IMLer's: Please excuse if I don't answer each of you - time is tight in Great Race days! Today, we crossed the Allegheny Mountains, moving from York, PA to Washington, PA (almost into Ohio), over the old National Road, pieces of which became US 40, then I-70. We drove all the twisty, hilly bits that they cut out for the faster highways - perfect for a challenging road rally! Well, perfect for more ordinary rally cars - the sheer size of the Imperial makes those mountain twisty one-and-a-half-lane roads a real challenge, indeed. But we did OK. It poured rain throughout the morning. At least 4 inches fell in an hour or two at the peak of it. We were reasonably comfortable, but we found all the leaks in the weatherstripping and we also found that the defogger has its limits. The rain seems to have contributed to two electrical faults. The driver's window switch won't connect for 'down,' only 'up.' I can hotwire that to the other window on the left side (they mostly go up & down together anyway. Mysteriously, the horn died this evening as we were pulling into town. The roads are lined with kids and families out to see this amazing collection of unusual cars go by, so tooting is de riguer. Every town we have visited so far (York, Lancaster, and Washington, PA, plus Cumberland, MD) has closed their main street and let us fill it with a rolling car show for an hour or two. We stop to eat and un-eat, and the locals enjoy the cars. It really is a show - part parade, part museum, part car-show, part race. In Cumberland, they even had the restored theatre on Main Street open to feed us and they were showing the old Tony Curtis Great Race movie! It's a real boost at the end of a run to come into a town through the finish arch to the applause of a crowd! Needless to say, the mighty 61 Imperial convertible ALWAYS gets a big hand. And in EVERY town so far, at least one (often two) guys come up to say, 'my uncle X had one JUST like this!' Already, I think we've accounted for most of the total production (429) of 61 Imperial convertibles ;) ! For those of you worried about the vacuum leak: it's ONLY during gentle braking. There is no leak normally, with no brakes, nor with hard application. I think we can live with that. The A/C, well, that I can't say. Pinkie, the Parts Car Not had uncharged A/C for years with no ill effects when I finally sprung for a load of R-12. I think we'll give it a go. And the jumper for the brake lights is NOT a fuse bypass, just a bypass for a wire that was shorting somewhere - it can say in forever, as it just replicates the original connection. When we left home, this engine had just 80 miles on a total rebuild. It ran pretty well! It burned a quart in the 350 miles to Philly, so I bought a case for the long trip. In the three days' running since, it hasn't burnt a drop that I can measure, and it's still as clear as honey. The transmission (also freshly rebuilt) is shifting a bit hard, but there's no slip at all. As we found out in the rain, the wipers work well. The lights all work still. We have been very pleasantly surprised at the comfort level of the seats, too. Neither of us has any stiffness (yet). WE did discover that the smooth leather is not ideal for wearing shorts - they do get sticky in the sun. Today, we thought we executed MUCH better than before, with no real major errors. WE were a bit disappointed to see our score did not improve! We're in 46th overall (of 89 still running), and 5th for Rookies (of 26). Well, tomorrow is another day. There's still room to move up! Check out the details at www.greatrace.com. Look for National Guard Great Race 2006 (Nat Guard is the Title Sponsor this year). Pictures are posted already from yesterday (24th), but none of the Lone Imp yet. They took a good one of us exiting a covered bridge today - maybe it will make the postings by tomorrow! all for now, jc
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