Monday, November 12, 2007

 

T-minus 32 hours and counting....

So we have a lot to do before departing Wednesday morning. We've made good progress in the last four days but another week for two would sure have been nice. Our original date for shipping from NYC was supposed to have been after Thanksgiving - this would have given us a nice leisurely 9 day vacation across the country. Now we're leaving a week early which doesn't seem like much, but you know how it goes.

Anyway, Vegas is starting to come together, here's a sampling of some of the things going on:
  • Visited the Oakland Pick and Pull and pulled a ton of spares for the road - wheels, tyres, alternator, regulator, starter, computer, distributor, handbrake mechanism, injectors, fuel metering unit, three roof racks, complete set of gauges, door handles, window motors, interior trim pieces, spare hood ornament.
  • The roof rack and trunk racks are now on and look good. Hard to believe but it turns out they made the entire roof of the limo out of fiberglass to save weight. It's a really nice job but nearly useless for anchoring a rack into. Finally found a couple of bits of steel to anchor the ends into so it's pretty sturdy now but took longer than expected. We also put a rack on the trunk lid, will look pretty nifty when it's cleaned up.
  • New (old) set of gauges - volts, amps, oil pressure and water temperature are all installed (just need to figure out how to hook them up).


Gauges, left and trunk rack above.

  • The drivers door now opens and closes, and the windows o up and down. Of course now the right rear door has stopped working and the left rear window.
  • The emergency brakes now works - handy little thing that, the emergency brake, for emergencies and whatnot.
  • New shock ! Sweet. After much research and several failed attempts found an upgrade to the stock Town Car front shocks. 1997 Ford Crown Victoria Police Edition - Severe Service Model. These are a perfect fit and much larger than the ones we pulled out. Hopefully this will help us make it through the desert - when we get airborne off the sand dunes in the sahara.....
  • Sadly we were not able to successfully remove and replace the front springs. I got some of those rinky-dink coil spring spacers but I'm not confident they'll be much use. We'll know how she rides tomorrow when we get her off the blocks for a test drive.
  • Replaced the front left rotor which we managed to destroy on the way back from BM when the pads wore out.

So between now and Wednesday morning just need to finish reassembling the interior, reinstall the front left hub, and get her back on the ground for a test drive. Fingers x'd. I'm sure every will work just fine. Fine fine fine. Yep yep yep.

The photo to the left is on the way back to San Francisco after a long afternoon at the Oakland Pick N Pull - on San Leandro down near Oakland Airport in case you need to know. Crazy place. Interesting people. Lots of wrecked Fords. If you zoom in on the map below you can see them all in the left corner, that's Suna waving from the top of a Crown Victoria.






One other item of news - the event is a staggered start - the first group has already reached Mali - live reports from the road are on the P-D website here.

http://www.pdcinfo.info/fieldreports/latestnews.htm

Cheers
Mark



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