I found myself a bachelor over a 4-day weekend and was thinking to spend the time working on the Pagoda --- but instead --- took a 1000 mile (1600Km) joy ride.
Started from the beach area of Los Angeles and headed for Vegas! Once out of the cities, the speed ranged between 65 – 80 miles per hour (105 – 130km). Eventually, I got used to the high revs but still every time I would look at the tach and see that I was running at 4000-4500rpm, for long periods, it would unnerve me bit.
About 3 hours into the drive, I suddenly heard a deafening scream from the dash. Not knowing what I just blew, and taking a quick mental inventory of the tools and supplies I packed, I pulled off to the side of the road. When my speed dropped below 20mph, the screaming stopped. I now know what the SCREAMING speedo is all about --- reading about it on the forum is nothing like experiencing it. If I had not read about this on our forum, I may not have figured out what was going on. Back on the road with the speedo occasionally screaming but I did notice that “at times” I was able to make it stop by jiggling the trip counter dial.
Made it to Vegas and stayed two nights – two nights too long as I left a donation at the craps table that would have treated the Pagoda to a new OEM rear diff trunk mount and maybe even a new trunk seal to go with it --- a few too many 7’s on the dice at the wrong time.
From Vegas, headed north-west through Death Valley and Mojave Desert – did not want to breakdown out here, but really wanted to drive through this area. Luckily all was fine.
Continued west up through Central California’s Wine region, finding smaller roads where I made my way to the Coast Highway near Big Sur – found a wonderful small road that cut through the hills getting me to the coast – what I did not know, was that this road is not always open as it runs through a military base --- but since the base was closed, the road was open – good thing as it would have been a two-hour backtrack.
Even though I have driven Highway One between Northern California and Southern California many times, it’s still a wonderful drive.
The car performed well as I hugged the coast. Fuel consumption averaged at 18 miles per USA gallon, 22 miles per Imperial gallon & 13 liters per 100km – this was for 750 miles. The last 250 miles, the fuel consumption was higher and power was clearly a little less --- not sure if I got a weak tank of fuel or some adjustment went off on the car --- will be looking into it and the dreaded screaming speedo --- sounds like a painful job from everything I’ve read – my atonement for making my Vegas craps table detour!
Definitely a different kind of Thanksgiving!
(A few photos in next message also)
