Here is a HUGE photo gallery of the 2008 Crazy Like a Fox Austin->Big Apple->Big Easy-> Austin Run.....
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
The Fox is Dead.... long live the fox
This is just a short post to say that we scuttled the fox in Chattanooga, TN after pricing replacement fuel pumps... $300 for parts and no promise that it would fix the problem.
We broke down in a little town in North Carolina and then had it towed to Chattanooga so that we would have access to parts and various other modes of transportation. At 2700 miles we completed the mileage of the official babe run twice, so we let the temptation of AC take over and we rented a one way from Chattanooga to Austin via New Orleans.
The internet access has been a little sparce, but I just wanted to give a little update with more detail to follow.... indian stink eye curses, bear hunting wrecker drivers and more to follow.
We broke down in a little town in North Carolina and then had it towed to Chattanooga so that we would have access to parts and various other modes of transportation. At 2700 miles we completed the mileage of the official babe run twice, so we let the temptation of AC take over and we rented a one way from Chattanooga to Austin via New Orleans.
The internet access has been a little sparce, but I just wanted to give a little update with more detail to follow.... indian stink eye curses, bear hunting wrecker drivers and more to follow.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Video Blogs - Manhattan - Day 6
Times Square....
Chinatown Subway...
Manhattan Recap....
Day Seven - Babe Rally Day 1
Chinatown Subway...
Manhattan Recap....
Day Seven - Babe Rally Day 1
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Day 4 -> Bardstown KY -> Carlisle, PA
"Who run Bardstown?" - Tina Turner in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
[josh] We made it to Bardstown KY the previous night. We stayed at the Best Western and had dinner at the old Talbot Tavern - a neat old place built in 1792. With a little continental breakfast under our belts we headed out on the Bourbon Trail. Bardstown was a good pick, since it's right in the middle between several distilleries.
First we tried Barton Brands. Makers of various low-price and transient-friendly spirits. It was close, and we wanted to see both ends of the distilling spectrum. The lady in the guard shack stopped us and called in to the plant to see if there were any tours. Well, there weren't. They don't offer tours. Apparently their fans have a hard time getting gas money together or something to make the trip.
Ok, let's step up a notch.
We pull into the Jim Beam distillery, and it's hard to tell exactly where the visitor's parking is located. I take, mabye, a wrong turn and pull up the ornamental drive that runs up a hill in front of the historic antebellum Jim Beam estate house. There is a group of 15 snooty look euroupean tourists standing around admiring the elegant old house on a beautiful kentucky morning, when we pull up the drive into their group sending them scattering back onto the walk - scratching their heads and puffing on their Gitanes. "Watch out, I can't stop right now!!" Huh? Sacrebleu!
The Jim beam tour was nice, but we didn't really get to see the actual process. The samples were great, and they had really good Bourbon chocolates, but I wanted to see the real deal. On to the next!
[Chris] Josh forgot to mention that we started sampling fine Kentucky Bourbon at about 10am, we had eaten a nice continental breakfast so we were fine, but Bourbon is the breakfast of champions[/Chris]
- Chris is right. One the standard tunes called out at the the local Austin bluegrass jams is "Whiskey Before Breakfast." I figured they were talking about Kentucky because of the whole bluegrass thing, and they must have meant 'bourbon whiskey' so that seemed like good enough excuse for me.
Everywhere we went, folks said that the Makers Mark distillery was the place to go - a really old historic, working distillery. We made our way there which was surprisingly difficult - we went 20 minutes though single-lane country roads. We couldn't figure out how they got the finish product out of the plant. Must be some special route. [/josh]
[Chris] Makers Mark is a beautiful distillery in the heart of the Bluegrass region. Absolutely beautiful. We drive up just as the tour is walking away. The tour guide told us that Hillary Clinton had been drinking there earlier in the week.... I heard she got shot at while there but they managed to escape unharmed... We got the distillation process explained to us several times during he day and I try to convince Josh that its a federal offense to do this in the garage. At one point in the Makers Mark tour we got to see the first part of the process where the mash was exposed to air and allowed to ferment. The tour guide let us stick our hands in and play with the mash. So next time you enjoy that premium bourbon, remember that they let anyone that wants to stick their hands in there, anyone.... We ended the tour in the hidden super nice tasting room. They gave us a little moonshine version of MM and the finished product. I am realizing that I am not a super fan of bourbon, I like it in coke, but straight kind of burns the skin off the back of my throat, some of them just happen to burn less. I decided to buy a couple of bottles as souveners and they let me dip them in wax after I don a bunch of protective gear. I have a conference call that I have to make at noon and we are in the booneys. The tour guide tells us that she sometimes gets signal on the hill, so I make Josh drive up and down this road until I get two bars of signal on his sprint phone. zero bars on my ATT phone... Thank you Josh!
Conference call over we head north east and decide to stop at the Four Roses distillery in Lawrenceburg, KY. Four Roses is owned by a Japanese company and they have historically exported the Bourbon to Japan and Europe, but are now slowly distributing in the US. We again arive at the very start of the tour and follow the tour guide around the factory. The highlight of the tour was when we got to sample the whiskey after it had been distilled once, it is 140ish proof and white. They call it white dog or moonshine. She gets a cordial glass and fills it almost to the brim and hands it to the 25 year old girl on the tour saying ladies first. SHE SHOOTS THE WHOLE GLASS WITHOUT FLINCHING! The tour guide mentions something about possible temporary blindness, but it all works out. The funny thing was that she shot that without even flinching, although she did break out into a sweat a minute or two later. I am sure her dad is proud.
We then turn north and decide to put some miles between us as that is not a ton of stuff to see in W.Va. Althought very pretty, John Denver is full of crap, nothing for a tourist to do in WV so we burn through there until 12ish so that we would be in striking distance of Nazareth PA in the AM. [/Chris]
[josh] The other notable thing about this long day is how the temperature changed. It was a balmy 72F in KY and in the low 50s and wet by the time we hit PA. We both had planned on being hot in a car with no AC, so we weren't very well prepared for cold. Oh yeah, the heater core on the fox was rotten, so we don't have heat either.[/josh]
[josh] We made it to Bardstown KY the previous night. We stayed at the Best Western and had dinner at the old Talbot Tavern - a neat old place built in 1792. With a little continental breakfast under our belts we headed out on the Bourbon Trail. Bardstown was a good pick, since it's right in the middle between several distilleries.
First we tried Barton Brands. Makers of various low-price and transient-friendly spirits. It was close, and we wanted to see both ends of the distilling spectrum. The lady in the guard shack stopped us and called in to the plant to see if there were any tours. Well, there weren't. They don't offer tours. Apparently their fans have a hard time getting gas money together or something to make the trip.
Ok, let's step up a notch.
We pull into the Jim Beam distillery, and it's hard to tell exactly where the visitor's parking is located. I take, mabye, a wrong turn and pull up the ornamental drive that runs up a hill in front of the historic antebellum Jim Beam estate house. There is a group of 15 snooty look euroupean tourists standing around admiring the elegant old house on a beautiful kentucky morning, when we pull up the drive into their group sending them scattering back onto the walk - scratching their heads and puffing on their Gitanes. "Watch out, I can't stop right now!!" Huh? Sacrebleu!
The Jim beam tour was nice, but we didn't really get to see the actual process. The samples were great, and they had really good Bourbon chocolates, but I wanted to see the real deal. On to the next!
[Chris] Josh forgot to mention that we started sampling fine Kentucky Bourbon at about 10am, we had eaten a nice continental breakfast so we were fine, but Bourbon is the breakfast of champions[/Chris]
- Chris is right. One the standard tunes called out at the the local Austin bluegrass jams is "Whiskey Before Breakfast." I figured they were talking about Kentucky because of the whole bluegrass thing, and they must have meant 'bourbon whiskey' so that seemed like good enough excuse for me.
Everywhere we went, folks said that the Makers Mark distillery was the place to go - a really old historic, working distillery. We made our way there which was surprisingly difficult - we went 20 minutes though single-lane country roads. We couldn't figure out how they got the finish product out of the plant. Must be some special route. [/josh]
[Chris] Makers Mark is a beautiful distillery in the heart of the Bluegrass region. Absolutely beautiful. We drive up just as the tour is walking away. The tour guide told us that Hillary Clinton had been drinking there earlier in the week.... I heard she got shot at while there but they managed to escape unharmed... We got the distillation process explained to us several times during he day and I try to convince Josh that its a federal offense to do this in the garage. At one point in the Makers Mark tour we got to see the first part of the process where the mash was exposed to air and allowed to ferment. The tour guide let us stick our hands in and play with the mash. So next time you enjoy that premium bourbon, remember that they let anyone that wants to stick their hands in there, anyone.... We ended the tour in the hidden super nice tasting room. They gave us a little moonshine version of MM and the finished product. I am realizing that I am not a super fan of bourbon, I like it in coke, but straight kind of burns the skin off the back of my throat, some of them just happen to burn less. I decided to buy a couple of bottles as souveners and they let me dip them in wax after I don a bunch of protective gear. I have a conference call that I have to make at noon and we are in the booneys. The tour guide tells us that she sometimes gets signal on the hill, so I make Josh drive up and down this road until I get two bars of signal on his sprint phone. zero bars on my ATT phone... Thank you Josh!
Conference call over we head north east and decide to stop at the Four Roses distillery in Lawrenceburg, KY. Four Roses is owned by a Japanese company and they have historically exported the Bourbon to Japan and Europe, but are now slowly distributing in the US. We again arive at the very start of the tour and follow the tour guide around the factory. The highlight of the tour was when we got to sample the whiskey after it had been distilled once, it is 140ish proof and white. They call it white dog or moonshine. She gets a cordial glass and fills it almost to the brim and hands it to the 25 year old girl on the tour saying ladies first. SHE SHOOTS THE WHOLE GLASS WITHOUT FLINCHING! The tour guide mentions something about possible temporary blindness, but it all works out. The funny thing was that she shot that without even flinching, although she did break out into a sweat a minute or two later. I am sure her dad is proud.
We then turn north and decide to put some miles between us as that is not a ton of stuff to see in W.Va. Althought very pretty, John Denver is full of crap, nothing for a tourist to do in WV so we burn through there until 12ish so that we would be in striking distance of Nazareth PA in the AM. [/Chris]
[josh] The other notable thing about this long day is how the temperature changed. It was a balmy 72F in KY and in the low 50s and wet by the time we hit PA. We both had planned on being hot in a car with no AC, so we weren't very well prepared for cold. Oh yeah, the heater core on the fox was rotten, so we don't have heat either.[/josh]
Day 3 - > Memphis TN to Bardstown PA
"No rollerskating on the Parthenon."
[josh] The King's Court in memphis may be a 1-2 star hotel, but there is no breakfast. We went to a Starbucks to get some coffee and breakfast before we headed out. There were a lot more things to see and do in Memphis, but we had to get moving on to Kentucky and the bourbon trail. So then next stop on the way would be Nashville.
We decide to only do a few stops in Nashville. First up was the Parthenon. Yes there is apparently a full-size replica of the Parthenon in Nashville. It was built as part of the Tennesse centential celebration at the turn of the century to emphasize the notion of Nashville as "The Athens of the South." I would think that Athens GA would have a pretty good bid on that title, but who knows.
So we stopped in Centennial Park in Nashville. The Parthenon is really cool looking in the setting of a park right near the city. Unfortunately, the inner area was closed on Sunday so we couldn't see the giant statue of Athena inside. We wondered maybe it was closed on Sundays to keep pagans out.
Around back there was an interesting sign - no rollerskating on the parthenon.
Back in the car and on to the next stop - the Lane Motor Museum ( http://www.lanemotormuseum.org/ ). I was lukewarm on this originally. I like cars, but car museums can be boring. This place turned out to be pretty cool. I had website for this place online, back when I was looking for places to buy a Messerschmitt car. They have a lot of mini-cars, electric cars, three-wheel cars, french cars, and other oddballs. Chris mentioned that it felt like some sort of a museum of failed automotive products. What? the motor cycle with the snowmobile tread was a commercial failure? Really.
My favorites were the Caterham Seven, the Messerschmitt, and the BMW Isetta.
Inspired by the motor museum, we jumped back into our own oddball car to make some miles before dark. We were shooting for the middle of Kentucky as our stop for the night, so we could start on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.
Tech update: the car ran pretty well, and the weather was awesome - dry, clear, and around 72F. We filled up after Memphis with 9.03 gal giving us 32.4mpg for the previous leg. We filled up later that night with 7.87 gal, putting us at 30.6mpg for that leg.
[/josh]
[josh] The King's Court in memphis may be a 1-2 star hotel, but there is no breakfast. We went to a Starbucks to get some coffee and breakfast before we headed out. There were a lot more things to see and do in Memphis, but we had to get moving on to Kentucky and the bourbon trail. So then next stop on the way would be Nashville.
We decide to only do a few stops in Nashville. First up was the Parthenon. Yes there is apparently a full-size replica of the Parthenon in Nashville. It was built as part of the Tennesse centential celebration at the turn of the century to emphasize the notion of Nashville as "The Athens of the South." I would think that Athens GA would have a pretty good bid on that title, but who knows.
So we stopped in Centennial Park in Nashville. The Parthenon is really cool looking in the setting of a park right near the city. Unfortunately, the inner area was closed on Sunday so we couldn't see the giant statue of Athena inside. We wondered maybe it was closed on Sundays to keep pagans out.
Around back there was an interesting sign - no rollerskating on the parthenon.
Back in the car and on to the next stop - the Lane Motor Museum ( http://www.lanemotormuseum.org/ ). I was lukewarm on this originally. I like cars, but car museums can be boring. This place turned out to be pretty cool. I had website for this place online, back when I was looking for places to buy a Messerschmitt car. They have a lot of mini-cars, electric cars, three-wheel cars, french cars, and other oddballs. Chris mentioned that it felt like some sort of a museum of failed automotive products. What? the motor cycle with the snowmobile tread was a commercial failure? Really.
My favorites were the Caterham Seven, the Messerschmitt, and the BMW Isetta.
Inspired by the motor museum, we jumped back into our own oddball car to make some miles before dark. We were shooting for the middle of Kentucky as our stop for the night, so we could start on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.
Tech update: the car ran pretty well, and the weather was awesome - dry, clear, and around 72F. We filled up after Memphis with 9.03 gal giving us 32.4mpg for the previous leg. We filled up later that night with 7.87 gal, putting us at 30.6mpg for that leg.
[/josh]
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Day 2 -> Welcome to my world
Day 2 starts early at the Motel 6 in Texarkana, the hotel was a little prison like, but the ac worked and no-one shot me, so its all good. I did find one of life's little contradictions on the night stand, an ashtray with a no smoking sign.... 
* On a sad personal note, I had taken one of my 10 year old down pillows with me because being gone 10 days, I just wanted one of my goooshy pillows. Let it at the Motel 6 in Texarkana. Tragedy abounds. * Josh and I load up and head to the Wafflehouse for breakfast, we fuel up on waffles and syrup. Outside, we check out the brake warning light and determine it's just a loose switch at the e-brake handle - a little fiddling and it went away. We also taped up the hood where it was rubbing on the positive battery terminal so we could at least detect if was continuing to rub. With those issues under control, we planned to make a break for Memphis, looking for a personal experience with The King. 
Day two is a light day, only 275 Miles, basically blasting through Arkansas. Arkansas smells nice, surprisingly, and the weather great - around 72F. We pull into Memphis about 12 or 1-ish and find that the annual "May in Memphis" celebration is going on, so there are tons of people floating around. We circle around downtown and look for cheap diggs... first hotel $259/night.... ok..... Look there is the "Kings Court".... we pull in and find a $95 room that has just finished being remodeled. 
The Motel is nice and right slightly to the left of smack dab in the center of the action. Memphis has apparently spent the last few years gentrifying the downtown area, there is a new baseball stadium and Beale street looks good. First things first, Graceland. We plug the address into my handy TomTom and off we go. $8 parking, but it is worth every penny because we get the opportunity to park next to a pristine looking corvette that is parked about by itself in the back 40 of the parking lot. I would have loved to been there when this obviously anal retentive dude came out to find our $250 VW next to his car. I love this. 
$28 dollars later we are on our way to the Kings House with our little electronic headphone tour guide.... 
The Kings song comes on "Welcome to my world" repeatedly during the tour. Josh and I find ourselves singing the chorus randomly throughout the night, cracking a smile each time. We spend two hours and get Elvis'd out. 
I find myself wondering if the property taxes went up or down when they buried Elvis there. Wrong I know.... Off to the rock and roll grill and I get a grilled penutbutter and banana sandwich, in memory of the King. Welcome to my world.... then the ceremonial adding of the bumper sticker to the trunk lid. 
We return to the hotel and there is a baseball game going on across the street and BBQ Fest crowds walking around. We walk down to Beale Street via the Peabody and are amazed at Beale Street. It is like Sixth Street in Austin, only with booze in the streets and more people wondering around. Its more like after the bar lets out on Sixth street. 
Josh and I wonder around and get a frozen drink called a "walk me down." We find a really talented street performer who is playing an instrument like I have never seen. It is a cigar box with two broom sticks and four stings and the sound is amazing.
He takes a break and we start looking for food. We settle on "Pig with attitude" and both get the ribs and tea. The Elvis impersonator gets up and the all of the sudden the "walk me down" has snuck up on both of us. We listen to Elvis songs and get a pic with Elvis...
Welcome to my world....
[josh] Chris also noticed a tingling on his right arm. He was on the south side on the way across Arkansas, and since we're rolling with the windows down, he got a nice sunburn on one arm. We'll fix that on the return trip.
[/josh] Back to the Hotel for an early night. I am amazed how quickly the frozen drink has zapped my will to be out, all I want is bed. We stop on the way there for a couple more bumper stickers and that is it for the night.
* On a sad personal note, I had taken one of my 10 year old down pillows with me because being gone 10 days, I just wanted one of my goooshy pillows. Let it at the Motel 6 in Texarkana. Tragedy abounds. * Josh and I load up and head to the Wafflehouse for breakfast, we fuel up on waffles and syrup. Outside, we check out the brake warning light and determine it's just a loose switch at the e-brake handle - a little fiddling and it went away. We also taped up the hood where it was rubbing on the positive battery terminal so we could at least detect if was continuing to rub. With those issues under control, we planned to make a break for Memphis, looking for a personal experience with The King. 
Day two is a light day, only 275 Miles, basically blasting through Arkansas. Arkansas smells nice, surprisingly, and the weather great - around 72F. We pull into Memphis about 12 or 1-ish and find that the annual "May in Memphis" celebration is going on, so there are tons of people floating around. We circle around downtown and look for cheap diggs... first hotel $259/night.... ok..... Look there is the "Kings Court".... we pull in and find a $95 room that has just finished being remodeled. 
The Motel is nice and right slightly to the left of smack dab in the center of the action. Memphis has apparently spent the last few years gentrifying the downtown area, there is a new baseball stadium and Beale street looks good. First things first, Graceland. We plug the address into my handy TomTom and off we go. $8 parking, but it is worth every penny because we get the opportunity to park next to a pristine looking corvette that is parked about by itself in the back 40 of the parking lot. I would have loved to been there when this obviously anal retentive dude came out to find our $250 VW next to his car. I love this. 
$28 dollars later we are on our way to the Kings House with our little electronic headphone tour guide.... 
The Kings song comes on "Welcome to my world" repeatedly during the tour. Josh and I find ourselves singing the chorus randomly throughout the night, cracking a smile each time. We spend two hours and get Elvis'd out. 
I find myself wondering if the property taxes went up or down when they buried Elvis there. Wrong I know.... Off to the rock and roll grill and I get a grilled penutbutter and banana sandwich, in memory of the King. Welcome to my world.... then the ceremonial adding of the bumper sticker to the trunk lid. 
We return to the hotel and there is a baseball game going on across the street and BBQ Fest crowds walking around. We walk down to Beale Street via the Peabody and are amazed at Beale Street. It is like Sixth Street in Austin, only with booze in the streets and more people wondering around. Its more like after the bar lets out on Sixth street. 
Josh and I wonder around and get a frozen drink called a "walk me down." We find a really talented street performer who is playing an instrument like I have never seen. It is a cigar box with two broom sticks and four stings and the sound is amazing.He takes a break and we start looking for food. We settle on "Pig with attitude" and both get the ribs and tea. The Elvis impersonator gets up and the all of the sudden the "walk me down" has snuck up on both of us. We listen to Elvis songs and get a pic with Elvis...
Welcome to my world....[josh] Chris also noticed a tingling on his right arm. He was on the south side on the way across Arkansas, and since we're rolling with the windows down, he got a nice sunburn on one arm. We'll fix that on the return trip.
[/josh] Back to the Hotel for an early night. I am amazed how quickly the frozen drink has zapped my will to be out, all I want is bed. We stop on the way there for a couple more bumper stickers and that is it for the night.Day 1 -> Departure
Friday -> Friday 16th 2008
Departure Day
[Josh] So it’s Friday and we get started after work. The plan is to try to make it out of Texas by tonight. This is first lengthy trip so we’re both at high awareness levels – listening for odd engine sounds, feeling for any strange vibrations in the chassis, smelling for any coolant, burnt oil, or leaking gas.
We’re also getting our gear tweaked in. Chris picked up a CB radio and antenna. I put in an inverter to run laptops or our various chargers. We have Chris’s TomTom GPS for our main navigation aid – set on the English Lady voice - and also a GPS-equipped radar detector that continuously reports our speed and heading. The speedo on the fox doesn’t work, so we’ll be reading our velocity via satellite. We also have the normal load-out of cell phones, digital cameras, and I brought my little Garmin as a backup.
Heading up to Dallas on IH35, the car is running well. I’m finally starting to relax. The fox has a very smooth and compliant ride on the highway. The new skinny 13” discount tires are probably terrible in the twisties, but they keep the unsprung weight down which must be part of it.
Stopped for kolaches and to check the car out at the Czech-Stop in West, Texas. We also decide that we should collect stickers where we stop and put them on the rear of the fox. So the Czech –Stop is our first road sticker.
We make it past Dallas and are on to Texarkana. It’s pretty dark out there, and not much traffic on the road. We’ve noticed a “burnt electronics” smell periodically, but it doesn’t seem to be persistent enough to stop and check it out – time for watchful awareness.
We noticed a lot of trucker chatter on the CB during this road stretch. Most these guys are impossible to understand. We’ve making good time passing pretty much everybody on the road, when we hear somebody on the radio “Yeah, did you see that VW with the stickers all over it. There was fire coming off the back of it.” Chris and I looked at each other. Chris says, ”Did that guy say that we are on fire?” “Yeah. I think that’s what he said.” Chris keys the CB – “This is the East bound VW - - can you describe the fire? Is it a big flame or a little flame?”. We get some unintelligible responses. It’s hard to see in the dark. I turned around to see if there were any visible flames. We didn’t see any smoke. We eventually figured out that they were giving us grief for going so fast.
We finally get to Texarkana around 11:30pm and decide to call it a night. We stop at the motel 6 and check the car out. Right as we pulled in, the brake warning light came on. We also notice the positive battery terminal plastic cover as a worn spot where part of the hood must have been rubbing against it. If that works through to metal, there’ll be a shower of sparks and the car will shut down. Hmm. We’ll have some things to check out in the morning.
Drive Summary: Austin to Texarkana – 374 miles, 30.75mpg
Departure Day
[Josh] So it’s Friday and we get started after work. The plan is to try to make it out of Texas by tonight. This is first lengthy trip so we’re both at high awareness levels – listening for odd engine sounds, feeling for any strange vibrations in the chassis, smelling for any coolant, burnt oil, or leaking gas.
We’re also getting our gear tweaked in. Chris picked up a CB radio and antenna. I put in an inverter to run laptops or our various chargers. We have Chris’s TomTom GPS for our main navigation aid – set on the English Lady voice - and also a GPS-equipped radar detector that continuously reports our speed and heading. The speedo on the fox doesn’t work, so we’ll be reading our velocity via satellite. We also have the normal load-out of cell phones, digital cameras, and I brought my little Garmin as a backup.
Heading up to Dallas on IH35, the car is running well. I’m finally starting to relax. The fox has a very smooth and compliant ride on the highway. The new skinny 13” discount tires are probably terrible in the twisties, but they keep the unsprung weight down which must be part of it.
Stopped for kolaches and to check the car out at the Czech-Stop in West, Texas. We also decide that we should collect stickers where we stop and put them on the rear of the fox. So the Czech –Stop is our first road sticker.
We make it past Dallas and are on to Texarkana. It’s pretty dark out there, and not much traffic on the road. We’ve noticed a “burnt electronics” smell periodically, but it doesn’t seem to be persistent enough to stop and check it out – time for watchful awareness.
We noticed a lot of trucker chatter on the CB during this road stretch. Most these guys are impossible to understand. We’ve making good time passing pretty much everybody on the road, when we hear somebody on the radio “Yeah, did you see that VW with the stickers all over it. There was fire coming off the back of it.” Chris and I looked at each other. Chris says, ”Did that guy say that we are on fire?” “Yeah. I think that’s what he said.” Chris keys the CB – “This is the East bound VW - - can you describe the fire? Is it a big flame or a little flame?”. We get some unintelligible responses. It’s hard to see in the dark. I turned around to see if there were any visible flames. We didn’t see any smoke. We eventually figured out that they were giving us grief for going so fast.
We finally get to Texarkana around 11:30pm and decide to call it a night. We stop at the motel 6 and check the car out. Right as we pulled in, the brake warning light came on. We also notice the positive battery terminal plastic cover as a worn spot where part of the hood must have been rubbing against it. If that works through to metal, there’ll be a shower of sparks and the car will shut down. Hmm. We’ll have some things to check out in the morning.
Drive Summary: Austin to Texarkana – 374 miles, 30.75mpg
Delivering the Dog
Delivering the Dog
After having the issues we’ve been having with the fox, it made sense to have a “proof of concept” run to test the car out on the highway for an extended period before we set off on our 3800 mile trip. Well, Tex the wonder hound needed to visit his grandma in San Antonio, while his owner was tempting fate in form of a 90 model VeeDub, so we loaded up and headed south. The first thing I noted was the dismay in my dogs eyes. “WTF no AC?” its ok Tex you only have an 80 mile ride, you will be fine.
The car is running well, but the temp is climbing slowly as we travel through Buda, Kyle and San Marcos. The fan is running at its max and my temp is about 210-215. 212 is boiling under normal conditions, in a car radiator under pressure the boiling point raises 10-20 degrees, so things don’t start spitting up in a hew of steam and scaled dreams until about 230-240. I make it to San Antonio and temps drop as we slow down to drive through town. I get home, kiss my mom and tell her I need to find some supplies to do some shade tree mechanic-ing. I hit Lowes and find some plexi-glass and some zip ties, MacGyver stand back. I also pick up a product called “water wetter”, I don’t know how you make anything wetter than water, but these guys claim to be able to lower water temps, so I’m game.
I get home and build the plexiglass shroud around the radiator, which is located next to the engine and is about half the size of a normal radiator. Damn German Engineers. Zip ties are a wonderful invention; remind me to buy the person who invented those a drink, if I see them. I kiss mom, sis and pup goodbye and head back north to Austin.
On the drive back, temps have dropped to 205, and I am happier with this. I get home to Austin just as the 60 mph winds from a T-storm are blowing through. Mental note - The car runs much cooler when being doused with rain.
I am home and we are nearing the point of departure….
Thursday -> May 15th 2008
============
[Josh]Still pondering why the fox is running so hot, we talked about checking the timing. It’s seemed like a long shot – how far off could the timing be? We weren’t misfiring and we passed emissions. Chris found the vaccum advance on the distributor was disconnected, replumbed it with new tube. Low and behold the idle jumped up and it appeared to run cooler.
We met at the Cedar Door after work to have a little send off with our friends. This is the day before we’re planning on leaving and we still haven’t made a decision about the head gasket.
Chris brought a bottle of Champaign to christen the car. We pulled it around the side alley where there was already a lot of broken glass. I smacked the bottle on the front quarter panel – I figured it was already dented there and it was metal, but no breakage. After a couple more thwacks, it was apparent I was just beating the heck out the fender so Chris took a try at smashing the bottle against the wheel which worked much better.
With the christening done, we decided to take a spin down IH35 to check our coolant temp under load with the timing advance fix. Chris had also bodged-up a plexiglass and zip-tie shroud to direct more airflow towards the radiator. We ended up running 190F under load – woohoo! So with all the improvement, we make the decision not to open up the engine and replace the head gasket. The decision made, our fate is set.[/josh]
After having the issues we’ve been having with the fox, it made sense to have a “proof of concept” run to test the car out on the highway for an extended period before we set off on our 3800 mile trip. Well, Tex the wonder hound needed to visit his grandma in San Antonio, while his owner was tempting fate in form of a 90 model VeeDub, so we loaded up and headed south. The first thing I noted was the dismay in my dogs eyes. “WTF no AC?” its ok Tex you only have an 80 mile ride, you will be fine.
The car is running well, but the temp is climbing slowly as we travel through Buda, Kyle and San Marcos. The fan is running at its max and my temp is about 210-215. 212 is boiling under normal conditions, in a car radiator under pressure the boiling point raises 10-20 degrees, so things don’t start spitting up in a hew of steam and scaled dreams until about 230-240. I make it to San Antonio and temps drop as we slow down to drive through town. I get home, kiss my mom and tell her I need to find some supplies to do some shade tree mechanic-ing. I hit Lowes and find some plexi-glass and some zip ties, MacGyver stand back. I also pick up a product called “water wetter”, I don’t know how you make anything wetter than water, but these guys claim to be able to lower water temps, so I’m game.
I get home and build the plexiglass shroud around the radiator, which is located next to the engine and is about half the size of a normal radiator. Damn German Engineers. Zip ties are a wonderful invention; remind me to buy the person who invented those a drink, if I see them. I kiss mom, sis and pup goodbye and head back north to Austin.
On the drive back, temps have dropped to 205, and I am happier with this. I get home to Austin just as the 60 mph winds from a T-storm are blowing through. Mental note - The car runs much cooler when being doused with rain.
I am home and we are nearing the point of departure….
Thursday -> May 15th 2008
============
[Josh]Still pondering why the fox is running so hot, we talked about checking the timing. It’s seemed like a long shot – how far off could the timing be? We weren’t misfiring and we passed emissions. Chris found the vaccum advance on the distributor was disconnected, replumbed it with new tube. Low and behold the idle jumped up and it appeared to run cooler.
We met at the Cedar Door after work to have a little send off with our friends. This is the day before we’re planning on leaving and we still haven’t made a decision about the head gasket.
Chris brought a bottle of Champaign to christen the car. We pulled it around the side alley where there was already a lot of broken glass. I smacked the bottle on the front quarter panel – I figured it was already dented there and it was metal, but no breakage. After a couple more thwacks, it was apparent I was just beating the heck out the fender so Chris took a try at smashing the bottle against the wheel which worked much better.
With the christening done, we decided to take a spin down IH35 to check our coolant temp under load with the timing advance fix. Chris had also bodged-up a plexiglass and zip-tie shroud to direct more airflow towards the radiator. We ended up running 190F under load – woohoo! So with all the improvement, we make the decision not to open up the engine and replace the head gasket. The decision made, our fate is set.[/josh]
Friday night out with the Fox
Friday night out with the Fox - Friday 9th, 2008 ( One week till departure)
Friday was a good day, or at least started out that way. I got home after work and we had sorted out everything needed to pass a safety inspection, but I was a little worried about the emissions test that cars are required to do in Austin. I drove down to an inspection station close to the house because driving with registration and an inspection that we both around two years out of date made me a little nervous.
The car inspector had trouble starting the car, as you have to give it a certain amount of throttle for it to start, but he managed to get it started and asked “will it idle” ….. “yes, but it will need to warm up a little” He does the driving part of the inspection gets back and does the emission test and to my surprise passed!!! I was very happy to say the least, almost in tears of joy!
Well, confident after having acquired an inspection sticker I decide to take the fox to a happy hour to meet up with some friends.
As I leave the Happy Hour and am getting into the car my jeans rip about 8 inches from my lower back to mid left cheek. Great. I should have taken this omen and gone home, instead I decide that I need to wash some more layers of dirt from the car, that’s when things turned south. Leaving the car wash I noted that the temp gauge was indicating a little above normal and I realized that I had left my Credit Card at Café Mundi, so I head east, only to start overheating, at least according to the gauge. So I pull over, at night, on the east side, in my $250 car. I let it cool down, drive 10 more blocks… rinse and repeat. I finally get within six blocks of the café and after two cops pull someone over right by me, I decided that I would walk the distance to pick up the card.(registration expired in Feb 2007) I set out walking, in my torn jeans, on the eastside at night. I get the card and head back to the car, the cops are still there, so I start the car and ease away. The car quickly gets hot and I find a Chevron to get an ice cream bar and let the car cool off. 20 minutes later I start off again and make it to the Chevron on Congress and Riverside (fairly close to the house). The whole time that I am waiting, I am beginning to understand how bad it would suck to breakdown outside of town, and really hoping that we would find a cheap easy fix to resolve the overheating problem. I get an ice tea and wait 20 min. I finally get the car home and I want to see if I can figure out what was failing. I shoot the hoses with an infrared temp gauge and see 200 – 240 temps, high, but not off the scale. Hmmmm?
[josh] Sorry Chris. There is nothing like standing around East Austin on a Friday night with your rear end hanging out. I had already already left Café Mundi.[/josh]
It turns out that the temp gauge had just decided to break on my inaugural night out with the fox.
The next couple of days we install a $20 aftermarket temp gauge and we are back into the hunt.
Saturday
[Josh] Ok, our new project for Saturday was figuring out why the fox was overheating. Shooting the radiator with the IR thermometer indicated we weren’t as hot as we thought we were. It was still running hot but the dash gage was wrong. Replaced the sensor – still wrong. Tested the sensor – seemed OK, resistance change with temperature. Figured out that the gage cluster must be busted. There was a TSB on the soldering coming loose on the voltage regulator in the gage cluster. Resoldered it onto its flex circuit and it still didn’t work. Eventually, we gave up and installed an aftermarket coolant temp gage and sensor. The up side is we know pretty well what our top tank temps are now. The down side is that we plumbed it into the place where the old sensor was so now the dash gage hi-temp warning light blinks all the time. This could be disconcerting, but we’ve decided to call the flashing red light a “heartbeat” instead of a warning lamp.
So with the new gauge, now we can actually watch it overheat instead of just waiting for steam to come out (!). We did a coolant flush, checked the water pump impeller, and threw out the thermostat just to get max coolant flow through the radiator. We warmed it up to check if that helped. Chris stuck his arm down in front of the rad to check the airflow and squeezed the rad top tube to see if the coolant system was generating pressure, when a pencil stream of water shot out of the front of the rad onto Chris’ arm. This was hot enough to cause the involuntary response of yanking his arm out while scraping it against the sharp metal of the grill metal. Sometimes cars act like they don’t want to be fixed.
We had uncovered a radiator leak – this would normally be a real downer, but probably saved outrbutts from getting stranded a week later if we hadn’t found it right then. A place in town had a new radiator, so we ended up picking it up Monday and installing it Tuesday. [/josh]
Tuesday
[Josh] After putting in the new radiator and doing some driving, we’re still running hot. The cooling system should be running at max effectiveness with the thermostat removed, but its just keeping up – we’re around 200F around town. It just seems high, and we’re about to head off for 3800 miles. We keep thinking about the head gasket. We think we could have a slow leak, but there is no milkshake oil, no oil or gas in the water, no bubbles in the water, and no steam. If it’s a leak, it’s definitely a minor one. The crux is whether or not it’s stable thing. If it hangs in there as-is we’ll be fine. If it’s something that’s prone to getting worse, 3800miles is a lot to ask. This is a tough decision – we can do the job, but we only have a couple days left. Is it bad enough to do major surgery? We’re going to be working fast, outdoors, and it looks rainy this week. If we doof something up during the job, then we’re basically out.
Chris decided to order parts overnight – head bolts, head gasket. I hooked up with the Stahl Willie tool guy at the Lexus dealer and picked up the special tool for the head bolts – and Chris lined up south Austin machine shop who could flycut the head deck for us in an afternoon. We agree to push the decision to Thursday, the day before we’re planned to leave Austin. We figure if we pass on the head gasket job, we can still take the parts with us – so if we blow out on the road, we still might have a chance to fix it in the field. I’m not sleeping super well at this point.[/josh]
Friday was a good day, or at least started out that way. I got home after work and we had sorted out everything needed to pass a safety inspection, but I was a little worried about the emissions test that cars are required to do in Austin. I drove down to an inspection station close to the house because driving with registration and an inspection that we both around two years out of date made me a little nervous.
The car inspector had trouble starting the car, as you have to give it a certain amount of throttle for it to start, but he managed to get it started and asked “will it idle” ….. “yes, but it will need to warm up a little” He does the driving part of the inspection gets back and does the emission test and to my surprise passed!!! I was very happy to say the least, almost in tears of joy!
Well, confident after having acquired an inspection sticker I decide to take the fox to a happy hour to meet up with some friends.
As I leave the Happy Hour and am getting into the car my jeans rip about 8 inches from my lower back to mid left cheek. Great. I should have taken this omen and gone home, instead I decide that I need to wash some more layers of dirt from the car, that’s when things turned south. Leaving the car wash I noted that the temp gauge was indicating a little above normal and I realized that I had left my Credit Card at Café Mundi, so I head east, only to start overheating, at least according to the gauge. So I pull over, at night, on the east side, in my $250 car. I let it cool down, drive 10 more blocks… rinse and repeat. I finally get within six blocks of the café and after two cops pull someone over right by me, I decided that I would walk the distance to pick up the card.(registration expired in Feb 2007) I set out walking, in my torn jeans, on the eastside at night. I get the card and head back to the car, the cops are still there, so I start the car and ease away. The car quickly gets hot and I find a Chevron to get an ice cream bar and let the car cool off. 20 minutes later I start off again and make it to the Chevron on Congress and Riverside (fairly close to the house). The whole time that I am waiting, I am beginning to understand how bad it would suck to breakdown outside of town, and really hoping that we would find a cheap easy fix to resolve the overheating problem. I get an ice tea and wait 20 min. I finally get the car home and I want to see if I can figure out what was failing. I shoot the hoses with an infrared temp gauge and see 200 – 240 temps, high, but not off the scale. Hmmmm?
[josh] Sorry Chris. There is nothing like standing around East Austin on a Friday night with your rear end hanging out. I had already already left Café Mundi.[/josh]
It turns out that the temp gauge had just decided to break on my inaugural night out with the fox.
The next couple of days we install a $20 aftermarket temp gauge and we are back into the hunt.
Saturday
[Josh] Ok, our new project for Saturday was figuring out why the fox was overheating. Shooting the radiator with the IR thermometer indicated we weren’t as hot as we thought we were. It was still running hot but the dash gage was wrong. Replaced the sensor – still wrong. Tested the sensor – seemed OK, resistance change with temperature. Figured out that the gage cluster must be busted. There was a TSB on the soldering coming loose on the voltage regulator in the gage cluster. Resoldered it onto its flex circuit and it still didn’t work. Eventually, we gave up and installed an aftermarket coolant temp gage and sensor. The up side is we know pretty well what our top tank temps are now. The down side is that we plumbed it into the place where the old sensor was so now the dash gage hi-temp warning light blinks all the time. This could be disconcerting, but we’ve decided to call the flashing red light a “heartbeat” instead of a warning lamp.
So with the new gauge, now we can actually watch it overheat instead of just waiting for steam to come out (!). We did a coolant flush, checked the water pump impeller, and threw out the thermostat just to get max coolant flow through the radiator. We warmed it up to check if that helped. Chris stuck his arm down in front of the rad to check the airflow and squeezed the rad top tube to see if the coolant system was generating pressure, when a pencil stream of water shot out of the front of the rad onto Chris’ arm. This was hot enough to cause the involuntary response of yanking his arm out while scraping it against the sharp metal of the grill metal. Sometimes cars act like they don’t want to be fixed.
We had uncovered a radiator leak – this would normally be a real downer, but probably saved outrbutts from getting stranded a week later if we hadn’t found it right then. A place in town had a new radiator, so we ended up picking it up Monday and installing it Tuesday. [/josh]
Tuesday
[Josh] After putting in the new radiator and doing some driving, we’re still running hot. The cooling system should be running at max effectiveness with the thermostat removed, but its just keeping up – we’re around 200F around town. It just seems high, and we’re about to head off for 3800 miles. We keep thinking about the head gasket. We think we could have a slow leak, but there is no milkshake oil, no oil or gas in the water, no bubbles in the water, and no steam. If it’s a leak, it’s definitely a minor one. The crux is whether or not it’s stable thing. If it hangs in there as-is we’ll be fine. If it’s something that’s prone to getting worse, 3800miles is a lot to ask. This is a tough decision – we can do the job, but we only have a couple days left. Is it bad enough to do major surgery? We’re going to be working fast, outdoors, and it looks rainy this week. If we doof something up during the job, then we’re basically out.
Chris decided to order parts overnight – head bolts, head gasket. I hooked up with the Stahl Willie tool guy at the Lexus dealer and picked up the special tool for the head bolts – and Chris lined up south Austin machine shop who could flycut the head deck for us in an afternoon. We agree to push the decision to Thursday, the day before we’re planned to leave Austin. We figure if we pass on the head gasket job, we can still take the parts with us – so if we blow out on the road, we still might have a chance to fix it in the field. I’m not sleeping super well at this point.[/josh]
Monday, May 12, 2008
It all started with an email.....
It all started with an email from my friend Josh R. Someone on craigslist was looking for teammates for some "beater" race called the "BABE rally." My inital thought was that babes were going to be involved, but alas I was wrong. BABE stands for Big Apple to Big Easy and the only condition of the rally is that your car must have cost less than $250. Of course this sounds like a GREAT idea to me. I love bargain hunting and I love working on cars. I contacted the guys, they were iffy and not committed until they could find a car. I offered to have a beer with them to discuss and found out later they came to their senses and decided not to go....
So Josh and I start $250 car hunting, mostly craigslist ( ah the beacon of crap cars everywhere). He finds a Chysler Diplomat (Kramer car) that has electrical problems after the rats chewed through the wiring harness, then a 280 or 300z that was sitting in two feet of grass, but nothing is jumping out at us. Until that faitfull Saturday afternoon when I find the $300 Fox on craigslist.
My favorite part of the add was the statement... "this car is a piece of junk" Perfect!
I call the guy up and explain what we are doing, 3800 miles - car must cost less than or = $250. He agrees that he will be able to bargain with me to that price point and I get directions to the car located south of Dripping Springs.
An hour later, I get there and we strike a deal. The car is supposed to be a good driver with a broken starter. I pay him and tell him I will return for the car tomorrow or monday. Sunday rolls around and Josh goes to get a trailer hitch installed on his just purchased from ebay F350 15 Passenger Van. It has a 5.4 Liter small block and has plenty of towing powa! We pick the car up monday and tow it back to my house via the car wash. (we threw away all of the trash and a few dominoes) When we get home and try to get the car off the trailer, we dont have enough muscle to dislodge the car manually, so I pull out my new smart car and we hook a cable to in to draw it off the car... a smart car as a tow vehicle...
The following days, I ordered a starter from a junk yard in San Angelo and it comes in. We slap that puppy in and it starts to crank and even runs!!!! We are home free, or so we think. We jump in the car for a quicky trip around the block and get about 50 yards down the alley, hit a bump, the car dies and smoke starts billowing from the dash, and I catch the distictive smell of plastic burning.... I quickly turn off the car and the smoke dissapates. We then try to start it to no avail... crap. We decide to push the car back to my house, but at that very second the locking mechanism in the key switch decides that it would rather visit its volkswagon ancestors in Vallhalla or wherever and gives up the ghost, but in the locked position. Good think my alley isnt very heavily traveled, we dissasemble the steering column and push back to the house. So this may be a little more challenging then first appearances.
We put on the problem solving hats and quit for the night. Josh manages to find diagrams online and he starts doing his engineering thing (did you know that circuits have to be closed?) Anyway we get the car started after tracing a burned wire from the key switch to the ignition coil. We run a replacement, but have another problem, the fuel pump isnt running. So more tracing, blah, blah, blah and the fuse panel has a short. Sqeeze it and it works. Great nothing like an intermittant electrical problem..
I find a guy on VW Vortex parting out a Fox and buy a various assortment of used parts from him, the parts get in, I install the fuse panel and we are off to the races again...
So Josh and I start $250 car hunting, mostly craigslist ( ah the beacon of crap cars everywhere). He finds a Chysler Diplomat (Kramer car) that has electrical problems after the rats chewed through the wiring harness, then a 280 or 300z that was sitting in two feet of grass, but nothing is jumping out at us. Until that faitfull Saturday afternoon when I find the $300 Fox on craigslist.
My favorite part of the add was the statement... "this car is a piece of junk" Perfect!
I call the guy up and explain what we are doing, 3800 miles - car must cost less than or = $250. He agrees that he will be able to bargain with me to that price point and I get directions to the car located south of Dripping Springs.
An hour later, I get there and we strike a deal. The car is supposed to be a good driver with a broken starter. I pay him and tell him I will return for the car tomorrow or monday. Sunday rolls around and Josh goes to get a trailer hitch installed on his just purchased from ebay F350 15 Passenger Van. It has a 5.4 Liter small block and has plenty of towing powa! We pick the car up monday and tow it back to my house via the car wash. (we threw away all of the trash and a few dominoes) When we get home and try to get the car off the trailer, we dont have enough muscle to dislodge the car manually, so I pull out my new smart car and we hook a cable to in to draw it off the car... a smart car as a tow vehicle...
The following days, I ordered a starter from a junk yard in San Angelo and it comes in. We slap that puppy in and it starts to crank and even runs!!!! We are home free, or so we think. We jump in the car for a quicky trip around the block and get about 50 yards down the alley, hit a bump, the car dies and smoke starts billowing from the dash, and I catch the distictive smell of plastic burning.... I quickly turn off the car and the smoke dissapates. We then try to start it to no avail... crap. We decide to push the car back to my house, but at that very second the locking mechanism in the key switch decides that it would rather visit its volkswagon ancestors in Vallhalla or wherever and gives up the ghost, but in the locked position. Good think my alley isnt very heavily traveled, we dissasemble the steering column and push back to the house. So this may be a little more challenging then first appearances.
We put on the problem solving hats and quit for the night. Josh manages to find diagrams online and he starts doing his engineering thing (did you know that circuits have to be closed?) Anyway we get the car started after tracing a burned wire from the key switch to the ignition coil. We run a replacement, but have another problem, the fuel pump isnt running. So more tracing, blah, blah, blah and the fuse panel has a short. Sqeeze it and it works. Great nothing like an intermittant electrical problem..
I find a guy on VW Vortex parting out a Fox and buy a various assortment of used parts from him, the parts get in, I install the fuse panel and we are off to the races again...
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