Warranty replacement of a 340 in 1970

[FONT=&quot]Well there are a few people out there who are interested so I will continue my tale.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]By the time we got the car back I’d been home a week. We were planning on heading out about ten days later. I had a lot to do my older brother was fabricating a Class II hitch for the Duster and I had to get the square tubing for that and get it installed, securely bolted to the frame in four places. That was accomplished so finally we rented a U-Haul trailer, loaded up our household goods, (it’s amazing what you can accumulate in two years of marriage) and we were ready to head or long beach. I don’t remember the size of the trailer, probably 5’x 8’ or 10’. I know it had a single axel and that I also had to rent a pair of towing mirrors that clamped on the to doors. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The last thing we did as we left town was to stop at the Shell Station where I had worked for four years while in high school and filled up premium of course at $0.339/gallon. Never again, I pumped many thousands of gallons in that span and as I remember the lowest price I ever pumped was regular at $0.159 and premium at $0.179/gallon. I also bought a case of Shell Rotella 30 W oil. I had changed the oil the previous day and had also installed a transmission oil cooler. I still had service bay privileges and could buy my parts from a wholesaler. The car had approximately 1200 miles on it when we left Danville, IL headed for Joplin, Mo. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]In 1970 the Interstate Highway system was well under way but there were still many miles of other than. We traveled on sections of the famed Rt. 66 off and on from IL to CA. Mostly I-40 & 44 we stayed over night in Joplin, MO 500 miles, two tanks of gas and two quarts of oil. Our next stop was in Albuquerque, NM, another 750 mile down the road we were getting roughly 15 mpg of gas and 600 mpg of oil. The car was running well I was driving about 60 mph and we were not having any problems with over heating. We left Albuquerque early the next morning as we were planning on making it to Long Beach that night. This was our longest day about 14 hours, 800 miles. What was memorable on this leg was the very first time I paid $0.50 a gallon for gas, I was shocked, at a station right on the Continental Divide. I also remember the long down hill coming into San Bernardino, CA . We had no problem with the grades, the Duster had plenty of power and even with the U-Haul pushing on the down grades braking with the double piston calipers was no problem.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Our arrival in the LA area was less than auspicious. I had filled up for the last time before LB somewhere near Ontario, Ca. At that stop I’d put in the 12th quart of oil since we’d left Danville, IL just a little over 1950 miles to the NE. We got back on the highway only, about 50 miles to go, just in time to hit the to hit the evening rush. Actually we merged on to the Long Beach Freeway South Bound from the San Bernardino at exactly 5:00 PM. The truly unfortunate thing was that on the ramp from the SBF to the LBF the rubber bungee for the RH towing mirror broke and that mirror suddenly went AWOL. I had never driven in LA’s rush hour traffic and we were stuck in the middle of I believe 5 lanes at that time. We were surrounded by wall-to-wall commuter traffic going 15-20 mph. I had no choice but to stay right where I was until traffic thinned out. As I remember it took us about 1 ½ hours to complete our journey. I was definitely stressed to the max. My wife was a little excited also, (An UNDERSTATEMENT). [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I’ve got to say that though I was really pretty unhappy about the oil consumption we’d had a good trip. Almost exactly 2000 miles in three days we used about 150 gallons of gas at an average of $0.38/gallon, less than $60 and the aforementioned 12 quarts of oil. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]My wife and I are driving to San Diego for a USS Blue Ships Reunion in Sept. It will be interesting to compare the trips since gas looks like it will cost about ten times more per gallon in 2011 vs. 1970. BTW I no longer have the Duster but I still have the wife. April 20th will be our 43rd anniversary. Once again a good place to stop. I promise I’ll get to the dirty details tomorrow. [/FONT]