Your Longest E-body Trips

[RzeroB]

San Diego CA to Lee Center NY January 1980. Unfortunately the last drive for my 1970 Challenger R/T 383 4-speed! An hour or so after arriving home, My brother basically stole it an didnt even make it to the end of the road. TOTALED IT! 

Brothers ... what is it about brothers that make them think they are entitled to your ride?? In 1980 I was home on leave from overseas for Christmas and saw an EV2 340 '71 Cuda 'vert for sale in the Pennysaver. It needed work so the price was too good to pass up. I bought it figuring I'd stash it at my folks place until I returned stateside. After I had left my brother talked my dad into letting him drive it for the weekend while his car was getting fixed. Late on a Saturday night he ran off the road and hit a rock-solid maple tree that practically tore the right front side of the car off. The car was totaled and off to the junk yard it went. Somehow my brother came out of it with only a couple of bruises ... until the next time I came home and then I gave him a couple of more. 

[71vert340]

  There's several of us who have made cross country trips in our E-bodies back in the day. Exciting times then. On my trip from Long Beach, Ca. ( in the Navy then) to Bremerton, Wa. I had to stop and replace a water pump in Tacoma on a Saturday evening. I had to buy a vegetable knife at a Kmart to scrape the old gasket off. On my trip from Bremerton to Toledo, I had my oil pressure go almost to zero in Ogallala, Neb. due to a clogged oil filter. I had to change the filter at 10pm in a service plaza parking lot. Fun times. I hope to drive my 74 Rallye Charger one day from Kennewick to Carlisle. I don't think I could survive a trip that far in the 71 Challenger now.  The wife and I did a 6000 mile trip in the 2015 Challenger in 2016. What a difference the new cars make in comfort.

Terry

[JS29]

@RzeroB  Ya our mommy or should i say his. (her favorite) intervened.  You have my condolences!  

[71vert340]

 @RzeroB. I had left my 71 Challenger convertible home for several months in 1975 and my brother had gotten out of the Army. He was married with a son and decided he needed a car to drive until he got a job and a place to live. He talked my mom into letting him drive my 71. My dad found out and took the keys and let him use the 72 Plymouth station wagon. He wasn't happy and found a car really quick. He would have wrecked my car for sure.
Terry

[JS29]

@71vert340  I am glad you had someone looking out for you! 

[RzeroB]

@RzeroB  Ya our mommy or should i say his. (her favorite) intervened.  You have my condolences!

On a brighter note, after "brother-gate", I later acquired a EB5 340 '70 Challenger 'vert with which I made monster round-trip road trip from Sacramento CA (where I lived at the time) to Los Angles (to pick up a friend) to the Chelsea Proving Grounds in Michigan for the Mopar Nats and then back to Los Angles (to drop off friend) and on home to Sacramento. I don't know what the mileage was ... but it was looooooooong!!

Car ran great with only two issues ... one of which could have been catastrophic. The first issue was altitude related ... climbing I-70 up to the Eisenhower Tunnel across the Great Divide (11,000' above sea-level) the sea-level jetting for Sacramento was REALLY rich!! The last couple of miles up to the tunnel the engine was all loaded-up and belching a cloud of black smoke behind it. With the engine choking, we chugged along barely doing 45mph until we made the tunnel and started the long down-hill down the Front Range towards Denver ... and that's where it got interesting.

I-70 from the Eisenhower Tunnel east towards Denver is all down-hill ... some of it at a pretty steep grade ... you're pretty much coasting and riding the brakes the whole way. Using the brakes so much I noticed that they were beginning to "fade". That "fade" rapidly progressed into the pedal going all the way to the floor!! Pump! pump! pump! ... pumping the brakes, provided enough pressure to get the car slowed down and off into a rest area so we could change our underwear and see what was wrong with the brakes!!

The master cylinder reservoir was very low, so I assumed the brake system had sprung a leak somewhere. Inspected the entire brake system and we could not find any evidence of a leak. Then I thought the master cylinder must be leaking internally past the push-rod and into the vacuum-booster. Unbolted the master cylinder from the booster to check and it was perfectly dry. I was temporarily stumped. Putting the front drums (it was an all drum brake car) back on I noticed that there was a lot of room between the drum and the shoes. Hmmm?? That was odd, prior to the trip I went over the car with a "fine-tooth comb" ... to include doing a complete brake job on it. There shouldn't have been that much room between the drum and the shoes. Carefully disassembling the front brakes I discovered that I had made a "rookie", and almost catastrophic mistake, when I did my brake job back in Sacramento before leaving on the trip. I inadvertently had switched the brake shoe adjusters putting the left one on the right and the right one on the left!! With the brake shoe adjusters on the wrong side, the self adjusters actually moved the shoes "in" away from the drum, instead of "out" towards the drum!! This in turn caused the wheel cylinder to have to expand a lot more than normal, using a lot more fluid volume, just to make the shoes contact the drum!! That "rookie" mistake could have ended horribly ... but fortunately it did not ... had an angel or something looking out for me that day!!

We put the brakes back together ... correctly ... and continued our trip without any further car problems. So in reality, the Challenger ran extremely well for however many miles we racked up on that trip ... and there were a LOT of them. The only two issues were not the car's fault: the first was altitude related having to climb up over 11,000' above sea-level; and the second was straight-up "human error" on my part when I did the brake job before starting the trip.

[BIGSHCLUNK]

My longest run was to MOPARS on the Mississippi   Basically Milwaukee to Davenport Ia. And thats been awhile. NIKKI's comfort level (seats) will kill you after 20 miles or so...

[Topcat]

Bigs,

Are your seats worn out?

I did a 3 hour run a few weeks ago, and came out snappy as can be, no pains. 

[RzeroB]

My longest run was to MOPARS on the Mississippi   Basically Milwaukee to Davenport Ia. And thats been awhile. NIKKI's comfort level (seats) will kill you after 20 miles or so...

Speaking of seats ... that reminded me of another road trip I went on with my '70 Challenger 'vert. Following my previously mentioned monster road trip to the Nats, I made a solo trip from Sacramento up to a big Mopar event in Spokane WA. On the way back to home to Sac, somewhere around Redding CA, I was tired and finding the seat to be rather uncomfortable. While driving, I went to stretch my back a little by pushing my shoulders back to arch my back. As I did, there was an audible "crack" with the seat-back collapsing back and to the left leaving me looking at the sky instead of the road!! Fortunately I had both hands on the wheel at the time and was able to pull myself back up so I could safely get the car off of the road.

What I found was that the left-hand L-shaped metal seat-back bracket that attaches the seat-back to the seat-bottom had literally snapped in half!! With no support on the left side, the right-hand bracket twisted and the seat-back collapsed back until the left rear interior side panel and back seat stopped it. I wasn't a huge guy, maybe 190lbs at the time, so I don't know why it gave way. Anyway, to make it driveable again, I had to wedge a bunch of stuff between the back seat and the seat-back to kind of prop it up near the correct position. Even so, the seat was still twisted off some to the left. To compensate, I wadded up my jacket to make a "pad"  and stuck it between my back and the seat and headed out. Needless to say the last 150 miles from Redding to Sac with a broken seat propped up with a suitcase was REALLY uncomfortable!!

[BIGSHCLUNK]

Bigs,

Are your seats worn out?

I did a 3 hour run a few weeks ago, and came out snappy as can be, no pains. 

Actually my seats are in nice shape, but 70's seat design has lots to be desired. No lumbar support what-so-ever. I like what Murray did with his... extra padding in the right places, way more comfort than mine. Granted BIGS isn't a young buck like TC.    I'm arthritic as hell and have no L5 cushion.   

[cqm964]

The day I bought my 70 Challenger, my son and I drove it home, from Otisville, MI back to New Lenox, IL, a trip of 255 miles. Probably the bravest thing we've done in it, given it's condition. Then annual pilgrimages to the Mopar Nats in Columbus a little over 300 miles each way. Had a battery problem once, and a fuel filter problem once, never a problem with Ma Mopar's parts ;-)
Correction, had it die close to home one year after the engine rebuild, wasn't getting enough voltage, needed some regulator/ballast resistor swapping. All part of the vintage car experience!

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

[JS29]