Road Side Seminar

The day started off with the drivers doing some maintanence of the Model A's.  I changed the oil for my 500 mile interval and then retorqued the head and manifold nuts, fortunately they were fine.  Since the tools were out Mike retorqued his Coupe's head nuts as well.  A few needed to be tightened.  Wayne was having a little trouble with his starter so he replaced the switch.  Andy was fine and cleaned his windshield.

With breakfast out of the way we headed off for the second leg of our journey that would see us end up Winchester, VA.  The weather forecast was for clouds early, then clearing and warm in the afternoon.  Guess what?  They were correct this time.

Traveling on RT209 we were happy that Saturday traffic was very light.  We switched over to RT443 and the traffic was even lighter.  Very good for the Model As.

We stopped for a break at huge Sheetz Fuel plaza and bought some supplies.  Wayne experienced more problem with the starter switch.  The new switch was inoperable, it seemed to be frozen.  Wayne got a spare (old original) and it worked just fine.  Problem solved and back on the road.

Travel was going smoothly until we reached a detour in the road.  No big deal, just follow the signs.  Following one of the turns, which took us over a bare patch of bumpy ground,  Mike called out for us to stop.  He was getting a loud knocking from the front of the engine.  Once we could hear the noise, it sounded really bad.  With us listening to the noise Wayne was able to see the problem.  The front motor mount bolt had fallen out and when we went over the big bump it dislodged the mount from the front of the timing cover and the mount was now hitting the crankshaft pulley.  Fortunately that fix was pretty easy.  Mike replaced the bolt and then tightened the other bolt which was loose.

Mike's other problem wasn't going to be as easy to fix, his head gasket leaking.  It seams the gasket was squeezing out between the head and the block and it finally let go.  Wayne had some block sealer and he poured it into the radiator and by gosh in a few minutes it had stopped leaking.  Being that we were in the middle of no where, Mike said to keep going.  Unfortunatley, we soon hit a monster hill and we think that extra strain was too much for this fix and the leak started again. 

In spite of the monster hill, our route was taking us towards Harrisburg, but I didn't want to get on the interstate, so we went beyond our turn and let the GPS get us back to RT22.  The plan worked perfectly as we traveled through some very pastoral farm land.

After stopping for lunch, in one of our Hershey eateries, we stopped at an auto parts store so Mike could buy some heavy duty stop leak.  The stuff Mike bought said that if this didn't work the next step was a engine repair.  Mike lucked out again as this stuff did work and it held up fine the rest of the day.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful.  We did travel through Amish country and marveled at how fast the horses were going as they pulled the buggies.  Our route took us through a lot of towns which made for a slow trip.  But, we evetually made it to Winchester, VA and the Hampton Inn.  A Ruby Tuesday restaurant was within walking distance which was nice as we really didn't want to drive anywhere.  Besides, we wanted to get back to hotel to watch the Bruins hockey game.