Hi Franz,
Yes, the "Lady in Red" did most of the work.......... and she performed like a champ.
When I left home for Thompson I don't think there was 400 miles on the car since I had put it together. The first leg of the journey was to Ken's place in Kelowna. It's a steep mountain pass, 4 lane highway, driven at 110- 125 KPH (70 - 75 MPH) by most people. Because of traffic I had not driven the car over about 105 - 108 KPH ( 65 MPH) before I left, but it drove good. That night when I hit about 115 KPK (72 - 72 MPH)........I had never in my life felt a car shake that bad....... that car shook so bad you could hardly sit in the seat.......... I was having all kinds of thoughts for the 3 1/2 hour drive....... 700R4 spinning the driveshaft to fast....... something wrong with the 3.55 diff (only had 50 miles on it)....... It was he worst shake I had ever felt. It honestly felt like a 2 lb hammer attached to the driveshaft, hitting the frame on each revolution........ I drove at 110 KPH (65 MPH) with all kinds of thought of what could be wrong. The next morning I had the tires balanced properly and it fixed the problem. What a relief that was.............
We had the little heating issue when we drove through Chicago. That's already in another post.....
I'd like to thank RAMAR for keeping us off the main highway and on the toll road..... Thanks RAY !!!! I missed you and Larry there this year.......... my room mates from the 2009 Thompson shoot out.
The 409 never did anything but run the whole trip........ I think we did about 55-5700 miles in total........... in that time she used 3 quarts of oil. Did an oil change at a friends house in Winnipeg on the way home.........
We drove the speed limit or a little less most of the trip..... it's 75 MPH most of the way across I-90....... anywhere between 2000 RPM and 2400 RPM. We did push her up to 3000 RPM at one point just for fun...... that put us at 150 KPH (90 MPH) on the GPS. My sister did catch us at about 80 MPH at one point and gave us a bad time...... how you ask ??????
I was worried about the car being stolen at some point during the trip. We did very well with Motels all the way and managed to park the car right outside the room. But before we left I installed a Blackline GPS Tracker. It's buried in the car and has no indication of it being there. With the passwords you can go to their website and it will tell you the exact location of the car and how fast it is moving........ very cool system. It will even tell if the car battery has been disconnected.......... If the car moves or gets a good shake my cel phone rings...... We had it go off once during the trip. We were having breakfast across the street from the motel and my cel phone told me we had a "perimeter breach". The car was Ok, sitting by itself and we attributed the breach to a very loud Harley.......... My sister and some friends watched us all the way across........ I highly recommend the system !!!!
We got a million waves, thumbs up, honks and lights flashed at us the whole trip.......
Here's a picture of the Moose Jaw exit off of Highway 1 in Sask. Silly for most of you, but in 1970 the 409 in the car was bought as a new replacement engine for a farm truck at the GM dealership in Moose Jaw.......... little different from the truck engine now, but that's where she came from.
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Dave
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bang
