The day is now Friday, crunch time for
my T fitting to arrive and rebuild my fuel lines. I didn’t know
which freight company was handling the delivery, be it UPS, FedX or
the post office, and the guy at Summit told me that I couldn’t track
it with any number like you can with most orders (because of the
drop shipment). I did know that
UPS didn’t have it so now I was waiting for either FedX or the postal service to
deliver the mail. At about 2:00 pm, I noticed the mail was being
placed in my mail box so I rushed out to take a look. As
luck would have it, there wasn’t any fitting…figures.
It was time to make do with what I had
so I worked many hours installing some of my old fuel system along
with some new stuff too. I also had to reconnect my fuel line that
goes to my gas tank because I had removed it earlier. In the
process, I got a "gas bath" like you wouldn't believe because the
fitting wouldn't screw on. I kept at it till it finally threaded on
and by then, I was covered in fuel. I know one more fitting that I’m
going to order soon, a fuel shutoff valve. It will be placed under the car
as it comes out of the gas tank. Once I cleaned up
from that mess, I detailed the car because Larry and I were going to
leave at six in the morning and I had a little extra time (7:30pm).
The next morning, I got up early, got
everything ready well before 6am and was in my car waiting for Larry
to arrive (excited like a little kid on Christmas morning) and once he
finally rolled up, we hit the road. We got off the freeway (well
before the 60/91 interchange so we could avoid that big mess) and
took some side streets to the show, like we did last year. A few
miles from our distention, my car quits running and noticed I had no
fuel pressure. I flashed my lights at Larry to let him know that I
had problems, but he kept on going right out of sight.
If you remember a couple of weeks ago,
I had the same thing happen on my way home from a different show.
The reason the car quit then was because it blew a fuse that went to
the fuel pump, and after replacing it with one from my turn signals
that night,
(15 amp) I was good to go again. Now I've never had any fuel pump problems
before, but this was a brand new unit from Holley that I put on at
the beginning of the year. The reason I bought a new one was because
it was suppose to be quieter. I guess it is a little bit, but not as
much as I thought it would be.
One of the things I did while I was working on
the car the day before was
put a larger fuse in place of the
old one (from a 15 to a 20 amp) for insurance just in case this new
pump was pulling a few more amps. I wasn't just shooting from the
hip here because I checked my wiring diagram to make sure the wire
size was large enough to handle the larger fuse. And because some of
the other circuits had the same wire size with 20 amp fuses in them,
I was confident that things would be fine.
At this point, I'm starting to wonder what happened. Once
I pulled over, I checked the fuse and sure enough, that was the
problem. I put in a new one and the car ran again...but only for
about one minute and it blew that one too.
While I was coasting to an intersection, Larry had turned around
and followed me as I was pulling over
again. When I told him what happened, I decided to put a bigger fuse
in (from 20 amp to 30 amp) to see if I could make it the rest of the
way. I knew this was a bad idea, but I was desperate at this point. Once I turned the key, the engine came to life....for about 10
seconds and then quit again. Right then I knew my day was over and
told him to go to the show without me. As he drove away, I was so
disgusted I couldn't see straight because this was one of the shows
I really wanted to be at.
I ended up calling the auto club and
told them I had a street rod that was very low to the ground and
that I would need a flatbed truck to haul it with. About an hour
later, the guy shows up and we were ready to load it. When he looked
at how low it was and really no place to hook too (without damaging the body), I told him that I might be able to
drive it on if I put in my last fuse, but I didn’t know how long it
would run for. I started the car again and as I was inching my way
forward, the driver guided me on, stopping and starting me as he put boards under the front tires as
needed so my front-end would clear the ramp. Between the both of us, I was able to drive it up on the
flatbed pretty easy. Now that the car was on the truck,
I started thinking how long the car might have run if I was driving
it.
Now that
I was on the truck safely, I
shut the engine off and the driver started to move the truck bed into
position for my ride back home. Once the bed moved forward, I thought my car was moving
and I mashed on the brakes, really hard. When my car didn’t stop, I figured out
that it was just the truck bed moving, not me. I never did let the
drive know what I did because it was embarrassing. And I did it a
second time when the bed moved that final two feet too. Duh!!
It was time to secure it to his truck
and I noticed the huge hooks and chains that he was digging out so I
asked if he had any straps instead. He said “yes” and when I asked
if I could hook everything up, he agreed again, so I got under the
car and did the delicate part. And I didn't mind crawling around
under the car because I didn’t want the car damaged, but do you know
how dirty those trucks are? Damn!! The driver told me that he’s
towed some really low Porsche’s before, (good thing he’s been down
this road before) which made this easier than I thought.
On the way home, my daughter called to
let me know how her trip back to Washington was going. She had been
on the road for 13 hours at that point and she said they got a flat
tire and needed two new ones. Then she asked me how the show was
going? I
told her that it must be a bad day to travel because both of us had
trouble.
