On Our Way Home...Hopefully

Day 16: 337 Miles
Total: 4,999 Miles

Well, we're on our way again. At 2:30pm we picked up the 1937 Ford, swapped our stuff into it, dropped off the rental car and headed out. We drove about an hour south to connect to the historic Lee Highway in Plainview, TX. The car is running very cool; no radiator problems at all, but when we got to Plainview it was behaving badly while idling and I was having a hard time keeping it running. Then it stalled and when I tried to restart it...nothing.

So we pushed the car off of the road and I opened the hood. Twenty minutes later we were off again like nothing had happened. Then we drove for a while and had to pull over to check the map and it stalled again. When I tried to start it...nothing. We waited a bit, then I decided to try something else. I got a hammer out of our tool box and crawled under the car. I lightly tapped the starter as Sharon held the key in the start position. The car fired right up. It happened once more and a light tap did the trick again.

The starter is clearly getting worse as we go. The repair facility thought it was the wiring and they fixed that, but it obviously wasn't the problem. Intermittent problems are difficult to diagnose, but a pattern is developing. I think the headers are positioned too close to the starter and in that tiny engine compartment the starter is getting too hot. When it cools off it works, but when it's hot it doesn't. I'll deal with it when we get home, but first we have to get there. We'll see how today goes.

We made a good distance yesterday, even with our late start. We spent the night in Laughton, OK. If all goes well with the car we will probably be somewhere in Arkansas tonight. Wish us luck. Even with all of this going on it was a fun day. We only took a few pictures because we were worried about stopping too often, but I posted some of them below.

The first two were taken of a really cool historic gas station in Manitou, TX.


This gas station in Snyder, OK is a log cabin.

Ciao!

Comments

Unknown said…
This is going to be one memorable trip for you. I'm really sorry you couldn't swing by to visit us, but maybe next trip or when you are on business in CA? I sure do wish you happy trouble free trails the rest of the way home. Love you. Aunt Mona

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