Three weeks and 5,000 miles and my road-trip from NYC to Boulder, CO and back is over. The single problem 'the Bird' suffered on the entire trip was a disintegrated valve-cover gasket, which made an oily mess (I'm thinking of it as a 'renewal' of the undercoating) until Mario in KS dug up a replacement for me- thanks again, Mario! Our route was NYC to Ithaca, to Niagra, into Canada to Windsor, through Detroit and up Michigan, across to the U.P. then down into Wisconsin, across Minnesota, South Dakota and down Eastern Wyoming into CO. The drive back took us across Kansas into Missouri, across a bit of Illinois and Indiana, a bit of Kentucky, back and forth between Ohio and West Virginia a couple times, into Pennsylvania then across New Jersey and back into NYC. It was a fantastic trip all around and we only encountered any rainy travel on the very last day from Western PA back into NYC. 'The Bird' did it with style and relative economy (averaged around 29 mpg, spent around $500 on gas), even without an M41; put in a couple long, hard highway days at the end, and she did fine, though getting the M41 in is next on my list. Had to take a half-hour and rejet the Weber when we got to the higher altitudes, then again when we came back down- having an A/F meter made that pretty easy. Lots of comments and chats about the car, and amazingly the only other Amazon we saw on the entire trip was Mario's! I think maybe we saw a p1800 in a used car lot somewhere... Certainly some "You drove THAT from WHERE?!?" questions. Well, I figure I spend most of this past summer's weekends sorting out things that could predictably give out or go wrong, so I was pretty confident that she'd make it, and she did. Yeah, I loved 'the Bird' already before the trip, but now we've really bonded! The last couple stretches of the trip I noticed a faint 'knock' at idle when the engine is hot, maybe some noise from the rear wheel bearings and a sort of squeek from one of the rear brakes, and anything that stays in the trunk for a while comes out with a faint smell of gas, so there are some things to be looked at... But bravo to these fine old vehicles!
Tom
NYC