Deals Gap/Tail of the Dragon 2023

[kishy]

I love this car so much.



Timeline remains more or less as laid out above. NJ leg of the trip is still scheduled to happen.

Honourary mention: the GT-R.

[Tiggie]

I wonder if the potentially better weight distribution of a wagon helps it in the curves?

[gadget73]

I always find it amusing how impressed people are with how these "barges" handle without any sort of major mods. Stick a rear bar on it and make sure the suspension is in proper working order even with stock-quality replacement parts and they will hold a corner better than the seat will hold the driver.

[87gtVIC]

Awesome photo spot!

[gadget73]

I forgot to ask, whats your fuel economy looking like with the EGR and all that sorted ?

[kishy]

I arrived home last night. This was an amazing trip and I'm glad I did it.

Thursday - group met in Taylor, MI, had breakfast, and started the drive down. Stops for Tesla charging happened in OH and KY. Dinner at Pancho's Mexican restaurant, Maryville TN (highly recommended). Headed out from dinner just as it was getting dark, and drove 'the dragon' in complete darkness (glad to have those new headlights!). As noted earlier in the thread, I was one of the lead cars in the group and received much praise for how I handled the drive. Got set up in the hotel in Robbinsville, NC, went to bed.

Friday - approx 5:30AM went out with Dan and Sarah (my friends; a couple) in their GT-R separate from the rest of the group to catch the sunrise in the mountains. This produced the photo I dropped earlier in the thread. Drove around for a good chunk of the morning in the GT-R before getting back to the hotel to take my car out. The rest of the group was just getting started around that time. We all drove all over the place and I did take the wagon on the dragon/tail of the dragon for a couple passes, which resulted in the area photographers all grabbing some shots of it. Case in point if you happen to be on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid...15311283959661

Saturday - again early morning, went out in the wagon to try to get a sunrise photo, but the fog was heavy and it didn't work out as well as the day prior. Drove some more area roads, including the Cherohala Skyway (winding mountain pass) before hotel check-out, then packed up and headed over to Bryson City, NC, to check in at the Deep Creek Campground in the Smoky Mountain National Park. Had dinner at a "Pizza Hut Classic", which is a Pizza Hut that has never received decor updates since the 90s and still has the salad bar. We were pleased with the service and food. We walked a trail in the park and went to sleep for the night.

Sunday morning, we had breakfast at a Bojangles (may seem an odd choice, but we don't have them up here), packed up the tents, and parted ways. Dan went back to the rest of the group for the drive home, while Sarah and I continued on the Blue Ridge Parkway to Asheville, NC, where we went to Udon Sushi & Noodle for lunch. We're both sushi enthusiasts and were thoroughly pleased with what was set out in front of us.

We then continued via interstates towards NJ, stopping for the night in Owings Mills, MD.

Monday morning, got a bit of a late start, but met up with Thain (gadget) in Pennsville, NJ for lunch. I handed him a couple bags of chips of flavours that aren't available in the US - Ruffles All Dressed, Ruffles Sour Cream & Bacon, and attempted to give him Lays Ketchup which he rejected based on past experience (lol). I believe I also gave him a box of Kraft Dinner (distinctly different and better than the American Kraft Mac n Cheese product, though looks the same at a glance). We chatted for a bit over lunch before parting ways.

Sarah and I continued across NJ to Absecon, where I met up with a long-time online friend Matt for the first time in-person, and it went great. The three of us went through what is fundamentally a drive-through nature reserve (leave it to the Americans, right?), then grabbed dinner at a local place, before heading to Atlantic City to drive around somewhat aimlessly. We briefly walked on the boardwalk, then headed back to Matt's place where I bestowed Canadian snacks upon him and met his cat. Sarah and I then headed back across the state, entered PA, picked up a vintage computer terminal which Dan had asked me to stop for, and found a motel in Media, PA, southwest of Philly.

Tuesday morning, began the long drive back home. Sarah had a friend in the vicinity of Emlenton who she hadn't seen in years, so we arranged to meet him for dinner at the Emlenton rest stop (which has a great small town diner attached to it). We had a relaxed, conversational dinner, then we continued back on the highway.

Dan picked up Sarah from a point near my house, and I pulled into my driveway at 11:50PM, unloaded the essentials from the car, and crashed for the night.

This was a great experience. I am so tired, but it was so worth it. Each day brought a new experience and I'm so very happy I did this.

Some stats of note:
States visited or driven through: MI, OH, KY, TN, NC, possibly WV, VA, MD, DE, NJ, PA. Most of these were firsts for me.
Worst drivers found in: VA by a long shot
Tolls paid: about 12 USD (took the long-but-free routes where possible)
Distance driven: 2360 miles per Tripminder
Fuel consumed: 140 US gallons per Tripminder
Fuel economy: 16.6 US MPG average per Tripminder (highway typical 16-21, offset by a lot of 1-5 on mountain climbs)
Highest elevation reached: 6053ft

The EGR fix absolutely improved the MPG. I'm having a hard time crunching the numbers to sort out exactly how much improved it is, but it's somewhere between 2-4MPG typical (where speeds are conservative - much north of 70mph and it makes no difference anymore), and that's a lot over a long drive.

We did also determine that my speedometer reads low. GPS speed as per Waze or Google Maps supports that at some speeds I'm off by over 5mph, but at others I'm perfectly spot-on. This plays a significant role in how I've evaluated fuel economy previously. I'm not sure if this inaccuracy is affecting the Tripminder, but I kind of think it isn't and the problem is the speedometer itself.

More pics will be selected to be shown once I've looked them over closely.

[gadget73]

The tripminder is fed from the VSS. If the speedo was off by a fixed %, then its probably a gearing thing and the Tripminder would also be off but if its off by different % at various points, then it sounds like the speedo itself is sticky in places. The tell would be the trip odometer function. if thats accurate, the speed signal to the Tripminder is also accurate.

If I'd realized you were heading basically through Philly I'd have suggested you get a cheesesteak from Pat's or Geno's. Or one from each and compare. Its been the long running argument about who makes the better one. The two joints are across the street from one another.

[sly]

Yeah... since the speedo runs on cable and the Tripminder feeds off the VSS, the speedo is more likely to be suspect. A squirt of WD40 into the center spinning bit from the rear and behind the face plate on the shaft and let that drain out, then give a shot of some stickier lube (I used PB blaster back when with the 88 I had) and never had another problem with it. If you have clock oil, that might actually work better. If the change in speedometer slowness is pretty steady as you climb in speed, this should fix it.

[87gtVIC]

Nice write up on the trip. Looking forward to noteworthy pics.

[Tiggie]

As a Virginia resident, I can agree with your driving comments about the state. It's worse on I-81, which you might have experienced, and in the urban areas.

Sounds like a great trip. No mechanical failures on the wagon speaks volumes about how far you have brought this car back from the dead.

[sly]

I can say that my drives through Virginia (on 81) was mainly just slow (speed limit Gestapo avoidance). Texas is worse from my experience... especially in urban areas (DFW, Houston, Austin, San Antonio). Texas drivers are in way too much of a hurry. I can't say I'm much better until I get out of town though.

[kishy]

The Philly visit was very late, and I think we sort of skirted around it in avoidance of tolls anyway. We left from Absecon after 10pm.

I am definitely leaning towards the speedometer being the issue, but maybe it is actually functioning as-manufactured and there is an inherent inaccuracy in the way the face is printed. This was a NOS speedometer first used by me in 2019, and it is for a 1979 model year car (therefore perhaps later years had revised versions). 70mph, in particular, is the speed that has the highest amount of deviance I've noticed. 70mph indicated is 75mph actual. The amount off from correct seems to be less both above and below that speed, I think. It is a metric cluster and has markings up to 110mph or 180kmh. 70 is just a little to the right of the needle standing vertically.

The VA bad drivers fell into two consistent categories:

• Completely oblivious: no apparent sense of where they are actually going, how to track their vehicle straight in their lane, or how to maintain a consistent speed.
• Actively malicious: while cruising at the same speed as me a couple car lengths behind in the left lane, notice that I am catching up to the car ahead of me (using cruise), then speed up to get beside me and stay there, blocking me from changing lanes for a pass, causing me to slow down. Multiple vehicles did this repeatedly over many miles, to the point that I took off in excess of 85mph to get away from them, found a new comfortable cruising spot, and then had them set up beside me again. VA was the only state that this happened in.

The car was truly rock-solid, and I was inviting problems with the way I drove it. I don't think most here would believe me without having been there - I drove the car hard. There was a lot of manual 2, hard acceleration up long grades and a lot of 3-2-3-2-3 thrashing through curves. The tires were absolutely howling on curves, both uphill and down. I put my brake upgrades to good use and had them hot enough to stink more than just a couple times (but no fade thanks to those upgrades). I'll gladly take credit for making the car able to handle it. I am mildly concerned about the trans as I managed to get a really big slip out of it on a 1-2 shift on an onramp, and there's a valvebody "buzzing check ball" type noise which is now happening sometimes in gear (previously only in park), but if it ends up needing a trans, it'll get one.

The three professional roadside photography outfits I am aware of (killboy, 129photos, 129slayer) all captured shots of my car. Of them, two have websites that are easy to link to for viewing the proofs and I was able to collect the photos of my car into albums:

• killboy: password is just the number 1: http://www.photoreflect.com/store/vi...aspx?a=1100820
• 129photos: password is just the number 1: http://www.photoreflect.com/store/vi...aspx?a=1100819
• The above links work best in a "private browsing" session, individually (not at the same time). Both photographers use the same vendor for storing their photos and things get buggy when you try to use both photographers sites at the same time.
• 129slayer does have a website but doesn't have this album or direct-linking capability

I plan to carefully review these and buy a couple. The variation in lighting modes through the photos is intentional - I wanted to make sure there would be shots with lights off, parking lights only, and headlights, to be sure I could find something I'd like later.

129slayer featured me (among many others, but not all cars of the day) in a Facebook post as a sort of "daily highlights" thing:



Some of my own:

[gadget73]

That group shot has two things that just do not seem to make sense, your wagon and the Escalade. The rest at a glance are all "yeah, I can see that". I suspect the wagon has a fair advantage though, much lower COG and less weight.

[Toploader]

I always find it amusing how impressed people are with how these "barges" handle without any sort of major mods. Stick a rear bar on it and make sure the suspension is in proper working order even with stock-quality replacement parts and they will hold a corner better than the seat will hold the driver.

After I put in KYB shocks in my '86 Tudor, I could not believe how improved the ride was.