Well folks, it’s been a while since I’ve fired up the old
blog so it’s about time to get it going again! A lot of stuff has happened
since I last posted over a year ago. Last August, I moved to Austin, Texas for
graduate school. I also rebuilt Jane’s engine, which was a hilarious story unto
itself – it had no place in a travel blog, but a search on the Vintage Mustang
Forums should pull it up pretty quickly. That turned into a fiasco that caused
me to have to leave Jane in North Carolina for six months while I finished up
my first semester of school. I then re-rebuilt the engine in January and
promptly drove her right on over to Austin to be with me where she belongs. After
that I put on all-new front suspension, which was a harrowing ordeal but
ultimately a much-needed upgrade. Now halfway through the summer I’m still
sorting out the bugs associated with completely overhauling an engine. Time has
been at a premium the past few months, but that hasn’t stopped me from going
all guts and glory and planning another long trip out west!
This time around I won’t be gone for two months,
unfortunately. But two weeks is still a pretty good long time. I’ll log over
5000 miles (which is more than 3 times the number of miles that the engine
currently has on it), see 5 new National Parks, and get to do what I love best –
drive a ridiculous car a ridiculous distance for a ridiculous reason. The final
destination this time around? Reno, Nevada.
Now whenever I tell people I’m going to Reno, they kind
of make an “ugh” face like they don’t know why anyone in their right mind who
isn’t a senior citizen with a gambling problem would go to that city. But hear
me out! Every first week of August, Reno is home to Hot August Nights, one of
the nation’s biggest, rowdiest, longest hot rod and classic car events. It
lasts for a full week and features car shows, cruises, concerts, drag races,
drifting, autocrossing, burnout contests, the works. So I’m going to meet up
with some of my Californian friends as well as some new friends. My parents are
even flying out to come see the spectacle! I’m sure Jane and I will get in all
kinds of trouble and it is going to be wonderful.
To prepare for my trip, I procrastinated on some big
repairs until three days before leaving (per usual). Jane’s transmission was
leaking like a sieve from what I thought was the bearing retainer (wrong), the
oil pan was leaking (I don’t know what I thought it was, but I was wrong), the
windshield was cracked (it still is), a lifter was ticking, and the alignment
was maybe not quite spot on (I did it, so of course it wasn’t spot on). Fortunately,
my friend John was able to help me pull the transmission and identify the
source of the leak (missing a top plate gasket… no explanation for that one),
which was good because the car constantly smelled like it was imminently going
to be on fire. I found that the oil pan was leaking not because I used the
trashy cork gaskets (my nice Felpro gasket got ruined in the course of the
whirlwind engine rebuild) but instead because half of the bolts were falling out
(nice). A lifter was ticking because some moron had cinched it down way too much
(it was me), so a simple valve adjustment fixed that up. Oh, and I messed with
the alignment some, which made things far worse (which I didn’t realize until I
left). I decided I would leave the cracked windshield because it doesn’t make
sense to put a brand new windshield in the car right before driving 5000 miles on
the interstate – jury’s out on how good that decision was but I’m hoping it was
a good one.
Anyways, so that’s where I was at at the start of this
trip. Ridiculous car, nearly-new engine, all kinds of bugs and odd problems,
and a 26 hour drive to Reno. You all know that this is going to be a good one…
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