Dear Panthers,
From May 11 to June 4th, me and four sheepdogs drove my 89 Colony Park 4512 miles to Sheepdog Trials in Illinois, Wisconsin, North Dakota and back to Wisconsin again before returning home. The wagon has 214, 000 miles on it, the engine 106k since rebuild, tranny 30 K.
It has remote doorlocks, pioneer and blauplunkt sound system and 4 days of mps’s on the iBook in the console. Its oil pressure and temperature guages are mounted on the A pillar.
It’s been to Scott twice for new radiator, generator, water pump, power steering pump, police steering and suspension, 16 inch tires and disk brakes. Scott has fixed everything he thought might break.
I was fully loaded with my gear, dog gear, four dogs, dog water and food and cartons of books in the jump seat compartment.
On this trip it consumed 211 gallons of gas for a trip average of 21.38 mpg.
It took one quart of oil. The defroster or air wa almost always on.
The GPS has a trip calculator. According to it, I drove 64 hours for an average speed of 63.2. That figure is misleading since I turned the GPS off once I found the trial grounds and my motel and left it off driving to dinner, back and forth to the trial, taking the dogs to some park to exercise etc. But the figure should be about right for overall highway travel. Most of my driving was eight hours per day. The longest day was thirteen hours, the shortest six.
The trip calculator says the fastest I drove was 128 mph but that can’t be correct. On two or three occasions passing in the Dakotas I might have hit 95-100 but that’d be the fastest.
I hit a deer fifteen minutes from home but since the radiators were undamaged, continued on. In the Dakotas my driver’s side window wouldn’t roll up but finally it did. Twice my ignition lock stuck but unstuck. Maybe half a dozen times my tailgate would swing open and I let down the window and lifted the latch and then the gate opened. With three dogs crated and one loose inn the wayback (behind the back seats) I had to slam the tailgate shut and bend the crates some.The last day of trialing I hadn’t locked the tailgate but parked at a funny tilt and it wouldn’t open so the problem is probably mechanical not electrical.
I intend to fix these things soon. The first day out I had hot air blowing when I pulled a hill and the cruise control wouldn’t work. Since Scott had replaced all the vacuum lines I figured maybe he’d missed something but after that one time I never had hot air again and the cruise worked flawlessly.
Getting used to such precise steering took some doing. It was easy to oversteer until I got used to it. After I did, Scott’s steering and suspension made driving effortless.
I had three white knuckle moments. After a trial, about two pm, somewhere between Bowman ND and Jamestown ND, I was hit by a thunderstorm which dropped more water on that part of the state since 1884 - maybe four inches in two hours. Crosswinds gusted to fifty mph and threatened to tear my deer damaged nose piece off the car. It was flapping. At 80, the car felt skittery on the road. It wasn’t hydroplaning but the Dakota roads weren’t getting rid of the water and I sat up straight and paid attention. Since the wipers couldn’t keep up with the rain I slowed to 70.
Northern Illinois, outside Chicago had the worst drivers in North America (including even the Quebec French). They were doing 85 in a 55 mph zone and passing from any lane. Crawling along the Dan Ryan Xpressway wasn’t fun either.
The trial field at the last Wisconsin trial could only be reached by fording a narrow creek with steep creekbanks and proceeding up a ridge via a tractor trial. All the other competitors had 4wd. I worried I might high center or bottom out but with judicious driving and limited slip, I made it to the top and back down to asphalt again.
The trick to getting from point a to point b six-thirteen hours apart isn’t how fast you can drive - unless you enjoy jail time you can’t drive 100 mph for very long on any US highway anyway. The trick is the pit stops: as few as possible. The Boulevard Cruiser is unusually roomy and comfortable. Now that it handles well, I only stop when the gas light goes on. I am rarely passed and can cover more miles in a day - day after day - than most cars on the road.
In Ohio, I was passed by the only Ferrari I’ve seen on the trip. Beautiful car. Probably came up to the bottom of my steering wheel. Because I’ve an EZPass transponder, I drove right through the next set of tollgates. He was stuck in line behind four trucks and since it was one lane construction after the tollgates, I didn’t see him again.
Donald McCaig
From May 11 to June 4th, me and four sheepdogs drove my 89 Colony Park 4512 miles to Sheepdog Trials in Illinois, Wisconsin, North Dakota and back to Wisconsin again before returning home. The wagon has 214, 000 miles on it, the engine 106k since rebuild, tranny 30 K.
It has remote doorlocks, pioneer and blauplunkt sound system and 4 days of mps’s on the iBook in the console. Its oil pressure and temperature guages are mounted on the A pillar.
It’s been to Scott twice for new radiator, generator, water pump, power steering pump, police steering and suspension, 16 inch tires and disk brakes. Scott has fixed everything he thought might break.
I was fully loaded with my gear, dog gear, four dogs, dog water and food and cartons of books in the jump seat compartment.
On this trip it consumed 211 gallons of gas for a trip average of 21.38 mpg.
It took one quart of oil. The defroster or air wa almost always on.
The GPS has a trip calculator. According to it, I drove 64 hours for an average speed of 63.2. That figure is misleading since I turned the GPS off once I found the trial grounds and my motel and left it off driving to dinner, back and forth to the trial, taking the dogs to some park to exercise etc. But the figure should be about right for overall highway travel. Most of my driving was eight hours per day. The longest day was thirteen hours, the shortest six.
The trip calculator says the fastest I drove was 128 mph but that can’t be correct. On two or three occasions passing in the Dakotas I might have hit 95-100 but that’d be the fastest.
I hit a deer fifteen minutes from home but since the radiators were undamaged, continued on. In the Dakotas my driver’s side window wouldn’t roll up but finally it did. Twice my ignition lock stuck but unstuck. Maybe half a dozen times my tailgate would swing open and I let down the window and lifted the latch and then the gate opened. With three dogs crated and one loose inn the wayback (behind the back seats) I had to slam the tailgate shut and bend the crates some.The last day of trialing I hadn’t locked the tailgate but parked at a funny tilt and it wouldn’t open so the problem is probably mechanical not electrical.
I intend to fix these things soon. The first day out I had hot air blowing when I pulled a hill and the cruise control wouldn’t work. Since Scott had replaced all the vacuum lines I figured maybe he’d missed something but after that one time I never had hot air again and the cruise worked flawlessly.
Getting used to such precise steering took some doing. It was easy to oversteer until I got used to it. After I did, Scott’s steering and suspension made driving effortless.
I had three white knuckle moments. After a trial, about two pm, somewhere between Bowman ND and Jamestown ND, I was hit by a thunderstorm which dropped more water on that part of the state since 1884 - maybe four inches in two hours. Crosswinds gusted to fifty mph and threatened to tear my deer damaged nose piece off the car. It was flapping. At 80, the car felt skittery on the road. It wasn’t hydroplaning but the Dakota roads weren’t getting rid of the water and I sat up straight and paid attention. Since the wipers couldn’t keep up with the rain I slowed to 70.
Northern Illinois, outside Chicago had the worst drivers in North America (including even the Quebec French). They were doing 85 in a 55 mph zone and passing from any lane. Crawling along the Dan Ryan Xpressway wasn’t fun either.
The trial field at the last Wisconsin trial could only be reached by fording a narrow creek with steep creekbanks and proceeding up a ridge via a tractor trial. All the other competitors had 4wd. I worried I might high center or bottom out but with judicious driving and limited slip, I made it to the top and back down to asphalt again.
The trick to getting from point a to point b six-thirteen hours apart isn’t how fast you can drive - unless you enjoy jail time you can’t drive 100 mph for very long on any US highway anyway. The trick is the pit stops: as few as possible. The Boulevard Cruiser is unusually roomy and comfortable. Now that it handles well, I only stop when the gas light goes on. I am rarely passed and can cover more miles in a day - day after day - than most cars on the road.
In Ohio, I was passed by the only Ferrari I’ve seen on the trip. Beautiful car. Probably came up to the bottom of my steering wheel. Because I’ve an EZPass transponder, I drove right through the next set of tollgates. He was stuck in line behind four trucks and since it was one lane construction after the tollgates, I didn’t see him again.
Donald McCaig
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