[Amc-list] Brief road trip...

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

Just last night got back from a 3-day (was gonna be 4-day) trip camping 
to the northwest corner of Arizona (near Meadview), a burning-man-like 
regional event. About 400 miles each way.

Took the newly-gasoline-converted Classic wagon, four people (two 
large), 20 gallons of water, trailer, 10 x 16 PVC quonset hut, big tent, 
and all the usual camping crap.

Man was it hot!! Car was very pingy, I need to re-curve the distributor, 
too much advance, though I adjusted it on the road finally more or less 
OK. Pinging increased with coolant temperature, but also air inlet temp 
(read on). This is a '70 232 with cast iron intake with a Carter YF.

Averaged just under 45ph (that's door-to-door trip speed) including all 
stops (there were (too) many) so not bad considering I never exceeded 
60mph, partly due to the trailer, but mostly due to heat. I was taking 
it VERY easy on the air-cooled Flash-O-Matic. I really gotta put a guage 
on that thing so I don't have to guess.

I've got a two-row radiator, a big flexfan, but no shroud. Cooling is 
adequate for desert driving. I've also got a big VintageAir A/C system 
that we ran pretty much the entire time. Turned it off for the big 
grades, which there were a few.

It was well over 100 on the way out (lucky us, a heat wave in LA, and 
large-scale weather seems to rotate eastward, from So. Cal.). I just 
kept it in D1 and drove according to temperature.

Got there OK, but the event wasn't to our liking; really fine people, 
but not for us, but combined with 105+ temps during the day made it 
unbearable. We left Sat AM.

The ride home was hot. By hot, I mean, the air at times was coolant-hot. 
It was 115 in Needles CA (route I40, at the CA/AZ border). 115 in the 
shade. It was so hot, we had to close the floor vents because it HURT 
YOUR LEGS hot, no exaggeration.

The A/C worked great, but up the loooong steep grade west of Needles, 
though only about 4000 feet altitude and I'm just guessing 5% grade, at 
115 degrees, in an ancient Rambler with a full load, and an air-cooled 
transmission, was a big nerve wracking.

Basically the way I handle those is run at the motor's sweet spot; 45 
mph in second, or 28 mph in low, steady, steady, steady, varying with 
heat and ping. The temperature gauge indicates the cooling systems "low 
normal" and "high normal"; the two extremes of thermostat mostly closed 
(it hunts around closed) and mostly open (it hunts around rated thermo 
temp, about 190 - 200 degrees. I worked all that out with an external 
thermometer long ago. A/C goes on when the temp is below high-normal.

All these shiny blacked out cars zooming by us up the grades; we must 
have looked like Amish people in a buggy, in a dusty old Rambler in flat 
paint with a trailer full of junk!

I'm sure newer cars have better default trans cooling systems, but I 
know most of them were eating up transmission life.


On the one accurate fill up I did before the trip, I got 19.8mpg, but I 
think that's high; for the whole trip itself it got 16.5mpg, not too 
terrible under the circumstances. I think I can get 20 out of it 
regularly, I just got the carb sort-of dialed in before I left. Timing 
is wacked.

I hope I didn't cook the transmission. It was one of the hardest trips 
I've ever made on it. Ran fine, no crazy leaks, no bad smells, rebuilt 
in the last year. I'll get a tune up this summer.
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