Road Trip.... The Rest of the Story
Thread Starter
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Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 481
Likes: 0
From: Westminster, CO
Road Trip.... The Rest of the Story
Let's start with some images....
Bandit passing Smokey.....
Fixing The Tire in the dark...
http://www.vanstory.com/images/Firebrid/IMAG0430.JPG
Another picture of me driving...
http://www.vanstory.com/images/Firebrid/IMAG0427.JPG
My friend John....
http://www.vanstory.com/images/Firebrid/IMAG0444.JPG
Warning: This is a bit long but fun to read nonetheless. There is even a celebrity cameo. (Summary at the bottom for those lazy folk)
Okay. So we land at Salt Lake City Airport round 10:15am. In the airport, I see Ultimate Fighter Chuck Liddell on the escalator. I turn to my buddy John and say, "Give that dude a dirty look and see what happens." Fortunately, despite not knowing who Liddell was, he didn't listen to me. So about 20 minutes later, the guy picks us up in his Camero. After a short 5-mile 100Mph ride to his house, I finally see the Firebird in person. It was just about what I expected so I was pleased. We chat for a while, look at some of his other rides, pay and take off. The first stop was the gas station for some 91' octane being that we had no gas and the car had been sitting for a while. As we pull up, the car dies. I guess we just made it. We fill up, and drive to our second stop, Jiffy Lube. It takes like 3 minutes to get the car into the bay. Turns out that every time you let off the gas, the car dies. This is not easy to deal with, especially on a hill. There are definitely some vacuum problems with the car. I'll tell you know, this is a problem we're going to have to accept for the next 500+ miles. So we finally get the oil changed, and head over to the auto parts store. That is where we will spend the next two hours. I don’t know why it took so long but it did. The biggest problem was a distributor wire that would get pulled out when you hit the gas. The wire wasn't long enough so when the engine moved it would fall out. So then when you hit the breaks, the car stalls, and you can't start it back up. We tried zip ties, electrical tape, and eventually spliced in a longer wire. During this process, the battery dies (It was jump started at the lube shop earlier). Believe it or not, Checker didn't have anything we could use to jump start it. The battery was old, and possibly dying anyway, so we replaced it. We spend about $200 at checker including tools, fluids, wire, battery, etc.
So around 3:00pm we finally head towards the highway. That was a good place to be considering the stalling issues we had. Once we were cruising, we could stay cruising. We just had to keep an eye on any traffic since we couldn't stop well at all. We drive 150 miles and have to stop for Gas. We were getting about 9mpg with the vacuum and other problems. We get back on the highway and drive another successful 130 miles when the front driver tire blows out. It was around 8:30pm. We had a so-called spare but no jack nor lug wrench. It doesn't take more than a few minutes and a couple guys pull over. They give us a ride to Rollins WY. They happen to work at the big rig repair facility but are unable to find anything usable for us. They do give us a number to the local tow shop. They don’t have any tires our size either as they also typically deal with trucks. Fortunately, however, they did have two used tires one size larger than stock. Not the best option but we're desperate. We decide as long as there are two of them, they would go nicely on the front rims. Anyway, I'll skip forward a bit here. Around 11pm, $160 later, we're back on the road.
We drive the 6 miles into town to again fill up on gas. As we pull out of the gas station, the car dies. There is no power at all, like someone pulled the battery. It was just before midnight at the time and a cold cold wind was blowing. We poke around for 10 minutes or so when I decide it's time to get a hotel room. Last thing we need is to get back on the highway, in the middle of the night, and end up breaking down in the middle of nowhere. No beer to be found anywhere.
Bandit passing Smokey.....
Fixing The Tire in the dark...
http://www.vanstory.com/images/Firebrid/IMAG0430.JPG
Another picture of me driving...
http://www.vanstory.com/images/Firebrid/IMAG0427.JPG
My friend John....
http://www.vanstory.com/images/Firebrid/IMAG0444.JPG
Warning: This is a bit long but fun to read nonetheless. There is even a celebrity cameo. (Summary at the bottom for those lazy folk)
Okay. So we land at Salt Lake City Airport round 10:15am. In the airport, I see Ultimate Fighter Chuck Liddell on the escalator. I turn to my buddy John and say, "Give that dude a dirty look and see what happens." Fortunately, despite not knowing who Liddell was, he didn't listen to me. So about 20 minutes later, the guy picks us up in his Camero. After a short 5-mile 100Mph ride to his house, I finally see the Firebird in person. It was just about what I expected so I was pleased. We chat for a while, look at some of his other rides, pay and take off. The first stop was the gas station for some 91' octane being that we had no gas and the car had been sitting for a while. As we pull up, the car dies. I guess we just made it. We fill up, and drive to our second stop, Jiffy Lube. It takes like 3 minutes to get the car into the bay. Turns out that every time you let off the gas, the car dies. This is not easy to deal with, especially on a hill. There are definitely some vacuum problems with the car. I'll tell you know, this is a problem we're going to have to accept for the next 500+ miles. So we finally get the oil changed, and head over to the auto parts store. That is where we will spend the next two hours. I don’t know why it took so long but it did. The biggest problem was a distributor wire that would get pulled out when you hit the gas. The wire wasn't long enough so when the engine moved it would fall out. So then when you hit the breaks, the car stalls, and you can't start it back up. We tried zip ties, electrical tape, and eventually spliced in a longer wire. During this process, the battery dies (It was jump started at the lube shop earlier). Believe it or not, Checker didn't have anything we could use to jump start it. The battery was old, and possibly dying anyway, so we replaced it. We spend about $200 at checker including tools, fluids, wire, battery, etc.
So around 3:00pm we finally head towards the highway. That was a good place to be considering the stalling issues we had. Once we were cruising, we could stay cruising. We just had to keep an eye on any traffic since we couldn't stop well at all. We drive 150 miles and have to stop for Gas. We were getting about 9mpg with the vacuum and other problems. We get back on the highway and drive another successful 130 miles when the front driver tire blows out. It was around 8:30pm. We had a so-called spare but no jack nor lug wrench. It doesn't take more than a few minutes and a couple guys pull over. They give us a ride to Rollins WY. They happen to work at the big rig repair facility but are unable to find anything usable for us. They do give us a number to the local tow shop. They don’t have any tires our size either as they also typically deal with trucks. Fortunately, however, they did have two used tires one size larger than stock. Not the best option but we're desperate. We decide as long as there are two of them, they would go nicely on the front rims. Anyway, I'll skip forward a bit here. Around 11pm, $160 later, we're back on the road.
We drive the 6 miles into town to again fill up on gas. As we pull out of the gas station, the car dies. There is no power at all, like someone pulled the battery. It was just before midnight at the time and a cold cold wind was blowing. We poke around for 10 minutes or so when I decide it's time to get a hotel room. Last thing we need is to get back on the highway, in the middle of the night, and end up breaking down in the middle of nowhere. No beer to be found anywhere.
Thread Starter
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Senior Member
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 481
Likes: 0
From: Westminster, CO
Around 6am, my friend John goes out to work on the car. He hadn't been sleeping well anyway. I know; he kept me awake. He discovers a number of wires were wrapped around the steering column. Obviously, this is why we had so many wires we couldn't identify the night before. After an hour of 'Guess where the wire goes' he has it back together. We get back on the road to travel another 250 or so miles back to Denver. Things went pretty smoothly at that point despite the very heavy rain we had to drive through for the first 200 miles. The only problem we really had was at a busy Gas station half way home. It's difficult to maneuver a car with poor breaks that dies when the gas stops. I was terrified the whole way that another tire would fail on us. I did stall out one time when I had to slam hit the breaks and pull on the shoulder to avoid traffic. Unfortunately the traffic was a lot worse on I25 than it was in I80 in Wyoming.
Summary:
Gas, Oil Change, 2 Hours at Checker Auto Parts, 300 Miles and Tire blows out (3 hour repair), 6 Miles and electrical completely dies, Overnight hotel, Fix Electrical, Drive 200 miles in terrible rainstorm, 50 miles home. Car has vacuum and carb issues the whole way. The result is that we have poor breaks (power assist not working) and the car dies every time you stop giving it gas. 1 Hour to Fly out, 29 hours to drive back.
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 2004
Posts: 891
Likes: 1
From: Lost some where in the middle of the Ozark Mountains!
Thats not that bad of a trip...
Here are some tips form my experince with these cars. Mine had the same idle problem with dieing at idle in gear and lack of stoping power. Turned out mine was sucking air around the bushings on the bottom carburator plate (Butterfly plate). Took the carb. off, took the plate off of the carb, took it to a local machine shop they pressed them out and put new ones in for $30. Put it back together and it ran like a dream and brakes were restored. Invest in a vaccum gauge. One of the $10 hand pumps with built in gauge is great. You can put that on the brake booster and pump it down and see if it leaks off. If it does then the booster is bad. You can also use that to check the diaphrams on the carburator or almost any vaccum operated device.
Best thing to do though is to rip all of the vaccum lines out and replace them all less than $20 and about an hour. The Chiltons manual has a vaccum diagram that I used when I did mine 6-7 years ago or so.
Here are some tips form my experince with these cars. Mine had the same idle problem with dieing at idle in gear and lack of stoping power. Turned out mine was sucking air around the bushings on the bottom carburator plate (Butterfly plate). Took the carb. off, took the plate off of the carb, took it to a local machine shop they pressed them out and put new ones in for $30. Put it back together and it ran like a dream and brakes were restored. Invest in a vaccum gauge. One of the $10 hand pumps with built in gauge is great. You can put that on the brake booster and pump it down and see if it leaks off. If it does then the booster is bad. You can also use that to check the diaphrams on the carburator or almost any vaccum operated device.
Best thing to do though is to rip all of the vaccum lines out and replace them all less than $20 and about an hour. The Chiltons manual has a vaccum diagram that I used when I did mine 6-7 years ago or so.
Last edited by PSS-Mag; Jun 13, 2005 at 05:36 PM.
