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Portland to St. Louis Trip Report (LONG)!

To: britcar@tin.monsanto.com
Subject: Portland to St. Louis Trip Report (LONG)!
From: lesnyd@bb1t.monsanto.com (Larry E. Snyder lesnyd@monsanto.com 314-694-3626)
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 11:16:53 -0600
       PORTLAND, OREGON, TO ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, IN A STRANGE GT6+
             By Larry Snyder, well-known as not real bright

All the times in this article will be Central Standard Time, since this trip 
was supposed to be a short one (hold the snickering) and I didn't want to mess 
with time zones.

FRIDAY

Left St. Louis at 6:30 pm, arrived Portland 12:30 am. Richard George and 
George Emery (the guy I bought the car from) picked me up. Went over and 
looked at the car and its bits, went and looked at Richard's GT6+. Very nice. 
Went back to George Emery's house and he couldn't locate the title. He finally 
found it about 3:30 am. I slept a few hours on the couch.

SATURDAY

Drove the GT6+ and heard a funny noise. I asked George about it, and he said 
the diff was on hard mounts and made more noise than usual. OK, I bought that, 
and took off for Salt Lake City.

Despite the irritating noise, it was a pleasure to see the smooth curves of a 
GT6+ bonnet in front of me again. The car has so much *shape* to it! Don't get 
me wrong, the hood of the TR250 is quite a work of art, too, but the curves 
are more pronounced on the GT6+. Too bad they sharpened the lines with the MK 
IIIs. (all IMHO, of course, for you MKIII owners).

I noticed as I entered Utah that the noise seemed worse. Hmmm. I also noticed 
that when I stopped it sounded really grindy. Hmmm. Anyway, I called MJB from 
Snowville, Utah. I thought it was funny that it was raining in Snowville. 
Little did I know that about 5 miles south it was REALLY snowing. Mark 
gave me directions to the Fat Chance Garage, and I hit the road. I got into a 
blowing snowstorm and couldn't see 10 feet in front of me. Of course, that's 
when the wipers quit working. I pulled over to the side of the road, trying to 
figure out what to do. It was too dark and snowy and dangerous to get out
and tinker under the bonnet, so I just sat there, ready to scream or something.
Then, all of a sudden, the wipers started up again. They worked the whole way 
down to Salt Lake City.

Mark took me to dinner at Squatters. Really nice. Then we took a peek under 
the GT6+. Yup, it was the rear end. We kind of decided it could 
probably make it, although be very noisy. We were a bit optimistic....

Anyway, I enjoyed meeting Mark and his wife Karen very much, along with Steve 
Bender and another nice guy whose name was Pug, I think. Whenever you meet 
Mark's wife, ask her how her basuki is doing. Maybe it's Bazookie. She'll know 
what you mean.

SUNDAY  (This is the bad one)

Left the Fat Chance early, about 6 am. Headed east on I-80 toward Wyoming. 
That noise began getting a little worse. Then, as I cruised through western 
Wyoming, the noise got a LOT worse. Like, a 747 would have been an 
improvement. The whole car shook and vibrated. I said to myself, "I think 
something is wrong."

Finally, as I approached the metropolis of Wamsutter, Wyoming, the rear end 
began skipping teeth, causing weird noises and hopping and other awful 
effects. I pulled off the exit into Wamsutter. I hobbled to the Conoco 
station, but it was closed. I managed to move it to the Texaco, where a 
teenage kid named Trey kept me entertained while I tried to figure out what to 
do. He said there was a big wrecking yard in Rawlins, probably could get the 
part there. I thanked him for the advice, but kind of doubted that there was a 
GT6+ sitting in the Rawlins junkyard...

OK, I had managed to get as far from any SOL folks as possible. MJB told me 
that Rawlins was my "point of no return" for Salt Lake, and I *was* 40 miles 
west of there...so I called, left a message, since he wasn't home. Then I 
called Ron Hood, who had offered roadside assistance earlier. Ron is in 
Louisville, Colorado, just north of Denver. A mere 280 miles away. Ron offered 
to come tow me back to his house. At that point, I would accept about any 
offer. As a matter of fact, I almost called MJB back to accept his generous 
offer to buy the car for $250.

So while Ron drive the five hours to Wamsutter, I had time to kill. I sat and 
talked to Trey for awhile, then went to the local cafe. Watched some football, 
at ham and beans, and drank enough coffee to keep all of Wamsutter awake for a 
week.

Ron came at about 6:30. We hooked up a towrope, and Ron gave me CB to use so 
we could talk as we went. The tow wasn't so bad, except I was freezing to 
death. The car didn't have any heat, and with the engine idling I wasn't 
getting enough engine heat to make any difference. My feet became numb.
We ended up at his house at about 12:30 am. We got the car in the garage. I 
was exhausted, but wide awake from the gallons of coffee I had drunk earlier.

During our perilous journey, Lawrence Buja had located a guy in Broomfield 
that raced a GT6+. And he had a spare diff! He would get it and bring it over 
Monday sometime.

Ron and his wife Beth are two of the nicest people on this earth. They put me 
up in their basement and treated me like family. I hope someday I can do 
something for them some day.

I tried to sleep.

MONDAY

Got up about 7 am. Went straight to the garage. I removed all the halfshaft 
and driveshaft bolts. I read the manual, but it didn't seem right, so I called 
and talked to Clive, the guy with the diff. He told me to remove the shocks 
and to unhook the leaf spring from the suspension to relieve the pressure that 
kind of holds the halfshafts to the diff.  Then remove the spring mounting 
plate from inside the car, then remove the mounting bolts on the diff. I did 
all that, except I didn't realize that I had to remove all 6 studs from the 
top of the diff before I try to remove it, and I had left two in. I had to 
push the diff back up to its mounted position to get at the studs and remove 
them.

I got under the car and worked at freeing the diff. It seemed very hesitant to 
come out. I had the floor jack under it, to catch it, but I moved it out of 
the way to try to work it loose. That, of course, is when it came loose. 
Although I was trying to hold it up with my right arm, I'm just not that 
strong at that angle, and it fell on my right upper arm. Ouch. So, at 12:30 
pm, the diff was out of the car.

When I looked at the right rear suspension, I noticed something pretty scary. 
The bolt holding the hub to the lower A-arm was sticking out about two inches, 
and the nut and washer were long gone. The bushing was sticking out about an 
inch on the nut side. I'm not sure what would have happened if that bolt had 
come completely out, but it wouldn't have been pleasant. 

Clive brought the replacement around about 1:30 or so. He helped get it into 
position in the car, but left me to put all the bolts back in. The only really 
hard part was connecting the spring back up. Clive had told me to use a 
crowbar and force the suspension into alignment with the spring. I didn't have 
a crowbar, so I used a couple of ratchet extensions and the floor jack to 
compress the spring upward (it was now securely fastened to the diff). That 
put it close enough to work in a screwdriver, which could be used to force the 
other side into alignment so I could slide the bolt in from the other side. 
This was very time consuming, but I had both sides done by about 7 pm.

I had to run to the hardware store to get some nuts and bolts to replace some 
older ones, plus to get a new nut and washer for the right lower wishbone. And 
I needed to to get some 90 weight for the diff, since it was dry.

Lawrence Buja and his wife invited me over for dinner during that break, and 
during that time they could wash my only pair of jeans. I hope they didn't 
mess up their washing machine.

Got back to work, and finished bolting everything up and filling the diff with 
oil about 1 am. Went for a test drive, but the engine was missing badly. I 
figured that a plug got fouled from idling so much on the tow to Louisville, 
so I started looking at plugs. 

Now, at home, my usual procedure on the TR250 is to look at #6 first, then 
forward to #1. For some strange reason, I started with #1 on the GT6+, and 
worked my way back. Plug #1 looked fine. Plug #2 looked fine, as did plug #3. 
I'll bet by now you've already figured out which plug was bad. That's right, 
#6. Cleaned it, replaced it, started the engine. It ran really smooth. I 
didn't drive it again, just turned it off and went to bed. It was nearly 2 am.

TUESDAY

Got up at 7 and got going. I was just ahead of the morning rush hour traffic 
and was out of Denver before things got too crowded. The car was really quiet 
and well behaved. I basked in the glory of Having Done It Myself. Kansas was, 
well, *Kansas*. Endless small towns, oil rigs, and flat fields. The sun was 
shining and the temperature was in the 50's. It was very pleasant, if a bit 
boring. 

Got into Kansas City about 5:30 pm, just in time for rush hour. Got caught in 
the crawling traffic from downtown KC to Blue Springs, about 17 miles east. 
Figured old Arthur Bryant would not have liked the huge billboard with his 
likeness that advertised his barbecue place. I spent a lot of evenings in 
Arthur Bryants in my youth. Best barbecue in the world.

Cleared the Blue Springs traffic and hit 70 mph again, but I stopped at the 
Oak Grove truck stop for dinner. They had a really nice buffet dinner that I 
enjoyed while I relaxed and tanked up on some coffee for the last four hours 
of the trip.

As I was about to pull onto I-70, I heard something rattle and clank. I drove 
on instead of getting on the interstate, and pulled into a McDonalds parking 
lot. Couldn't find anything wrong, so I went on. It turned out that I had 
lost the chrome trim ring around my right front headlight. Anyone got a spare 
out there?

The last four hours were uneventful, and I pulled up to the house at 10:45. 
Boy, was it great to be home. I had completely lost my voice, probably from so 
much exposure to cold. My wife felt so sorry for me she didn't even tell me 
how stupid I was. I really appreciated that, since I already knew it...
I went to bed, and was at work before 9:30 on Wednesday.

CONCLUSION

I owe so much to the folks who helped out on this trip. Anything I can do for 
fellow travelers I will do gladly. And I think Ron Hood went above and beyond 
any call of duty to drag my little car 280 miles to his house.

Next time, though, I'm going to get a trailer.



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