I took her on her maiden voyage (aside from just around town) this weekend to visit Topher and buy some tires from him. The trip is about 80 miles on nice back county routes and US 6 (one of my favorite roads). It was quite the adventure. Just 10 miles in, I came up to an intersection and felt my shift linkage drop. It swung to the driver's side, right under me. As shown in the photos in a previous post, both arms of the linkage had to be cut, and put into pipe sheaths and welded. This renders them a bit more brittle and susceptible to breakage, especially if dropped to the ground and twisted to the side. Very luckily, it was fine and all it needed was a pin (even a bent nail would do) to put it back where it belongs. Within a minute some nice guy stopped, drove me to his house, and got me a little bolt to repair it. Within 10 minutes of the occurrence, I was up and running again! It did NOT like large hills, and I would find myself nearly flooring it in 3rd gear to keep up to the speed limit. Even for a 1 liter, this can't be normal, right? Hopefully it gets a bit more power. I plan on checking my timing and making sure all of my grounds are nice and solid since it will skip ignition firing periodically. In addition to the tires I bought, Topher gave me a nice handful of thick wire for grounding and an extra rear hatch, I was on my way.
The real bummer to this trip was on the way back: an oncoming large truck whizzed by me on a narrow bridge and caused my hood to fly up and whack my windshield, giving it the same cracked glass design that it came with when I bought it (this isn't the first time the hood has flown up on this car). That means $260 down the toilet.
All in all it was an exciting/stressful trip that made me want to make like Darin and always take non-interstate highways. People helped me within minutes both times I had to stop with car troubles, and there are always more interesting things to see on the "back roads", less traffic and less police. These are all in the Hypermiler's favor, and at least around where I live at the pace I drive, there really isn't much of a speed difference between the interstate and the good old US, State, or County route. The windshield could've been in a car that I needed to get around in, it could've smashed right through and injured me, I could've swerved off the road and gotten REALLY injured or killed... This is just a project car and even though it has cost way more money than I intended, I'm very thankful to have money to throw into this project, and all the mistake-driven education I've been getting out of it. I feel lucky to be able to do this in the first place, and lucky to know people who get as much out of stuff like this as I do.
EDIT: Fun fact! I drove through a place called Camptown on the way, and I just realized it's the Camptown in that Camptown races
folk song. The more you know!
Not that it matters that much since the engine is still breaking in, but the very first tank of gas looks like it will return something in the high 20's for MPG.
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Have you been documenting the build in photos? I know it's hard to remember to snap pix when you're busy skinning your knuckles.
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Yes, a bit.
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Think you could do a quick YouTube vid showing it?
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Probably. Is Ben doing anything with that Watchdog review?