Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback
Problems, problems, problems...
My son informed me that he'd like us to be done with the car by Wednesday. That's only a total of one week from the time he came. I thought we were supposed to have 2 weeks.
We still don't have the ECU from FAST but it should be here tomorrow.
The new valve cover breathers came today and they're the wrong size. Summit's site had them listed as for an inch and a half hole which would have been what we needed. Instead the largest diameter of the rubber grommet portion is an inch and a half. They won't work. We decided to rob the pair of Mickey Thompson's from the Charger project for now. We'll swap covers some day down the road. On the bright side, the new 383 emblems did arrive. I think they look pretty sweet on the valve covers we'd planned on using.
We called around this morning trying to find header reducers that would adapt our 3&1/2" collectors to 2&1/2" pipe. No go locally. The closest place was Speedway Motors in Lincoln. It's an hour's trip away but it seemed our only option. Before we left to get them we did manage to set up an appointment at an exhaust shop for tomorrow morning.
I'd noticed that the truck plates were expired so we decided to take the 'Cuda.
We must have been on the Highway To Hell. Simple road trips should never go so wrong. We got about 25 miles from home when I started smelling the first problem. We pulled into a gas station in Seward, Nebraska to check things out. It wasn't anything major, but one of the fuel fittings was weeping gasoline. I drove to one of my buddy's shops and tightened up the AN fitting. - Problem solved.
10 miles further down the road I began to smell something different. I thought it smelled like wiring insulation. The smell was faint and I thought I might have been imagining it until I saw the alternator needle jump to the max charging side a couple of times. We pulled over to the side of the road to check it out. We popped the hood and inspected all of the wiring we could and everything seemed OK. As far as I could tell everything was functioning fine too. We hopped back in the car and resumed our trip.
I'm still not fond of those 4.10s in the rear end. I kept the RPM below 3000 and let traffic pass us by. When we hit the interstate I had to be cautious. I was doing about 55 and many of the cars coming up from behind must have been doing 80. I had to speed up a few times to keep from getting a$$holed by some drivers. At least a few were on cell phones and seemed oblivious to our slower pace.
As I pulled into the Speedway Motors parking lot I saw the temperature had climbed on the 'Cuda. We parked and went inside to get our parts. While Spencer waited at the counter I went back outside to see what was going on with the Barracuda. I flipped the fan switch on and got nothing. That explained why the temp had climbed. I checked the relay fuse and saw it had blown. I replaced it and figured that if it blew again we'd be driving down the highway and getting plenty of air through the radiator soon. No sense trying to do further troubleshooting when I didn't have any tools with me.
The electric fan cooled the motor back down within a few minutes but I could tell when that fuse popped again. The temperature rose - but not to a spooky level now that we were driving road speed.
When I approached Seward on the way back home I decided to pull into Walmart to pick up some spare fuses. When I got out after parking, I heard the sound of air leaking from the left front tire. It was nearly flat. I didn't have a jack or a spare with me. I guess I was asking for trouble. We went inside to buy the fuses and a can of Fix-a-Flat.
The tire partially re-inflated with the can of crap I'd put in. I decided to limp to the nearest place for repair. It was almost 5:30 and everyone would be closing shop soon. By the time I got to the Wally World exit the tire was almost down all the way. We were screwed. I'm running tubes in all of my tires and I needed to find a place that sold them and then another to install.
I drove on the shoulder a half mile to a NAPA store. They did not sell tubes but told me another store a mile away did. We were able to air up the tire and get to the next place before it ran flat again.
They had no tubes close to the size I needed. I tried calling a few garages in town but they were already closed. Next I called Doug (another buddy I knew in Seward). He's the guy I had helped find a '69 Coronet. He told me that he'd loan me a tire/wheel if I could make it to his place. We aired up the tire again and drove a couple more miles to his place. The Fix-a-Flat may not have worked, but it must have slowed the leak.
I kept my fingers crossed after changing the wheel, - half way expecting a meteor storm before we got home.