(Editor's note: I've turned this month's Up Front over to Kev as a reward for finally getting one of his projects moving under its own power and it gave me one less thing to do.)
When R&C's road trip to Bonneville was first announced and I knew I'd be going, I decided I wanted to drive one of my cars. After all it would be my first trip to the salt after years of wanting to go, and I didn't want to take a boring normal car. My initial plans were to take the Project '49 Chevy, but I soon realized it wouldn't be ready in time.
Thoughts briefly turned to putting together my Model A coupe-after all I have all the parts-but then the all-too-obvious answer dawned on me. My '46 sedan-turned-roadster pickup was in my garage buried beneath quad bikes, kids' bicycles, and assorted boxes of household items. It ran, the brakes worked, and it just needed a wiring harness and a couple of little jobs to put it on the road. Plus it had space for our luggage and spare parts! How hard could it be?
You know how some projects get done immediately while others seem to get pushed farther down the list? Well, that's my truck. I started it around 12 years ago and I've somehow kept hold of it through a marriage, two kids, three house moves, three other projects that had been completed, and an emigration halfway 'round the world. Maybe its time had come.
Of course those little jobs turned into a full-on month-long thrash with plenty of 3 a.m. weeknights that saw it barely road legal but ready for our trip at around 11 p.m. the night before we set off. So it was at 5 a.m., with barely 2 miles under its wheels from when I took it to get new tires fitted the previous afternoon after protestations from my girlfriend, Kandice (she wasn't happy about it running the cracked old rubber it had worn for years), that myself and a couple of friends who'd flown over from England set out for Hollywood Hot Rods where we were to meet the rest of our group. It ran a little hot in the morning rush hour traffic but we cleared the first hurdle.
Then the group left and we immediately turned back! I'd always believed my use of the complete stock front and rear suspensions (with the exception of narrowed tubular Fatman Fabrications control arms up front) from an '82 Caprice would pay off if I had problems out on the road, and my convictions were justified when the front left brake locked on. A quick trip to a local parts house (thanks to Troy Ladd for the use of his daily-driver and workshop space at HHR) and a $16 brake caliper and hose later, and we were back on the road. Or at least we were after replacing the fuel filter which was clogged with some mysterious chalky white gunk. So, some three hours behind the rest of the group, we pressed on, into California's central valley, skipping the lunch stop and catching up with the group in the late afternoon. Another filter, a replacement thermostat housing, a brake caliper mounting bolt, a couple of stops to let it (and us) cool down, and we made the first night's hotel stop near Yosemite.
The rest of the trip wasn't quite so hectic, though we did change a couple more filters, and even the water pump as I'd packed a spare, but the hot running continued. Then on a long desert stretch some 30 miles outside Winnemucca in Nevada, the fuel vapor lock started. Packing ice around the electric pump every 100 miles or so seemed to keep gas reaching the carburetor, so we pressed on. The pickup made it, we made it, and I have another road trip adventure story to add to my "trans-northern Europe in a Flathead Model A roadster" story.
I now know it needs a bigger radiator and a fan shroud as well as a mechanical fuel pump, but overall I was pleased. I was sure glad we packed a floor jack and plenty of tools, and I know we were the cause of much bemusement amongst our fellow travelers as every morning we seemed to have the truck half apart in hotel parking lots, or the hood up at every gas stop, but to me it's all part of the fun, and that's what it should be about. I had a blast, my co-pilots, Brian and Tracy, had a riot, we saw some great racing at Bonneville, and have new tales to recount. There's nothing like a 2,200-plus mile test run to break in a new project, though maybe I'll give the desert in August a miss next time, or at least add a roof, A/C, and something other than a bare metal floor and no interior panels. Phew...