Wednesday, October 17, Albuquerque, NM

This blog is about another of our cross country trips with old cars.  If you check some of our other blogs, you'll see several of these trips chronicled.  We are just too cheap to attempt these travels in newer conveyances.



Packed and ready to go in Albuquerque.  Lots of tools and spare parts on board.

This trip is a fairly long one for our oldest car:  a 1927 Buick Brougham.  This is a big heavy beauty that I restored almost 10 years ago.  It is not really compatible with modern highways, it has a top speed around 45 mph.  As the sign says, it is old, slow and cranky.  Still, we have enjoyed driving it on long trips, using as many secondary roads as possible.  The latest trip is from Albuquerque, NM to Brenham, TX, the site of the 2012 AAA Glidden tour.  This drive will be about 800 miles, quite a challenge for this old iron and its old humans.  I am traveling with my friend Ken Murphy who is an accomplished old car collector and driver. 

Buick cools off in Moriarty, NM

Day 1 is always a challenge because it involves negotiating the mountains and high altitudes of New Mexico.  These are always hard on our old cars.  Today, we had lots of trouble:

1. We started east driving uphill through Tijeras canyon to Moriarty, NM.  This drive is tough, but today it was worse because we had severe tailwinds the whole way.  A tailwind is very hard on old cars, their huge radiators are starved for air and the engine overheats and the carburetor vapor locks.  This is what Buick did.  Fortunately, we only had to stop a for a few minutes in Moriarty to cool her down.
2. Going south to Estancia went better because we had a mere 30 mph cross wind.  Buick was heavy enough to resists the gusts and the engine ran better.  We continued south until we turned east on US 60.  Here, the electric fuel pump quit, the winds had blown one of the electrical leads off the pump.  We were able to fix this after just two trips under the car, laying down in a bed of  sharp gravel. 
3. Heading SE from Vaughn on the very lonely US 285, the tail winds got stronger yet.  The engine fought vapor lock for about a hundred miles.  Fortunately, Buick kept running aided by constant manipulation of the choke. 
4. About 100 yards from the first gas station in Roswell, Buick stopped dead, completely out of gas.  We only got 140 miles on this tank, the vapor lock increased the fuel consumption considerably.  There goes our carbon budget, down the drain.  When stopped, I noticed a pretty ugly water leak out of the engine manifold.  Nothing critical, but no doubt this would have to be fixed eventually.
5. We had a spare gallon of gas on the rack, so we topped up and motored towards the gas station.  I noticed a distinct trail of liquid drops on the road in the rear view mirror.  At the gas station, a huge puddle of gasoline appeared under the engine.  We shut down all systems and opened the hood.  The main needle valve in the carburetor was gone, apparently it had fallen out somewhere.  Ken and I walked down the road for a mile or so, no luck with finding the disappearing needle valve.  This would normally the the end of the story -- a 1927 Buick will not run properly without that needle valve in place.  Guess what, the night before we left I casually tossed in a spare carburetor under the front seat. It had a needle, we stuck it in and we were on the road again.
6. We found an auto parts store to get gasket material, sealant, and fiberglass resin that may be needed to repair the water leak.  This went well, but by then it was dark and we could go no farther.  We only went about 230 miles on day one.  Not bad, but we will need to do better in the next few days.

The good news is the car is running OK now, we found a nice Days Inn in Roswell, and had a great dinner in a sports bar.  Hopefully, tomorrow will be better and we'll find some chance to fix the water leak.  See you down the road! (I hope).