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[T3] Overview of my Parma experience...


Well, here's my recollections:

Thursday:

Get up at 6am.  Drink two pots of coffee waiting for the fog to burn off.  Dig out suitcase, throw clothes into 
it.  Find tent, sleeping bag, picnic canopy.  Fiddle with the injection project, *finally* get it running right by 
10am.  Short test drive to Forestville (10miles) by way of the gas station/car wash.  Get home, clean all the crap 
out of the car.  Load tent and etc., make sure house is in order.  Hit the road aat 1:30, thinking that I'm either 
very brave or very crazy to be going on a long trip like this with an untested injection system ... but I have 
Plan B (carbs) in the trunk, so no big worries.

Stop at AAA for roadmaps, then head out towards I-80, ten miles into things I start smelling burning brakes.  
Realize the smell is coming from me!  Eeek!  Pulled over, found a stuck caliper.  Wait for things to cool off, 
then cut the hose and plug it with a drywall screw and two hose clamps and pry the pads away from rotor. Back on 
the road, I hit monster traffic from Sonoma (two miles from the brake issue) until Fairfield...thirty miles of 
stop-and-go.  Where did all these people come from?!?  Finally got to Sacramento at 6:15, hit the drive-up at Jack 
for some tacos, then cruised around until I ran into Greg.  And we waited.  Kris came by.  And we waited some 
more.  Finally we figured that we were going to be it for the caravan, so we got gas and hit the road.

Greg summarized the rest of the day pretty well, but a few observations:  Even without the signs, I would have 
been able to tell when we left California ... because the highway suddenly got nice and smooth!

Friday morning we all met up at the same gas station, decided to abandon the caravan route, and went out I-80 
towards Winnemucca.  Stopped at one of the rest areas for some roadside repairs on Raul's car, then had lunch at 
BK in Winnemucca after gassing up again.  After that it was Hwy. 95 all the way to Parma... there's a whole lot of 
not much between Winnemucca and McDermitt, and a lot more not much between McDermitt and Jordans Valley, but we 
did have a pit stop in Rome, OR.

Anyway.  I'm still working on a write-up of my injection project.  Despite the difficulties on the trip there and 
the ultimate failure in Ontario ... to me, the concept has proven itself I drove a completely untested and untuned 
system for nearly 700 miles before the pressure regulator failed.  I had great power, driveability and gas 
mileage, and this is a system designed for a 2.3L engine running on a 1.6L!

After spending the better part of Saturday getting the car towed from the Sonic in Ontario to the Motor-Vu (I 
don't remember your names, but thank you so much!) and converting the car back to carbs, then it was off for the 
cruise and photo-op, and a quick stop at the drive-in back in Parma .. I was damn hungry at that point, so I had a 
Buffalo Burger.  MMMmmm...dead buffalo. =) 

I wound up going with the Portland crew over to their campsite in Caldwell -- guys, I had a blast hanging out with 
y'all, even if I did crash before most everyone else.  Got back to the Motor-Vu in time to hang out and catch 
John's presentation on composites, then Raul and I headed out around 4 to get back home.  About ten miles out of 
Parma I started getting a rattling kind of sound, so we pulled off the road to check it out..  I'm not sure *what* 
the sound is -- it sounds like something's dancing around inside the fan, but it doesn't vary with RPM, and goes 
away when cruising in 4th.  Maybe some crap rattling loose in the muffler?  In any case, I just kept driving with 
it... it didn't go away, but it didn't get any worse and it didn't keep me from getting home okay.

Raul and I spent Sunday night at a campground back in Winnemucca -- we made it there from Parma in just over 5 
hours, with a gas stop in Jordan's Valley and a dinner stop in McDermitt.  Monday morning we BBQ'd some chicken 
for breakfast and hit the road.  Stopped once along I-80 so I could re-do my throttle cable extension, then in 
Reno for gas, and then lunch up at Donner Summit (leftover BBQ chicken).  We stuck together until we got into 
Sacramento, where we had to split up -- him taking I-5 south to LA and me taking I-80 west towards SF.  I got home 
around 5, and from some email I got from him since then he got home around 8:30.  

Anyway.. I gotta go hit the sack.  Maybe I'll feel motivated to write more tomorrow, but .. <shrug> I'm still 
digeting everything.  It was a real blast.





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