most of the bulbs making better contact, but still needed to pay attention to the headlights. I'd already gone through and made sure their connections were good some weeks before, but hadn't paid much attention to the headlight adjustment nor the adjusting screws themselves. When I stepped out to check the alignment, it became obvious that we were in for much more of a job than I'd realized. The left headlight was facing so far down and to the center of the car that it mostly illuminated the front bumper, while the right one was doing a good job of pointing out the curb of the road 20 feet ahead, but not much else. As I got to work trying to adjust them, 3 of the 4 screws had stripped heads, and the plastic blocks they screwed into were all but gone. Luckily however, I had recently gone through and replaced some parts of the buckets on my '67 so I'd brought the spare blocks and screws leftover, but we still lost a good 45 minutes on that stop alone.

Heading back out into the much darker evening, it was immediately obvious how badly the headlights had been adjusted before as we could now see the road ahead, but only so far as the cars in front of us, and the high beams weren't much better. We'd gotten our taillights working mostly, although they still were prone to getting bounced around on the rough highway surface of eastern Nebraska and occasionally losing contact. We stopped one more time before we got to Omaha to try and get the lights dialed in one last time, losing about half an hour again, before admitting some sort of pyrrhic victory and setting off into the now dark night. The rest of the drive went without much incident, but we'd all realized how tired we'd become and the attitude in the car became a little more reflective as we passed through Omaha at night. We talked less about how the day had gone, and more about how much we looked forward to spending some time in Chicago before our drive home in a rental car. Western Iowa passed without incident, with conversation turning to the immense fields of wind turbines, and how we thought their lights worked in perfect synchronization. To anyone who hasn't seen it, imagine hundreds of bright red lights, all floating hundreds of feet in the air, and all flashing simultaneously. It's a genuinely cool sight, and did a good job of keeping us awake as it was now after midnight.

Finally, after one more fuel stop, it was the last stint to my in-laws, about an hour's drive, getting off the interstate and onto a series of successively smaller state highways before going through their small town just north of Des Moines. As we turned onto state highway 415, I thought about how the last time I'd been here, my wife and I had just announced our engagement, and how we'd planned to host our wedding here before the scourge of Covid led us to change plans to something smaller and more close to home. I thought about how we'd planned to do this trip in my bug, with one or two other support vehicles and friends, in the heat of the summer, and taking much more time with it. Everything that had happened in the intervening 10 months seemed an indeterminable blur compared to the long day we'd just survived piloting this poor little bug across the greatest of the Great Plains region, the small town passed by looking more ghostly than ever in the deep of the night. As we finally idled up to my in-laws' farmhouse and shut the car down with more of a shudder than usual due to someone's insistence on trying to run lower-octane fuel at a stop earlier in the evening, I was just happy to be somewhere with a warm bed, and slightly disappointed in knowing we'd be back out here in four hours or so to meet our planned departure time of 7 a.m.

Get ready for day 2, it's a doozy.

[andrewlandon67]

Oh man, it's been over a month since I've updated this. Sorry for the delay to anyone who's been keeping up, I hadn't realized how long it's been, so without further delay, here's day two!

My brother woke me up after about four hours of sleep to let me know there was snow on the ground. We knew it'd be a possibility, the American midwest in October is known for random cold snaps, but none of our weather apps had warned about it. Trying to keep the images of cars buried in feet of wet, sticky snow from my mind, I raised myself out of the bed and peeked out the window to look upon the source of our misery that day, only to see that it had barely stuck to the ground, and there was only an inch or so on the car.



Between Tanner, Wolfie, and myself, we decided to let Logan sleep in another hour or so and sat down for a nice, warm breakfast with my in-laws instead of our original plan of leaving before the sun had truly risen. About two hours later, now comfortably fed and caffeinated, we brushed the snow off the car's roof and said our extremely grateful goodbyes as the car warmed itself up with a comfortable burble. As we pulled out of their dirt driveway, we were in high spirits, cracking jokes as we drove through the suburban farmlands north of Des Moines on our way to Interstate 35 that would take us back to our planned route of I-80. We had plenty of fuel left from the night before, so we didn't worry much about finding a station before turning south and joining the morning commuters heading into Des Moines. Aside from a very enthusiastic mulletted gentleman in a tastefully modified diesel GMC truck, nobody seemed to notice the crappy little bug as it smoothly and comfortably merged onto I-80 east, and as we waved our goodbyes to the GMC, we were excited to be just a few short hours away from Illinois, and from there, only four hours from Tanner's apartment in Chicago.

Iowa once again proved itself to be much bigger at 65 mph, as we took nearly four hours to get to the I-80 "World's Largest" Truck Stop, where we bought ourselves lunch and whatever ridiculous souvenirs caught our eyes before gassing up the '74 and getting back on the road.



The whining transmission that had permeated the whole of the trip seemed to have quieted down a bit in the colder weather, which we were thankful for in the moment. The engine sounded healthy and Logan was driving us as we took the northern route around Davenport, towards the Mississippi river bridge, in high spirits and listening to whatever music that could make us wince the worst. As I put on a song that was one of the earliest "viral" videos, we started running down the hill towards the river, with one exit branching off to our right towards the river road and...

*BANG*

Fourth gear was gone, sounding like the tops of the teeth had been completely worn down. We pulled over to the side of the road before the bridge so I could take over driving, and I limped the car up to the rest area just on the Illinois side of the river where we parked at an overlook.



Trying to assess what to do, we all stood around a bit, and I tried a few futile attempts to get fourth to engage better, but each attempt left the engine able to rev freely in gear, sounding like it was turning a gravel crusher. We knew there would be trouble on this trip, but not to this degree. The transmission had been noisy the whole trip, and when my dad and I were putting the car together, but when we'd changed the gear oil out, there was very little metal in the pan and it'd helped considerably. Crossing the Mississippi had put us so much closer to our end goal, but we were so far from any real help that we had no other option but to try and find a route that would be appropriate for a battered little bug with only three gears to get across the state of Illinois. Tanner found one, a mix of two lane county roads and small state highways that ran roughly parallel to I-88, our original route across the state, but would add at least another hour and a half to our drive time, not including that we'd be limited to around 45 mph for the rest of the day. We decided to soldier on, the mood in the car as we headed towards the off-ramp much more somber than an hour previous.