[T3] The road trip blues

[Daniel Nohejl]

Well, we left Madison early this afternoon and made it 481 miles to the outskirts of Cleveland. In general, the car is idling better than it has in a while, it’s back to full power, and cold starts have been quicker. 

It turns out that one of our issues was that the black “spring” that holds the metal ball onto what some call the glider part of the breaker plate had broken off. Jim found the ball somewhere in the bottom of the distributor. Our timing couldn’t have been all that stable while that was the case and that could perhaps explain why after the oil puking event we couldn’t push the rpms in any gear without a miss. I wonder if the oil event was precipitated by that spring breaking which set in motion the chain of events Phil wrote about a few days ago. 

I wish that we could say it has been all smooth sailing, but it hasn’t. There have been a few little events, two of which are worth sharing here. I’ll start with the less immediately concerning one:

1. The starter has been great but for once.  After a longish interstate run at speeds between 75 and 80, we pulled into a rest stop. We spent about 10 minutes resting and when we got back to the car, the starter didn’t do anything but click again so we had to push start and it fired up right away. The starter has been okay since then, but this suggests we should reconnect our hot start relay. 

Since this hot start issue has now been the case with at least 3 starters and 2 batteries, I think we have to conclude that something is awry in either the cable from the battery to the starter, the long wire red wire (ours is one long continuous piece) in the black sheath that runs from the ignition switch to the starter, or in the ignition switch itself. Perhaps the relay is a band-aid (and a good one at that), but I’d also like to find out what’s really the matter. 

The more concerning one:

2. About 460 miles into our 481 miles, we were cruising along at 60 mph in a construction zone when all of a sudden the engine cut out for a second. The car lurched forwards and so did we against our seatbelts. It was as though we’d hit a large bump, but there was no bump and I could clearly feel in my right foot that the engine just wasn’t there for a second. In the 21 miles since then, all was well. 

So what’s up with that? 

We’ve had random non-recurring misfires before and we’ve also had misfires that are connectivity related and which recur with a vengeance. Is there actually such a thing as a random and “benign” non-recurring misfire, or can it actually always be traced to a larger issue?

So now, for our final 472 miles, I suspect we’ll be a bit on edge waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Just when you start to trust your car again…...