A Map and a Mustang: Welcome to Colorful Colorado

Somehow, against all odds, I have built a tremendous, fantastic, wonderful... corner-carver?

I won't take all the credit. Most of that is due to Chas's bodywork skills (subframe connectors on a unibody car are a wonderful thing, I'll tell you that, especially when they're tied into the floor), but I'd like to think that some of it is the parts I picked when I cobbled this car together. I didn't have a dang clue in the world what I was doing, but I must have done something right.

I'm in Colorado right now, way up in the mountains at 8400 feet. I've lived here the past couple of summers and have driven all kinds of cars on the twisties up here - econoboxes like Nissan Sentras and Chrysler 200's (terrible cars), middle of the road cars like the new 300hp Chevy Impala, and I've even ridden along in a 2003 Cobra prototype and one of the snazzy new 1000hp Shelbys. None of these cars even come close to the way Jane corners. I have yet to find the limit of this car - every corner I've found can be taken with complete confidence. Zero body roll, no oversteer or understeer, just goes right around like there's a magnetic rail going round the bend. Just fantastic. I'm sure there are better, but I never expected anything this good out of my half-century-old car!

Anyways, most of yesterday was spent NOT corner-carving, but instead driving straight through nearly the most boring terrain I have ever been through. The only thing that beats it is I-40 in North Carolina, which is just a straight road rimmed by trees. Instead I was on I-70, which is a straight road rimmed by corn.

We hauled along the road at a good 80mph clip the whole way across Kansas until we reached Colorado.

Colorado was not so colorful at this point - mostly just gray. But hey, at least we would be in the mountains soon! Except we weren't. As far as I can tell, eastern Colorado is just an extension of Kansas.

But at least sometimes I got to go right or left... wahoo?

My god, this is the most interesting thing to happen to me in the past hour! A right turn!

We pulled into town yesterday afternoon sometime amidst a steady rain. I was bummed because I wanted a nice view of Pike's Peak as we trucked up Highway 24 from Colorado Springs, but the weather was conspiring against us and so we had to stare at gray sky the whole way up. On the plus side, Jane doesn't pull sketchy business when it's raining, so behavior was excellent the whole day. In fact, behavior has been suspiciously good the past three days! The fuel gauge even (mostly) works now! Amazing!

A pretty terribly gray picture of Jane with Pike's Peak in the background

At my house (well, it's my landlord's house, but I rent from him so I guess it's kind of partially mine) we changed Jane's oil. We were running a bit long on the change but I had added a pretty good amount to it right before we left on the trip to make sure it was topped off. Interestingly, only 2.5 quarts came out (including what was in the oil filter). Given that the original volume of oil in the car is supposed to be 5 quarts, 2.5 quarts was a bit... low. I've no idea where the extra oil is going as she's always leaked a bit (but not that much) but best guess is that she might be burning a bit of oil. Alternatively, as suggested to me by Chas, it's getting blown off due to excess crankcase pressure. Either way, it was no longer in the pan which was a bit alarming. But hey, with Jane it's always something. If she wants to burn some oil instead of rebelling in other ways, I would much rather have to carry extra oil than have to fix other things on the side of the road. So oil loss is A-OK with me!

Today I slept in, puttered around the house, and went into work to help out with some stuff. While I was there we had a nice monsoon so all of the dust was washed off of Jane. Unfortunately, the volume of water that came out of the sky was a little overwhelming to the half century old window sealing technology on my car... so she leaked a few drops (a few drops is nothing, and quite frankly impressive). I'd call that passing with flying colors.

To recap, I've now been on the road for nearly a week (if you count the part where I drove 9 hours in one day to get exactly nowhere last Saturday). My car is getting better by the day and I have not yet found myself hating and/or dreading driving - not even with the noise, or the huge turning radius, or the manual transmission on the mountain, or the little quirks. I've lost count of the number of compliments and thumbs-ups Jane has gotten. So far, this trip may be one of the best ideas I've ever had!