July 5 - Epiblog

Today we drove 400 miles from Green River to Albuquerque:  via Durango and Bloomfield.  We have made this trip many times so I will not dwell on the details.

The best news was some sort of weather front came through Green River in the early morning.  It was much cooler and there was rain in the area.  We enjoyed thunderstorms and cool weather all the way home.  This day was expected to be a scorcher, but it was not the case.  The desert seemed to soak up all the rain instantly, it has been a very dry summer in this area.  We saw no fires, thank you rain.  Did we bring this from British Columbia? 

I must make a few comments about the Healey.  She continued to run perfectly, now many miles and days into this trip.  One of the few failures was the speedometer:  it quit 1.5 miles into this trip.  I thought I had fixed the cable but apparently did not.  The total Google distance I came up with was 4225 miles, give or take a few.  That makes this one of our longest Healey trips, about the same distance as our trek to Vermont several years ago.

Problems were few, but here they are:  I bought new tires just before the trip. I had a bit of trouble finding the right size tire and ended up with some Chinese tires (NanKing brand) that looked good and were reasonably priced.  I was not impressed.  The tires were squirrly on grooved pavement and also wandered on the many semi-truck wear tracks we encountered on this trip.  They handled these longitudinal features like bias ply tires.  I could see some wear on the outer edges of the front tires after a couple thousand miles. They were very smooth at speed, I give them credit for that.  I don't think they will be staying on the car for long.

The condition of our interstate highways is pretty bad, we hit many rough patches throughout this trip. We broke two spokes in Billings and I switched to our spare.  I have not inspected the car, but I'll bet I will find a few more broken spokes.  The secondary roads, which we prefer to use, were in better shape.  Still, we had to be careful to avoid potholes and bumps with our low clearance Healey.  The steering and shocks felt a bit looser than when we started.

Our hottest weather was in th low 90's.  The Healey rarely ran over 190F, most of the time it was under 180.  She did act funky on every hot start.  The engine would fire quickly but then barely keep running as gas fed into the carburetors boiled.  Keeping the revs up would usually keep it running and it would clear it up quickly.  The air and gas entering the carburetors would eventually cooled them and the engine smoothed.  At lower altitude the Healey has a lot more power, quite a pleasure.   I detuned this car on the last rebuild.  It has less power than it used to, but it is still lively and now runs on regular gas without pinging.  We got 18-20 mpg most of the trip.

We used 6 quarts of oil, or about 1 quart/700 miles.  I think most of this is leaked out the rear of the engine.

For the first trip in a long time, the overdrive worked throughout.  We used the OD constantly, we drove most of the time at 2800 RPM, corresponding to 65 mph.

The door latches have both gotten rather loose, the doors have been opened and closed so many times. 

The side curtains were great, we had a couple of driving days with them on all day.  Fogging of the windows is a problem, we kept rags and wiped, wiped, and wiped again.  Healey leaks water in as always.

Nance drove a couple hundred miles this trip.  I put blocks on the pedals that helped her reach them.   They helped a lot and I got used to having them there.  I will leave them in place.  The seat is still a bit low for Nance.  She can't see over the bonnet easily and if we use more pillows her legs can't get under the steering wheel.  The Healey is small but not really designed for short people.

No wheels fell off, we were delighted with that.  Hail to the Healey!!!

See you down the road,
Bill.