1. It Ain't Easy Bein' Green 2. Hot Wheels 3. Details, Details 4. Sound Blaster 5. Road Test 7. 2010 Snowball Rally 8. Engine Woe/Getting Even Chapter 7, 2010 Snowball Rally
April 2010There is a group of vintage car people here in the SF Bay Area that holds rallies regularly. Many are one day, a few are multi-day deals where you pay a modest entry fee that covers one or two low budget hotels and the cost of photo-copying a direction-sheet which tells each participant how many miles to the next turn and the name/description of the next turn. These tours usually take you over roads you'd never have found otherwise, and interstates are to be avoided at all costs.
This year, the Snowball departed from the small marina under the Golden Gate Bridge at dusk for a night run to Sacramento.
The first section at night turned out to be my favorite portion, because I've rigged the car with euro-spec hella headlights from a 1991 Jetta, wired them straight from the alternator for lowest voltage drop, and installed bulbs that are triple the stock brightness. The giant reflector area and superior lensing of the glass on these units plants the light very precisely and does not bother or dazzle other drivers while yielding incredible coverage and brightness. My car loves the dark and is painted to match!
After a long, flat run across portions of the central valley through rolling plains that had some of those new monstrous wind turbines installed, the area became really dark in a way that you just don't get to experience very often if you live in a major metro area like I do. The contingent consisted of 72 vehicles, mostly European, mostly small displacement sports cars.
The rolling flatlands took a turn for the fun when we made a careening left turn and got onto the River Road, which runs atop the levees on either side of the San Joaquin Delta and Sacramento River. The gorgeous thing about the River Road is that it's essentially deserted after dark, and there are very few intersections, since the water is on one side, and you're atop a 60-foot tall levee with a drop off to farmland on the right.
As soon as we arrived there, I was about 6th in our cluster of cars, and an Alfa sedan broke from the back and roared by.
Nobody else reacted, and since I was there to Drive and stretch the car's legs, I pulled out and engaged the Pursuit setting on the car's accelerator pedal.
I caught the guy within about a mile, passed him, and just kept going. The car handled magnificently and was very stable - as designed - when driving crisply.
The next 30 minutes or so were a real pleasure. The car was comfortable and stable, high speeds were maintained, and the road was silky smooth under the Imperial's pliant suspension. Just curving enough to be entertaining without being dangerous or really challenging. The high beams on those lights give me at least a mile of clear view - farther than any other car I've ever been in, and that made driving such a deserted road both safer, and easier to do fast, which is to my liking.
The Alfa driver said subsequently that I'd given him quite a scare, since nobody had ever overtaken him like that, and that he'd presumed I was a cop out to discuss his high rate of speed.
That night was spent at the Motel 6 in Sacramento in one of the only two rooms left when I called en-route. The guy repeated that it was a "smoking room" about 4 times and I brushed it off as a part of the adventure, but boy that room sure did stink! Disgusting, but I turned the fan on the window AC unit on to blow air across the bed all night, and turned on the fan in the bathroom and it was manageable. For a $40 rate, I can't complain further.
We met at 9am the next day in a park for the official start of the 2010 Snowball, and left Sacramento in a grand procession of cars fitted with chrome and carburetion to the delight of people doing their Saturday morning errands and coffee procurement.
Roads for the day were as back road as back road gets, with gorgeous gold-country panoramas and darting curves. There was a bicycle event going on in the lower elevations where things were rolling, and I deployed my secret weapon - the siren. I bought an old electric fire-engine siren on ebay and mounted it inside the bat cave in front of the radiator, and it's a good way to give notice to the people riding 3 abreast on a deserted road that there is a 5000 pound block of metal approaching, since bicycle time and rally car time are on different planes. The other car guys haven't figured this one out yet, and the message boards keep getting filled with messages cursing inattentive cyclists. Not a problem in my workspace!
There were about 2 hours of darty, rough surfaced roads that were a blast to drive. I had a pair of 1970's Z cars with sporting rubber behind me, and I was pleased to see them keeping up with me during the flatter, smoother part. As we started to gain elevation, I kept the pace steady and was surprised to see them drop behind, despite obviously trying to get the most out of their cars. The Imperial is a real sleeper that catches people off guard when the roads get twisty. It has several things going for it that the smaller cars don't. It's heavy, it has 275 wide sport truck tires, which I have yet to find the outside end of traction on, and it has sway bars as thick as an infant's fore-arm. The power steering is super, and the square Exner steering wheel is icing on the cake.
Since I also have plenty of power and don't have to diddle a manual gearbox, I can pay attention to setting the car up for corners and than I just power through them, usually dropping whoever is trying to be anyplace close to my rear bumper. Too bad for the sports car guys who were anticipating a quick end to me once things got twisty.
Broke out onto one of the lesser highways that traverses the Sierras and was treated to some front runners pulled over at the side of the road throwing snowballs at passing event entrants, who are conspicuous in that part of the world for having cars made out of metal and wearing the SNOWBALL 2010 rally plate on their front license plate. Up and over the Sierras in sweeping, well paved roads, with traffic light and willing to pull into the turnouts to let us by. Down the back of the mountains on the lee side the trees disappear and the beginnings of the desert in Nevada can be seen.
Stop in Markleeville (check it out on Google Earth?) for a good lunch at a place that we essentially swamped. This is a sleepy backwater that isn't used to hosting 140 people in a 2 hour period, even if they have the seating capacity to handle 2/3 of us at at time anyway.
After lunch, we were set to exit Markleeville, make a right turn off the primary road, and then onto one of the dirt stages that the organizer loves to include.
Once again, The Imperial rose to the occasion and shined. There may be a worse road in the western hemisphere. The one out to the Ghost Town at Bodie would be a contender, but this one was plenty nasty. In addition to your garden variety washboard bumps, it was dirt with rocks embedded in it. Rocks the size of footballs, but narrow and pointy, having had the dirt surrounding them worn away during the wet season by traffic and water so that they stuck up 3-4 inches. Absolute murder on the teeth and suspension, BUT even more horrible if you're driving a low slung European job from the 1960's! The large wheels, softer suspension, longer wheelbase, and aggressive driving style of yours truly had the GT in the empty oncoming "lane" passing everyone at double the speed that the rest of the gang was driving. I managed to fly by about 20 cars in the course of the 10 mile road, and the last 2 miles were delightfully empty when the ruts and juts stopped. Now it was hardpack dirt with gravel atop it. Once on the marbles, I was able to have fun drifting the car around turns and steering with the throttle.
The car is a true GT, and has lived up to the name I've given it.
The good news in all of this was that my passenger and I were completely, totally comfortable for the whole trip. The car is firm enough to be a serious road car, but plush enough not to fatigue over a long haul, the way that some of the other entrants probably were. There was a yellow Citroen that was a cross between a Jeep and a VW Thing with an engine about 1/3 the size of either and tires about as wide as the ball of my foot. Those guys were very committed - look for it in the photos below (count the number of lug nuts per wheel, too!
With Ken Lang's help, I had just last week bypassed the defunct Auto Temp II heat control unit that's bad on all of these cars (and an $800+ thing to repair correctly), and put in a manual control valve, so we had heat. I took Kerry Pinkerton's advice and installed the blower motor and fan out of a mid 1970's Chevy truck, and the increased air volume made a real difference! The car was warm in a matter of minutes, and although not automatic, was delightful, since I've never had heat in any of my fuselage-bodied cars because they're that consistently defective in the heater control department (and a coat is usually enough where I live). The AC is coming soon - something that the rest of the rally gang almost certainly doesn't have. Someone in Tahoe was surprised to hear me mention that I had cruise control!
The roads after the dirt section were driven under tension, because the car had developed a serious exhaust leak - one that I was expecting, but wasn't welcoming.
Driving the car hard over back roads with bumps and bounces forces the exhaust system to sway and bounce. Since it's all welded together and rigid, it swings as one, and obviously needs to have its hangers reinforced and perhaps some stiff springs installed to hold it in place during aggressive driving. Maybe I can find some flexible tubing or something (this is my next project).
Anyway, the rear bolts on the exhaust manifold dumps tend to work their way loose. I've taken to double nutting them, with the first nut torqued down and the next nut torqued onto the first, but even this can be overcome by a determined road and long term vibration, causing the gasket between the pipe and the manifold to blow out and the car to start sounding like an un-muffled speedboat.
I dropped away from the course and headed up 395 into Minden, NV where I was able to procure new grade 8 bolts and nuts for a quickie repair. This was Saturday, and nobody with a lift or pit was open in Minden, so I stayed light on the throttle and proceeded west over the pass to drop into the truly panoramic view of beautiful Lake Tahoe. The road surrounding Tahoe is aggressively policed, and speeds are set at 35 miles per hour, even in the areas with no population, so the cruise control was engaged, engine revs were minimized to control the sound, and the car made it to our stop at Cal Neva for the night.
