[VAC] The Maiden Voyage

[Susan Wallace <cyberia@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the info on transmissions and such. My old Plymouth  ('65 Belvedere
I) with a slant 6 engine was found by my brother John in someone's backyard in
Yukon, Okla. where it had been sitting for ten years. It had belonged to
someone's grandpa and had less than 100,000 miles on it. He tinkered with it
for several months, drove it to work and back once he got it running, replacing
stuff and fixing other stuff, then repainted it for me. It's never towed the
airstream, but it did have some kind of a small hitch on it when he brought it
over from Yukon. Except for a dead headliner that I eventally just had to rip
out and have not yet replaced, it looks pretty sharp.

We went up and got the Airstream in Michigan with John's old tired 1983 Dodge
van which performed admirably the whole time. He had put a heavy-duty tranny in
it and had a "new old stock" transmission cooler out of the box that must have
been as old as we are -- copper tubes, clever compact and "moderne" design,
that he mounted in front of the radiator. We saw someone in Iowa at a rest stop
who was towing just a little boat on a trailer -- he had pulled off the highway
because he cooked the tranny on his late model tow vehicle, you could see the
heat and pouring from beneath it.

The old Dodge had made it down from New York state about three years ago. My
brother had towed an old travel trailer (I think it was called a "Frolic") and
it and the van were filled with all his worldly possessions which included lots
of guitars and hundreds of record albums, so he figured an empty airstream and
an empty van couldn't weigh nearly as much as his previous voyage.

He still had all the wiring in the back of the van from when the previous
trailer was wired up, so the first chance we got, "we" spent some time in a
wallmart parking lot figuring out how to wire it up to make the electric brakes
work. They were the Kelsey-Hayes style, and after much "cussing and
dis-cussing" he came across the magic formula. I'd like to find me a
Kelsey-Hayes controller since they are recommended, but the controller on the
van was of a different type and functioned as it was intended.

We came down to Oklahoma through Iowa and Kansas rather than test the Dodge in
the mountains of Missouri. It was a few more miles, but we didn't want to push
our luck. There were a few hills, but nothing like what we would have
encountered in Missouri. My brother sold the van and the fact that we had just
been 1800 miles in it without trouble was probably a good selling point. He
took the transmission cooler out of it; I told him he should clean it up and
hang it on the wall as conceptual art!

Did I write all this? What's wrong with me?
Back into lurk mode!
Susan Wallace
65 Trade Wind home at last