Day 13: How many dudes does it take to fix a head gasket...

Well apparently it takes 2 Californians and 3 Texans to pull a head off of a Model A! We spent a good few hours working on pulling the head, trying our best not to damage anything. We pried, we lifted on the head with an engine lift, we beat with a rubber mallet, we even fed rope into the plug holes and cranked the engine so the piston would hit the balled up rope against the head. The rope trick actually worked wonderfully, it really popped the head up. There was a lot of rust built up around the studs so it took a long time to persuade the head to loosen up, but we finally got it free. There weren't really any signs of blown gasket, so it's assumed at this point it's either the rings or valve guides. The valves looked fine, didn't look or feel burnt, and seemed to be seating fine, and the cylinder looked fine so no signs of a broken ring. None of the other cylinders dropped in compression so it seems unlikely that number four would have dropped from 60's to 30's on the drive, but I suppose anything can happen. I was told it may be the valve guides, making the valves seat just off enough to drop the compression down, even though we couldn't see any difference from the other valves. We got to meet another fella in the Angelo A's club, an 84 year old man named Leroy Palmer. He drives his Model A from around 3,000 to 5,000 miles every year, by himself with a pull behind trailer to camp in, what an inspiration! So it was me, Lane, Scott, Roger and Leroy all putting our heads together to try and get this head off and figured out. Model A's are so great, in the fact that they bring so many good folks together, it was really great to spend time with Model A'ers and talk shop all day long and watch the carb cleaner evaporate. After an amazing meal Jan made and a good cleaning of the engine and head, we got the new gasket on there and fired the car up. Eventually after re-torqueing the head bolts the car got its pep back and started running on all four cylinders again. It's amazing what a fresh gasket will do, it was definitely time for one! Thanks so much to you wonderful folks in San Angelo, you took great care of us!

Rope, it's the cotton version of baling wire.

We needed some serious leverage, so Scott found a lift to borrow.

Headless!



Sometimes, you just gotta stare at stuff...
Left to Right: Roger, Scott, Me, Leroy, Janice.



First time seeing my engine open.

Beheaded.

Roger is a good worker, let me know if you need his number :)

Day 12: Andrews, TX to San Angelo, TX

Surprisingly got some sleep at the rest stop, even though we were only about 10 yards from 80mph trucks flying by all night long. It's pretty funny to see where you end up camping when you wake up the next morning. A lot of times when I'm really tired and on the road and it's night time, I end up settling for a place to sleep where it seems like no one would notice you, then wake up realizing that I'm on a foot path or something. The man who is hired to take care of the rest stop got to take care of all of the area but ours, he was nice enough to let us be with our pup tents, and focus on the other parts of the lawn. We did some calling around to folks in San Angelo and found a fella who supposedly had a fan we could pick up. We drove on from Andrews to San Angelo, and boy what a bad drive that was. If you'd like some advice about driving a slow car on small four-lane roads in oilfield territory, basically, don't. People around the oil fields in West Texas are terrible drivers, I don't know if they are inexperienced, aggravated, ignorant, or just plain tired from working oil in the hot sun, but boy it was a rough drive. I even had to swerve over into the shoulder, when a big truck came roaring up right up to my bumper. I thought for sure he'd hit me, I'm not sure if he was trying to intimidate me or was just plain not paying attention, but I did send some words his way... Anyway, we finally made it into San Angelo, and the traffic was intense. It didn't help that we had arrived during rush hour. We met up with a gentleman named Scott, who was our fan guy. He came and met us at Walmart and we followed him back to his house, where he said we could use his garage to once again take the radiator off and replace our fan. Fortunately we had just done that the night before, so it was cake to do the fan swap. Scott was kind enough the hook me up with the fan, which I am very grateful for, as well as a place to sleep, shower, launder and have a good meal! Also, another fella named Roger came by in a beautiful '31 pickup and hooked us up with a generator, as ours was starting to come loose at the shaft. As soon as we finished putting the fan and radiator back on, I fired the car up and noticed it was missing, I grounded out the plugs and figured out that the 4th wasn't changing the idle at all even though it was getting plenty of spark. I checked the compression in all of the cylinders, and sure enough to our dismay, 4th cylinder had a low reading of 32psi. What a night! At that point we decided to just sleep and deal with it in the morning since Scott and his wife Jan were kind enough to invite us into their home for another day to fix the car up. It was great to find such nice people who were willing to help!

Deja vu!

Spankin' new fan.

Day 11: Roswell, NM to Andrews, TX

Roswell was a pretty interesting town, it was as I expected, full of alien related gift shops. We spent a little while in town walking around, checked out an antique store and ate some Mexican food, and set out on our way towards Texas. It was surely a hot day, so of course we had to run with the hood open again. You sure get a lot of looks driving a Model A, but can imagine how many looks you get driving a dirty Model A with the hood open and a moped strapped to the back? Well we're not crazy, just driving a car from one place to another, a lot of people do that on a daily basis! Everything was going pretty smooth on our last stretch of New Mexico, until we started hearing a decent little rattle coming from the front of the car. I had heard the rattle before but it was very faint and was hearing it through the floorboard or cowl so I thought it was just some random part of the car doing what a lot of things do on the car: rattle. When Lane went out to check what it was while I had the engine on, it was very apparent what it was and he had me come check it out. I turned the engine off, and realized the water pump had a lot of back and forth play, I don't mean an 1/8th of an inch, but it moved back and forth about an inch and a half. Not only that but the fan had started to get loose. We were in a parking lot next to a gas station, so we decided we'd pull the water pump and swap in a freshly rebuilt one. Luckily we'd bought one from our friend Bob in Concord before we left! We spent the next hour or so taking the radiator off, and putting on the new water pump. And at that point we saw exactly why the fan was loose, the rivets had started to back off so the blades would make a clicking sound. I know it's not a good idea to drive with a bad fan, but, you know what? We weren't about to sit at a gas station in an ugly part of some town we'd never heard of and wait for a fan to drop into our laps, so we did what we did and headed out of town in the dark and head towards San Angelo, TX. We made it over the border and down to a rest stop just outside of Andrews, and decided to stay the night there, and call some folks in San Angelo and see if we could find a fan there since it was the closest town to us in the Model A Membership Roster. That night drive was terrible and trucks flew by us at 80 miles an hour, swerving close to us, even though we weren't even on an interstate. It felt good to get off of the road and set up our camp on the rest stop lawn, hope no one cares!

Just a normal day in Roswell.

New Mexico wasn't ready for us to leave.

Who needs a radiator anyway?

We made it to Texas! And felt about as blurry as this picture...

Day 10: Datil, NM to Roswell, NM

Aliens! I have to say that this stretch of New Mexico has been one of the nicest and prettiest drives we've had this whole trip. Just about everyone we passed waved and smiled at us, the scenery was gorgeous, and the road continued to be easy and wide open. This state definitely goes up and down a lot, meaning many uphill climbs for the car, but it made it just fine as soon as we opened the hood back up again for some better cooling. The most beautiful part of that road was a historic community called Lincoln, had an old west feeling and was nestled in a really nice canyon, full of trees and actual green grass which we hadn't seen in quite some time. On the way down one of the grades we found some lava beds, called Valley of Fires, which are the oldest and best preserved in the states. It was neat because they weren't from a volcano, but instead seeped out of cracks in the ground. We pushed on and made a total of 240 miles that day, and finally arrived in Roswell around 7pm. We were at the first gas station in town, and an older fella came up and started talking about Model A's, and how his first car was a tudor sedan when he was 15 years old. We talked and talked, I told him I'd love to see his cars and he says, well come follow me to my farm and I'll show you some! Well cars we did see, Bob Jenkins had roughly 300 cars, and immeasurable amounts of motorcycles, bicycles, mopeds, and any other kind of rusty metal junk you could think of. Oh that over there under that tin? Yeah that's just a 1940 Indian Scout, no big deal... Well after wandering around at night looking at treasures, we camped right in the middle of his wrecking yard, which had been added to for 40 years. Bob is a great guy and I'm glad to have met him, he was very excited to see us young guys driving an old stock Model A.

Lava!

Night time at the Wrecking Yard.

Good ol' Roswell...

Day 9: Springerville, AZ to Datil, NM

Well we had a good stay at Lyman Lake, the place was pretty and they had hot showers! We were close to the border of New Mexico, so we figured it'd be pretty easy to get a decent ways into the state. The day was pretty easy and uneventful, the stretch between Springerville and Datil was nice and hardly populated, which made for a nice easy drive. What a change from the 40, I keep thinking about how exciting it is to drive for miles without seeing a car or building. The route we chose seems to be pretty bare in terms of food, so we've just been gettin by with what snack we have, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are staple. We ended up camping at the Datil Well Recreation area, in history it was one of the wells along the route to Magdalena, NM where cattle drivers would stop to water their cattle. There was a well every 10 miles for about 100 miles to the town of Socorro, where trains would ultimately pick up the cattle and take them off to wherever. It was a really pretty place, and the well water was delicious. Luckily there were fire pits, and a huge stack of wood left behind for us, so we had a great fire that night. And camping was only $5!

Pie Town.

Day 8: Flagstaff to Springerville, AZ

Well we decided to try and take off from Flagstaff, Lane decided he was going to sell his truck since it was more of a hassle than it was worth to fix. We brought it back to the storage he was keeping at, and the owner there had a moped he couldn't get to start. Well, Lane told him I knew a thing or two about mopeds, so long story short, I got it running and now it's on the back of the car! We must have stood there for over an hour staring at the car, figuring out how we'd get the moped on there. Well after some hand-fashioned brackets and some much appreciated lunch, we got it on there! Those of you that really know me, know why this is just a normal day in my life! Well we ended up leaving much later than we had planned, but it was well worth it to have such fun and to meet such great people. We got on the road, not excited to get onto I-40, but very excited that we'd soon get off of the interstate for good in Holbrook. From there we got off and cut down towards Springerville and camped at Lyman Lake. The drive was great, we only saw about 20 cars over 90 miles! And Lyman Lake is only about 35 miles from the Arizona/New Mexico border, another big accomplishment in our drive!

Yep...

Flyin' through Arizona.

This could be an old photo, but not older than 1985 (due to the moped!)

Our camp at Lyman Lake.

Day 6/7: Kingman to Flagstaff

Day 6:


Woke up after a surprisingly good nights sleep, even with freight trains roaring by every 30 minutes. We packed up camp and headed back to the 66 to try and make our way to Flagstaff. This part of the 66 was great, compared to California's stretch. The California part is incredibly bumpy and unmaintained, I'm ashamed that they don't care more about preserving its history and keeping it alive! We saw all kinds of old cars, and soon upon arriving at a neat old general store full of old rusty clunkers, we found that the carb was again overheating and boiling, so we needed to make some more improvements. Well this place was full of old rusty cars and all kinds of rusty junk, so we figured there had to be something good around there that we could fashion a heat shield out of. Well sure enough we found an old rusty coffee can, cut it up with the tin-snips, and baling wired it to the carb, in hopes of blocking some of the heat from the exhaust manifold. Dear Henry Ford, why did you have to put the carb  and fuel line so close to an exhaust manifold?? Well the tin, mixed with the fuel line wrapped in insulation, and having the hood open, pretty much solved our overheating problems! We trucked on down the road after a bit of a stop, and made our way up the mountain to flagstaff, which is above 7,000ft! Well this old car sure made it up those grades, it just found that sweet spot and lugged up the mountains with nothing but the old purr of the engine, and the light hiss of the carburetor sucking in air.


Day 7:


We spent the whole day in Flagstaff to check on Lane's truck, and just to get a good days rest from driving. I saw a Model A parked on the street next to the park we were going to hang out at, and decided to park behind it to see if I would meet the owner. Sure enough, a fella named George came out, excited to see the car and told me how I passed him by in traffic the day before and he tried to catch up to me to get a better look at the car. Well now he got to look at it all he wanted to! George was a great guy and we ended up talkin about old cars for hours, and he even had us over for homemade pizza, what a treat!