Between work kicking my ass and a leaky remanned steering box this idea almost died, but I think I turned a corner last night in an effort to save the trip. I'm posting here to try to keep myself accountable so I don't wuss out and just get a boring rental car.
Vacation was scheduled but no real plan. We though about blue ridge and smoky mountains or maybe Vermont.
Side note was we were trying to schedule our winter vacation (swmbo has to put in 6 months in advance) and we're planning to do 2 weeks of skiing in Colorado. We did this last year at Winter Park as they sold cheap 4 packs online. Copper also has cheap 4 packs but they make you buy them in Colorado.
"We could go to Colorado so we can get one to each this year..."
Stupid back button.
So the original plan to justify the trip was to fly and drive back something less rusty. $100 flights to denver.
The more the plan evolved the more stressful it seemed.
"What if the cars we find are sold or crappy?"
"We can find something over the course of a week"
So a week of car shopping is possible, sounds like swmbos dream vacation.
It was around this time that John Welsh decimated my productivity by linking over to the adventures of vermin over on advrider. I had been over there before but his rides hooked me hard. This is the first ride report, you can find the later rides if you care to. Cliff notes is a cubicle dweller who takes cheap bike from Michigan to so cal with not much planning beyond where he'll start at and where he's stopping at. He takes his 11 year old son with him. He leaves the bike at a relatives house and goes back the following year with his daughter to ride up to Alaska. Not sure what happens next as I've cut myself off from reading the next report.
https://advrider.com/index.php?threads/detroit-to-san-diego-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-negligence.265019/
That's when it clicked that I didn't need to make an excuse to go somewhere I wanted to go. SWMBO and I have no kids, have the time off, and have enough money to take the trip so who do I have to justify this to other than her?
I don't want it to be like our last summer Colorado trip. It was fine but I booked everything in advance before realizing we'd much rather spend more of our time in the mountains. We didn't even get to see everything we wanted to see in rmnp, not to mention the rest of Colorado. I want to be more flexible this time, if we're somewhere that we're enjoying why leave because I booked a room already at the next place.
Enter the hearse. SWMBO is fine with camping but what if you can't find a campsite or you just have a rest stop or Walmart to stop at?
If you plan to sleep inside, harbor freight has a decent deal on a mosquito screen designed to cover a garage door entrance. Cut that into oversized window shaped pieces and use the small rare earth magnets they sell to hold them in place. Proper ventilation makes a huge difference in comfort.
Don't bother me, I'm dead tired.
Many of us are lucky enough to have SOs who support our car hobby. But if yours is willing to sleep in a hearse as part of your once-a-year vacation? That's another level.
I think the Nekromantix have a song about this...
ultraclyde said:
Many of us are lucky enough to have SOs who support our car hobby. But if yours is willing to sleep in a hearse as part of your once-a-year vacation? That's another level.
Yes sir, she's quite the catch! 
Don't tell her that though, I keep telling her my actions are normal.
In reply to Dead_Sled :
They are normal, for you right? 
In reply to EastCoastMojo :
Exactly.
No dice on 134 at Ollie's, they only had the expensive refill cans. The experience was great though, the random product placement on the shelves, the looking for 10 minutes to make sure they don't have a product, the dirty bathroom, it was glorious and I can already tell you guys have cost me a lot of money buying things I didn't know I needed.
Finished mounting the tires this morning and dropped them off at Walmart on lunch. The kid who helped me load them this afternoon sheepishly asked me
"if you don't mind me asking, what are you mounting these on?"
"Cadillac Fleetwood... Hearse"
I thought he might have just noticed that the rims looked like car rims, but while swapping them out I saw this
i suspect he was confused thinking about AT tires on a limo, bet he wasn't expecting me to say hearse . He seemed a little confused.
Side one complete
Before
After
Side two complete
need to loosen the steering gear a little then time for a trip around the block
Test drive with SWMBO was fine, no additional tire noise to 70 and smooth as before. T minus 6 hours to alarm time, plan is to be in fort Collins CO saturday afternoon.
Sweet. My wife and I camped in the back of my '66 Pontiac hearse/ambulance a bunch of times. I threw a futon mattress back there and it was super comfy. Except it was a greenhouse with all that glass around it so sleepy time was over at sunrise if we couldn't park in the shade.
dculberson said:
Sweet. My wife and I camped in the back of my '66 Pontiac hearse/ambulance a bunch of times. I threw a futon mattress back there and it was super comfy. Except it was a greenhouse with all that glass around it so sleepy time was over at sunrise if we couldn't park in the shade.
Meanwhile, at the next campground....
"where ya been son?"
"Uh...well Dad, there's this....hearse at the next camp site....and there's this couple in the back....but it's all glass, so you can see..."
"oh? OH! Say son,...you want to show your old man where that is....?"
T.J.
MegaDork
9/7/18 4:14 p.m.
dculberson said:
In reply to ultraclyde :
Tickets were $5.
Too bad the show ended after 2 minutes.....
So after a delayed leaving we had a relaxing drive through the countryside, this thing was made for eating up highway miles. New tires are awesome. Got some sleep in a rest stop near Des Moines, right near a womens prison, still gotta check the back for hitchhikers but then we're back on the road!
In reply to Dead_Sled :
Awesome. Safe and fun travels. I'll continue to follow along.
Finally sitting at a keyboard with coffee so I'll update. Plan was to leave by 8am Friday. We were pulling out of the driveway at 745, success!
Got to the end of the driveway and the brake pedal went to the floor. E36 M3! Did I ever refill the brake fluid after flushing? I kept siphoning it out in between corners because it was so nasty. Popped the hood and check, rear is dry, berk me, they were fine on the test drive but I'm sure there's air in them now.
Spent the next 2 hours re-flushing the brakes, didn't want to chance it with a 7k lb hearse coming down pikes peak. Couldn't get fluid to come out of the pass side front bleeder so I bled it at the banjo bolt. We rolled back out at 1030, not great but we were not letting it put a rush on our care free trip. Fired up some tunes and jumped on route 20 driving through all the small towns along the way, it was a really nice day in the 70s so we just cruised and checked out the scenery.
Around 2pm in the middle of nowhere Indiana we saw a sign for a fish fry at the local VFW. Hungry? Let's get some fish!
Ate more fish than I should have but it was really good. Got back on the road and kept cruising.
Nice. I went to ollie’s yesterday and spent $175 on a cart of stuff I didn’t know we needed
Quick update as we sit at the fort Collins dmv hoping to get some temp tags, really hope we aren't sitting here for no reason because at this rate it's going to eat up the whole day.
We're still alive, the bears couldn't catch us. We've been up in the mountains with no reception for most of the week, it was glorious. I'll do a day by day recap as time allows but I've typed up the next leg of the trip at least 4 times but lost it when the browser reloaded for no reason. If I can find a wall charger in the car I'll type it up as we sit here.
