This trip began on an ominous note, and it almost made me rethink the whole thing. The day I was to leave New jersey for New Mexico and points west, it was raining, overcast and kinda ugly. I was nervous enough about leaving for a month, and being out of work, but still excited at the prospect of a long road trip, and seeing my daughter after almost 2 years. I finished loading the last of my gear on the roof rack, said my good bye's to Rita and finally headed down the driveway to begin the long ride out west.
I noticed the work crew in my front yard installing the new sidewalk were all staring at me, but being used to getting looks in the Tracker I thought nothing of it and smiled and waved as I began to pull away. Before I got even a half a block I happened to check my side mirrors as I often do, and was shocked to see a huge billowing cloud of blue white smoke pouring from the exhaust. "This is not a good sign" I said to myself, and quickly turned onto the first side street. I immediately knew what happened, and how to deal with it, as I had this happen once before. The night before, I had been under the dash " cleaning up" some wiring just to make it prettier. I'd inadvertently knocked the power wire for the turbo scavenge pump off it's connector on the fuse panel, so all I had to do was reconnect it, and 30 seconds later I was on my way once again. Right about then my wife called me on the cell to tell me the car was "really smoking bad." I laughed it off, told her the fix situation, and pretended to be not concerned at all.
Now I was really nervous, thinking of every possible reason this was a bad idea. Too many home made parts to break, the Tracker loaded to the hilt, limited funds, and to top it off the exhaust was still blowing a pretty good cloud of smoke. I knew the smoke would eventually diminish and stop altogether once the oil had cleared the system, but now I noticed the temp gauge beginning to rise. I was in typical Philly stop and go traffic, but I had just recently installed a thermostat controlled fan switch and relay so I wouldn't have this problem again. The nervous dread began to really take hold at this point and I seriously considered bagging the whole idea and turning for home only about 20 miles away. Dogged determination got the better of me though and I just pulled over, let her cool down, turned the fan on "manually" and once I hit the highway all seemed well again. So far I'd covered all of 20 miles, and had to stop twice already. Not an encouraging start to a 6000 mile trip.
The next couple of hours were pretty uneventful. The Tracker seemed to be running fine now, and I was cruising down the highway on my google mapped route at a relaxed and steady rate. I had planned on taking the PA turnpike to the merge with interstate 70 west and following 70 all the way to eastern Colorado, then turn south to New Mexico. That's until my Christmas gift from my wife got involved, a Garmin Nuvi 750 GPS.
I've always been a paper map kind of guy, the maps themselves being my favorite souvenirs of a trip. I have a large stack of them in my shop marked with routes of every backroad and cross country trip I've been on, so I never really took to this talking idiot proof touring device and used it rarely. Until now.
I decided another gadget attached to my windshield would look cool and give me something to play with if I got bored. So while filling up with gas just east of Harrisburg Pa, I programmed my daughters address into the Gps and hit GO. I watched in fascination as it calculated all the variables and was beginning to be impressed with the device until it started talking to me and urging me to turn around! I thought wtf? It was telling me to start going due south on Interstate 81, taking me directly into the Blue ridge mountains. I wanted to trust the damn thing, but my directional instincts told me no! IT'S WRONG! So I turned around again and headed back to the PA Turnpike and my original course. The GPS said " recalculating" in it's feminine computerized voice and told me to turn around at the next ramp. It was determined to get me going south. I though about it for a few seconds, and said OK, I'll trust it and turned around at the next ramp. The GPS was still talking in that non human voice, and was beginning to irritate me. Once again it said " recalculating" for the third time and I swear I was beginning to hear a condescending tone in her voice. Like, " hey idiot, how many times do I have to tell you?" " Re calculating" that bitch said again, and I finally let go on her. "You semi computerized turd!" I pulled over and stopped on the shoulder, lit a smoke and pulled my trusty road atlas from behind the seat and took a good look at the GPS route in comparison to my Google map route. Sure enough, the GPS had me going on a Southwest diagonal trip across the US that actually made sense compared to my straight west then south route. Going the suggested route of the Garmin would shave 300 miles and a few hours off the total, so I decided then to go ahead and trust the thing, and follow it's directions. South on 81 I went, right into a big ass storm and the Blue ridge Mountains.
Up to this point the Tracker had been running great, getting decent gas milage and not being stressed too much. Most of the ride had been on pretty much flat highway so the engine was never really on boost. As I began to get deeper into West Virginia the road began to rise and fall gently at first then really began to throw some mountains at me in earnest. It's still raining pretty hard, and getting darker by the minute, and I now have to floor it to get the overburdened Tracker up the steep grades with any speed. Staying in the right " granny" lane I was able to maintain a decent rate of climb by keeping the engine on boost and around 4200 rpm. Well, this is the beginning of the test I thought, and it's been running on boost for 10/ 15 minutes at a time to make it up these mountain passes. Already tense from driving in the low visibility of the rain storm that seemed to continue unabated, I had a pretty good grip on the wheel as I watched the pyrometer and temp gauges closely. EGT was staying in the normal range, and engine temp was also still in the green. Oil pressure looked good too.
I kept flogging it along, missing the beautiful scenery the Blue Ridge is known for because of the rain and evening darkness starting to fall. It was still raining and I was quite beat at this point so I decided to motel it for the night and get a rest. Before I could sleep I wanted to check over the load on the rood for security, so I climbed up on my little folding plastic stool and proceeded to give the two large duffel bags I had my camping gear in a good shake. That's when I noticed they were both pretty wet. I had used up two cans of " waterproofing " spray on the supposed " water restant " bags before mounting them to the roof, and was somewhat confident I did a good job. A good squeeze of the bag proved otherwise, as water dripped out of the seams. Great I thought, down came the bags, into the motel room , and once opened I found my tent, sleeping bags and assorted soft camping gear all pretty wet. I ended up opening everything and spreading it around the room, hanging things everywhere I could to try and get it all dry before morning. I had stuff hanging from the curtain rods, the doors, to nails in the wall where I removed the hanging pictures. It's close to midnight by now and exhausted, I dropped into the bed, and fell asleep.
End of day one, I'd traveled about 475 miles, and so far had enough issues to really have me considering my sanity at trying to do this trip. Nothing major, and certainly nothing that would be considered a trip stopper, but enough tension to make me think. Tomorrow is a new day and I'd sleep on it. Hopefully with better weather and less mountains to deal with.
Stay tuned for Part 2, in which I continue to flog the Turbo Tracker for all it's worth.
