Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1992 15:56:12 -0800 From San Francisco to Santa Fe and back in a GT6+ or I've Enjoyed About All of this I Can Stand It seemed like a good idea at the time; drive the GT6+ from San Francisco to Tucson to see my Mom for Christmas, and since I was so close, go on to Santa Fe for a few days. Heh. This car is my daily driver now, and will slowly be turned into my autocrosser. So far, it's basically stock, except that I've replaced the mechanical fuel pump with an electric one (mounted on a rear frame rail), mounted SPAX adjustable shocks, and wider wheels with 185/60-13 Yokohama A001Rs. The car was originally designed as a Grand Touring car, so I figured that such a trip wouldn't be much of a problem. It had been quite reliable in daily use, so I didn't worry too much about breakdowns -- I changed the oil, checked the tune, topped up fluids, and packed up a breakdown kit: general tools, torque wrench, socket set, a gallon of coolant, and an ignition spare parts kit. Oh, and duct tape. Can't forget the duct tape. I was a little worried about the heat, since the car doesn't have the best cooling system in the world, either for the engine or the passengers, but figured it would be manageable. Day 1. I started out Sunday morning. The plan was to head south to Los Angeles and turn left; this means getting over to I-5, which means either heading somewhat north towards Sacramento, or south to Gilroy and over Pacheco Pass. I chose the latter. I stopped off at the Casa de Fruta for gas (they've widened the road, and the Casa is now on a spur road rather than the main road, hooray), and noticed that my front tires didn't look happy. The tires had been showing wear on the outside shoulders, but I attributed it to autocrossing; the car didn't seem to be wandering down the road. The outer portion of the shoulder had gotten pretty smooth (the 1Rs, unlike the 8s, have a symmetric tread with tread blocks all across); at least one person (hi, Dick!) suggested that I might have a toe-in problem, but it didn't feel like it, so I didn't get it checked. That was a mistake. Anyway, the wear seemed to be increasing. I decided I'd stop in 50 more miles or so and look again. So I got on the freeway and drove down to Harris Ranch. I-5, for those of you that don't know, runs through California's Central Valley, and is about as straight and as boring as going through Kansas. Except that it isn't as green, and there are fewer places to stop. I pointed the car straight and tried to stay awake. The overdrive had stopped working by now, as usual; it only seems to last the first hour or so, apparently until the oil warms up enough that the viscosity drops beyond the point of the O-rings to keep pressure. So I'm cruising at abour 4000 - 4500 rpm, which is 60-70 mph; the speedometer hasn't worked right since I bought the car, so it's bouncing around between 80 and 110. It's hot. Stopped at Harris Ranch, and I can see little threads of rubber on the tire, and lots of wear. OK, the wheels are toed in too much. Damn. The outer 35% of the right tire is now smooth; the left tire is still showing some tread on the outer section. The rears are quite happy, having about 3 or 4/32s left. So I dig out a wrench and the ChannelLocks, crank out the toe two flats, and go on. Drive on for another hour or so, pull off, buy gas and check the tires. The wear seems to have stopped; at least I don't see threads of rubber on the tire surface any more. But I crank the toe out another flat just for good measure. I still never felt any wandering in a straight line. I also notice that the car is smoking a bit from the engine compartment; there's a light film of oil over parts of the right side of the engine, it's soaking into the heat wrap on the exhaust downpipe, and then smoking away. Looks like there's a drip from the front seal, but it doesn't seem like that should account for this much oil ... oh well. Pressure is still good, level is still good, so it must be a very small amount. I ignore it. Get down to the Grapevine -- this is a long slow pass up to about 4200 feet that crosses the mountains that surround Los Angeles. Starting up the first long incline, the car starts stuttering and sputtering; feels like the fuel delivery problems I had when I first installed the electric pump. Pull over, take a look; sure enough, the fuel filter is pretty empty, and the fuel pump is making much louder noises than usual. But I don't have anything to use to bleed the line, so I just wait, throw a little water on the pump to cool it, and drive on slowly. The pump is mounted on the inside of the frame rail, approximately under the axle; it's fairly close to the exhaust pipe and muffler. So I figure that given the long hot day, things have just gotten a little too cozy down there. Gotta fabricate a heat shield when I get home. Next rest stop, I pull out, buy a plastic cup from the food vendor, and bleed the fuel line. Takes about 20 seconds to get a steady stream of fuel into the cup. Oh boy, this is going to be fun. Sure enough, the car kept doing this; almost every time I started up an incline, there would be a stutter or two, sometimes worse than others. I learned to hit the clutch and drift to the right shoulder; often all it took was a minute of unloaded running to push cool fuel through the pump. But it certainly was annoying. Somewhere in downtown LA the speedometer got worse. Instead of just bouncing in a narrow range, some internal mechanism started catching; the needle would go full scale, all the way around to the pin at 0 mph, then the spring would pull it back all the way around the other way, then it would bounce a bit. Eventually this was too much, something went "clack", the needle came to rest at 0, and the odometer quit working. Oh well. It had been reading about 25% high anyway, no doubt at least in part because of the 185/60 tires! Stopped around 4pm in San Dimas, hot, tired and hungry. The car and I both wanted a rest, so I took about 90 minutes for dinner. The sun set, and the drive on to Indio (east of Palm Springs) was largely uneventful. Total mileage: 486, approx 23 mpg. Day 2. Morning inspection really made me worry about the right front tire, so I rotated the "good" rear tire to the front and the "bad" one to the rear. Also tweaked the toe out by another flat. The weather was overcast as I crossed the desert, and the oil was starting to show some dirt and lose oil pressure at idle more quickly. An uneventful day, 476 miles to Tucson, mileage down to about 21 mpg. Day 3 and 4. Just spent a little time driving around Tucson, nothing much to report here, the car is working fine but continues to have oil on the right side of the engine. Still can't quite tell where it's coming from, but it can't be too serious -- still haven't needed to add oil, but the oil shows more black. Day 5. Driving back to the hotel the previous night, I heard an odd shrieking noise; something like the sound that a tach or speedo cable makes when it's cold and rubbing against the outer housing. I popped open the bonnet, disconnected the tach cable from the distributor, but the sound didn't go away. It seemed to be coming from the distributor, though. OK, I lubed the advance mechanism (through the hole marked "Oil here") and popped the rotor and put oil underneath it (the felt wasn't completely dry, but close), and let it soak, hoping that this would cure the problem. It didn't. The noise seemed to be coming from the top of the distributor. Pressing down on the cap seemed to decrease the intensity of the noise; the pitch didn't seem to change with engine revs, except that it mostly went away over 3k. Fascinating. Recall that I had a spare cap/rotor/points/condensor. I swapped the rotor, no apparent change. But the cap was a non-Lucas one (the GT6 has an AC/Delco distributor, so I bet this came from a Chevy dealer), and the rotor was a genuine made in Britain out of black bakelite Lucas unit. So I changed the cap, too. This is where the trouble began. I couldn't quite remember the firing order of the 6, and the manual was upstairs and I was too lazy to get it. And the depth of the cap contacts differed from one cap to the other, so getting the wires to stay on the cap was a frustrating exercise. I spent about an hour trying different combinations of cap and rotor and firing order trying to come up with something that ran! I finally ended up with the right order and the old cap and rotor, and decided that the cap and rotor weren't the problem. But the noise wasn't gone, either. I was just going to let it run until it broke, and then it would be obvious. Heh. Went in and made a few phone calls; one to mjb, who wasn't there, and one to dickn, who was. We talked about possible causes -- he mentioned that the rotor might be hitting the cap contacts due to play somewhere, but I didn't see any metal shavings. Mutter. (Dick also told me that he thought the Delco distributors were nothing but trouble and I should replace it with a TR6 distributor, but that wasn't going to help me get home.) mjb called back, but didn't have any great ideas. He *did* give me the name and number of a VTR member in Tucson, though, in case I had to ditch the car somewhere. This was a serious possibility, since I couldn't see driving the car like this for two days and >1000 miles. Went off to dinner; the car was noisy at idle, better while running, but then started to miss really badly -- as if only three or four cylinders were running. Pulled off into a parking lot and did what I should have done; slowly, methodically swapped in the new cap and rotor, making sure that the order was right and the wires all seated well. Voila! The car ran great and the noise was gone. Off to dinner. Unfortunately on the way back, I heard that telltale noise, but just a chirp or two. This wasn't over yet. Day 6. I inspected the old cap and found that one contact did indeed have bright metal. I inspected the new cap and found that one contact had bright metal. That and the rotor seemed to fit very loosely on the shaft, allowing it to both rotate a touch and slide up and down. I bent the spring contact up so that the cap would press down harder, and used a bit of cardboard to shim the rotor to the shaft. That seemed to alleviate the noise problem completely. Going on the theory that it's a system, I swapped the points and condensor, too. Unfortunately, I didn't bring a timing light, so I had to hope that nothing had changed. This was probably an unfounded hope, but so it goes. The car ran OK, the noise was gone, and I stopped being nervous. Mostly. Noticed something hanging under the car -- apparently I scraped the heat tape on the lower exhaust system over a speed bump, and it had torn. Sigh. Day 7. The plan was still to drive to Santa Fe. But just to be sure, I drove north to Flagstaff first; that way I had a choice to go east or west, depending on how the car behaved. The car behaved perfectly. Gas mileage was around 24 mpg until the climb to Flagstaff (7000 ft) at which point it dropped to 18. Up there, I found snow on the ground, serious fog on the air, and discovered that my heater wasn't working. About 380 miles. Day 8. Overnight low of 15 F combined with the altitude meant I needed a jump start. While the bonnet was up, I discovered that the oil was coming from the carbon cannister -- apparently we have a bit of blowby. Getting out of Flagstaff was exciting; between fog, some snow, and the inoperative heater, I had to stop about every mile to clear the ice off the windscreen. Finally the passenger compartment heated up enough to keep the stuff on the outside wet and I just needed the wipers. The weather cleared off after about an hour of driving, much to my relief. The car ran fine till about an hour outside of Albuquerque; at that point, it (and I) was getting tired. Got a little rough running; when I pulled off in ABQ for gas, I could barely keep an idle, and almost got rearended by a bus trying to make an uphill standing start. Took a break here, and then on to Santa Fe; the car was unhappy, sputtering and burbling for the entire way. I was worried; it was now dark and I did NOT want to get stuck. We made it, and I was relieved. 354 miles, about 20.3 mpg, widely varying per tank. Day 9 & 10 I didn't drive anywhere, and was quite pleased about it. Day 11. Checked the points gap; it was low, about .010. I've had this problem and the symptom of rough running over 3000 rpm before, so I adjusted it and hoped it would cure the problem. (I really don't understand this, since the decreased gap should give increased dwell, so the coil gets an even better chance to charge; perhaps the spark gets decreased too much to burn the mixture well?) I would have liked to adjust the mixture, but the carbs are completely sealed. Sigh. Car started right up, though, with a full choke and a shot of ether down the air cleaner. Drove around and things mostly seemed fine. Got about 5" of snow overnight; I decided that I couldn't trust the almost bald 1Rs to maneuver in the snow and slush. So I found a tire store that had something reasonably decent (Yoko Y352) in my size and knew about tape weights, and got them installed. I went for 175/70 tires to give myself a little extra ground clearance and a little better gas mileage; this pretty much sealed my decision to buy race wheels and tires this year! Day 12. Left Santa Fe, headed for the California border. It's cold, and the car is working reasonably well; the cold air is denser and the mixture seems a bit better. Also, the cold seems to be keeping the operating temperature down and the overdrive working -- at least for the first 200 miles or so. Quite a pleasure to cruise at 3500 instead of 4200! But by the time I pulled into Needles, CA, there was a bad stutter again. Back close to sea level, the temperature had gone up into the 40s, but the car really wasn't happy. Oh well. 668 miles, about 21 mpg, varying between 19.1 and 26.6 ... Day 13. The home stretch. Adjusted the points in the morning. Saw a bit of foam on the oil when I checked it -- uh oh. The rocker/valve noise has also changed some, which I don't like. But there's nothing to do now but go on. Cool and foggy day, the overdrive worked all day long. Through the Mojave, up to Barstow and Bakersfield, and finally onto I-5 and back over Pacheco pass. A real pleasure to run with the overdrive, but the car is clearly tired of the trip. At this point, so was I. 537 miles this last day, about 26mpg, making for a total of 2798 miles and an overall average of 22.3 mpg. About a week later, I set the valve clearances -- they were all either spot on or a bit tight, and noted that the rocker shaft is worn in a couple of places. I checked compression and found that 5 out of 6 cylinders are low. I haven't yet done a leakdown test, but I'm guessing that valves aren't closing completely, leading to low compression, ping, burble, and blowby. Time to freshen the head. I also tried to set the timing, and found it quite difficult. The timing is jumping all over the place, which I'm guessing means that either the rotor is loose again, or the shaft/bushing have worn. The final setting I arrived at was considerably retarded from where I had it for the trip, but like I said, I don't know for sure. The car is currently running OK, but I wouldn't race it; it's quite down on power, especially under load. I plan to pull the head in the next week or so, and I'll certainly let y'all know what I find. So, would I do it again? Yes. With the overdrive working and reasonable profile tires, the car is a very nice highway cruiser. Adding an oil cooler and getting the heater to work would probably make the experience even more pleasant. It's a noisy ride, but a comfortable one. Just don't plan to bring much luggage!