Well, 3,900 miles, three time-zones, five states, three provinces and one territory later, my girlfriend, our dogs, one full trailer and I completed our journey from Iowa to Alaska in my '90 245.

Many thanks to the brickboard for everyone's help getting my brick ready for the trip - she ran flawlessly - mostly. The only problems we had were, in no particular order, difficulty with hot restarts, one window switch flaking out, and a failed hanger on the rear muffler.

The worst of the hot starting problem actually happened at the Montana/Sasketchiwan border crossing. There were a few cars waiting in-front of us, so I turned off the car. Surely enough, when I went to restart the car, all cranking and no running. The Canadian border customs/douanes agent was very understanding, and, after pulling the plugs and waiting a while, the car fired back up and off we went.

Not much to say about a failed window switch.

The muffler hanger on the rear muffler broke after ~3,500 miles of the trailer slowly swaying back and forth behind the car. I notices slightly increased exhaust noise while we were driving and saw the hanger bracket starting to flex upward and picked up some wire at Canadian Tire in Whitehorse to wrap around the muffler incase the hanger failed completely. Well, the wire didn't quite work as planned - the bracket failed, the rh hanger came out of the rubber hanger, the pipe between the first muffler and second muffler broke at the entry point of the second muffler - and the muffler was then quickly dragging behind the car, only held on by the wire wrapped around it. After stopping to unwrap it and strap it to the top of the car, we were back on the road, now with a throatier exhaust note and a hare more performance.

When we started, the mileage was 226,000 - and at the completion of the trip, the odometer had just passed 229,900. The brick and trailer did well with a tailwind, achieveing approximately 20 mpg... I won't go into the mileage with a headwind uphill. There were no problems with hills - though the steepest grade tackled had me flooring the accellerator and going a steady 30 mph (or would that be 50 kph, to be appropriate at the time?). All in all - a wonderful trip I'd make again - gorgeous scenery - and thanks again to everyone here who lended me a hand - or some suggestions - to get the brick ready for the trip - I probably couldn't've done it without everyone here!

Zach Zaletel
'90 245 / 229,xxx mi
Anchorage, Alaska