This morning I awoke bright and early. I had to leave Sutherlin by 7 a.m. so I would reach the Seattle airport in time to pick up Kim Morgan, my cousin. Checking out, I talked to the same clerk who’d checked me in the evening prior, Larisa Sparrowhawk.
Larisa had stayed up all night reading this blog (bless her). She had some road trip stories of her own. In fact, she’d recently moved from Virginia in a pickup truck ladened with a dog, cat, three ducks, three goats, and a trailer full of all her worldly possessions. On the way to Oregon she was pulled over three time by border patrol to search for illegal aliens. I can only imagine the look on the officers faces when they were greeted with her veritable barnyard.
The Brougham ran smoothly and quietly over Oregon’s many mountains and along the way I met some more biker friends. Bikers really like the Caddy. I like the bikers and have met them in every variety, from accountants with a rebellious streak to rebels with a rebellious streak. They all love the open road.
At noon I picked up Kim from the airport. The warm day and sunny skies gave no hint of Seattle’s wet reputation. Without much ado Kim and I motored towards Seattle’s largest annual car show, near Greenwood Lake
. One the way there, we encountered a lot of traffic, which I thought was odd given it was a Saturday at 3 p.m.Once we arrived at the show, we spent the next two hours passing out t-shirts and greeting many of the 20,000 car enthusiasts who turned out. It was a spectacular event, and by the time we got back into the Brougham we were both exhausted.
Our host for the evening were fellow Brougham owners Andrew and Jeannie .
The gated grounds for their gorgeous home proved the perfect retreat for the Brougham. Though it is not a working estate Andrew and Jeannie’s home does provide fresh eggs, mutton, and herbs. We enjoyed an incredibly fresh and delicious meal and then collapsed for the evening in Andrew and Jeannie’s spacious carriage house. Before going to bed I warned my dear cousin, who like many night creatures abhors the bright light of the morning, that she may wish to wear her eye mask. “why do you say that,” Kim asked.
“Because that skylight above your bed will likely light up this room like a Roman candle” I replied. I then went back to my room and drifted off to sleep happy in the knowledge that I didn’t have to get up early or drive to another state tomorrow.
“*$@&!” thud! “*@#%!”
I opened one eye.
“what the,” Kim muttered from the other room, “it’s so bright.”
I heard the camera’s lens shutter clicking and wondered what on earth my cousin Ansil Adams could be doing in there. The time read 5 a.m.
I rolled over trying to go back to sleep. I’d driven the Brougham 5000 miles since leaving Dallas and was so happy to be here at Andrew and Jeannies. The car was safely locked behind their secure gates, I had enjoyed a fine meal the night before, and Jeannie had promised to make me a goose eye souffle for breakfast. All was right with the world, my cousin’s attack of Tourettes notwithstanding.
In fact, over the next two days Andrew and Jeannie treated us like royalty. Andrew’s garage, fully equipped with all the latest tool technology, sports not one, but two hydraulic lifts, each capable of hoisting my 5800 pound paper weight. Andrew suggested that we should change the oil and lubricate the Brougham’s 17 grease fittings. This was made much simpler by Andrew’s vast knowledge of the car and his lift. We estimated a grease job might take two hours. It took 10. Now I was the one with the case of Tourettes. None of those damned zerk fittings would accept the grease unless we removed the weight from whatever joint we were trying to lube.
Along the way I made a discovery which undoubtedly averted certain distar. The right rear leveling valve is held to the frame of the car by two bolts. While examining my undercarriage, I discovered, to my horror, that one of the bolts and it’s associated spacer were missing. Worse, the remaining bolt had no nut, and was literally hanging by a thread. One wrong bump or a foreign objet in the road could have ripped my leveling valve off the car, causing the system to immediately loose pressure and deflate my dreams of making it to all 48 states. Incredibly, Andrew had the exact bolt available. We secured the leveling valve to the car, adding some Lock Tite as an extra precaution. We also attended to some other assorted odds and ends.
Andrew and Jeannie double checked all my bulbs and lenses. I measured the dwell on the points, which had slipped to 27. I also pulled a spark plug from each bank of cylinders, and both looked clean.
The Brougham’s harmonic balancer is supposed to have three timing marks. It has two. The third, presumably, was painted over during the rebuild. David King and I had set the timing to the second mark, which now under further examination with Andrew’s neighbor Gary’s timing light looked to be five degrees. Factor specification suggest ten degrees, so with a twist of a distributor cap, I eyeballed it and advanced the timing by an additional five degrees. Instantly, my idle sped up by 150 rmp.
I am nervous about driving into higher elevations and so have been gathering advice on high-altitude driving from other Motorpool users and technical experts. The most common advice is to step down the jets in my carburetor one size for every 2,000 feet above 4,000 feet. My center carburetor had its jets increased to .065s at sea level in New Jersey. This increase in jet size by .005, or approximately 10 per cent, was done to compensate for the decrease in energy due to the alcohol mixture so prevalent in todays gasoline. And indeed, at sea level the car did perform noticeably better. At elevations above 7000 feet, however, gas milage dropped to 5.5 mpg, plugs were fouled, and performance was abysmal at best.
I do not want a repeat of Gallup, New Mexico, yet changing the jets seems unwise at this time. Why? First of all, I’ve never changed jets before. Secondly, carburetor jets are made of brass, so if you should be so cursed as to drop one into the engine, no magnet can retrieve it. With my luck that’s exactly what would happen. Lastly, it used to be that any service station could sway your carburetor’s jets. Today, you are lucky to find a gas station that has a mechanic, much less one who’s ever even touched a carburetor. Still, to be on the safe side, I decided to locate some .060 and .058 jets while I was in Seattle. Much to my surprise, Seattle still has a carburetor shop, Carbs Unlimited, which had precisely what I needed for a very reasonable $10. Their telephone number is: (425)251-0210.
http://www.carbsunlimitedandperformance.com
It was with genuine sadness that we left Andrew and Jeannie’s. It was fun of course, to hang out with fellow car enthusiasts. But it was even better to hang out with car enthusiasts that were also gourmet cooks. Had I stayed any longer Jeannie and Andrew would have no doubt had to thin their sheep herd even further (we’d eaten “Spud” our first night. Cousin Kim who is a vegetarian, was horrified that dinner had a name. Jeannie perkily informed her that dinner was also the rug beneath our feet, and with that Kim went back to her potatoes and I noticed the following morning she didn’t ask the origin of our tasty bacon.)
We were presented with a snack lunch for the road and Kim and I set off for one of my favorite companies in the world. Griot’s Garage makes what I consider to be some of the finest car care on the planet. If you are wondering how I have kept this car clean over what to date has been 10,000 miles, you need only check out “Griot’s Speedshine.” Unfortunately, Richard Griot was not in today, but Kim and I did get to meet a number of Griot’s employees and tour their head office. Before leaving, we were presented a fresh bottle of Speedshine and a can of Metal cleaner, which Andrew told me would work wonders on my stainless steel roof.
Now, I was headed home. Seattle had been my furthest point from Birmingham. It was on to Missouri. A few hour into our drive, Kim and I decided to stop for some coffee in Pioneer, Washington. Pioneer was a great small town with a really hip coffee shop named, appropriately, Pioneer Coffee Shop.
Fully caffeinated, I managed to drive another two hours to Moses Lake, Washington. We had a good dinner on the lake at a small restaurant called Michaels and then retired for the night at a new Holiday Inn Express.