On the road with Buddy and Cally Cat too!!

The next night I had an overnight stay at the KOA in Limon, Colorado located next to the Flying J, to my surprise I parked next to Gary Smith and his wife in their SOB, they are friends of Don Bradner and also he is now a member of the WANDERLODGE forum, when I left the next morning I saw a PT 'Bird named "The Chuckwagon", that was parked at the Flying J, but there was'nt anybody around to say Hi to.

I continued my journey north toward my next stop at the FamCamp at FE Warren AFB in Cheyenne, Wyo. The 'Bird ran great maintaining 60-65 mph whenever the terrain was flat, but when I came to any long hills the speed dropped fairly quickly as I could tell that not having a turbo was making a big difference on those hills over 4,000 feet in elevation. Near Ft. Collins, Co. I pulled into a rest area after I heard of a truck that had overturned about 6 miles north of there blocking both north bound lanes.

I decided to take Colorado 14 east over to US 85 and continued my trip to Cheyenne that way, it was north on US 85 that I had a chance to really test the radiator mister for the first time when the Horton fan continued to do a fine job of keeping the temperature within tolerance, but the fan ran consistently, which meant that the engine temperature was not dropping below 190 degrees where the thermoswitch for the fan would disconnect power to it. Using the mister for up to 30 seconds at a time made very little difference, I believe that it doesn't have enough water jets to put enough water on the radiator to make A difference, like I thought that it would.

This section of US 85 doesn't appear to be a drastically climbing road but it is deceiving as my speed dropped to 40 mph and at times down to 35 mph, it almost acted like I had clogged filters, but whenever there was a stretch of actually level road it would pick up to 60-65 mph again. The last 20 miles or so of this section of US 85 has an elevation change from 5,000 to 6,100 feet and this is where the temperature climbed but didn't overheat, as I geared down in places to second gear and just kept the engine speed down, remember my 'Bird and trailer are 40,160 # gross with no turbo on my Cat 3208NA.

I finally got to the Flying J and topped off the fuel, my average for this section from Amarillo to Cheyenne, including using the generator while driving 95% of the trip plus a few long naps in there for good measure, came up to 5.7 mpg. I left the Flying J and continued north on I-25 at 60-65 mph for the short trip up to the base, where I again met up with Gary and his wife at the FamCamp, where I will be until next Monday.


Greg,

The mister nozzles are currently aimed at the radiator fins, but I will adjust them tomorrow to direct their spray across the front of the radiator, keep in mind that there is very little room between the grill and the radiator on an FC so it cannot direct the spray out in front of the radiator by very much, but we will see if it makes any difference, thanks for the suggestion.

I use Lucas fuel treatment which basically does the same thing as your 50/50 atf/diesel in the filter when changing, but the Lucas does it for the entire tank. I use it because after my personal 30 + years of over the road experience working with different drivers driving all makes of engines in their trucks, more of them used Lucas and recommended it than any other product and after the first tankful using Lucas in my 'Bird, I could definitely tell the difference, so I doubt if there is an injector clogged or dirty.

I checked the Racor type water separator, which on mine is a Baldwin and it showed a few specks of dirt in the drain off this morning, but the flow using the Carter electric fuel pump that Randy installed along with a switch for it on mine directly before the Baldwin filter, with the air bleed drain opened on the injector pump there was a powerful flow into a drain pan located directly below it on the ground, so I believe that there is no restriction in any of the filters.

There definitely was no lack of smoke when climbing those long hills, so I doubt if there is any lack of fuel delivery problems, I just think that I am seeing the results of a low horsepower non turbocharged diesel engine pulling a heavy load at high elevations.

I had to reflect back a few years, about when I brought Cliff Vaughn's '80 FC, that I was delivering to Mark Loran in BC Canada, across I-80 into Cheyenne dealing with basically the same elevation change with a similar Cat 3208NA engine, but 10,000 pounds less weight and I pulled the long grade from Kimball, Nebraska to Cheyenne at no faster than 45 mph and the truckers said that it looked like there was a Union Pacific freight train rolling westward on I-80 when they were coming up on me, my 'Bird was making the same type of smoke coming into Cheyenne from the south, so the opening graphic on my 2007 trip photo album is not much of an exaggeration, there just were no flowers to watch grow on US 85 for me to smell this time :o) http://www.pbase.com/iamflagman/summer_trip_2007

While I was doing all of these things to check out the fuel system, I also did an underneath the engine visual check and I noticed that one of the engine motor mounts rubber parts was starting to deteriorate, so I will have to keep an eye on this too and change it out when I return home, if it doesn’t create a problem before then.

One of my biggest fears that I have while I'm in my 'Bird is a
surprise from violent weather and since I tend to very rarely watch
local TV and usually just watch my satellite dish TV, I put myself at
a disadvantage of not seeing the severe weather warnings and alerts.

I decided to purchase a Midland Weather radio earlier this year after
there was an earlier discussion about weather radios on the forum and
I installed it in my 'Bird, which I full time in. While it did alert
me to some storms back home, I never really experienced the workout
that it got on the second day of my stay here at the FamCamp at FE
Warren AFB in Cheyenne, Wyo. I really didn't expect to hear while I
was in Wyoming, warnings and alerts to as much extreme weather as
there was in this area on that late afternoon, as earlier in the day
Buddy and I had taken a driving tour of the area with the top down on
the VW on a mild sunny afternoon, but all hell seemed to break loose
late in the afternoon and that was when the weather radio got its
workout, with one alert followed by another for almost three hours,
for tornadoes that were sighted, golf ball size hail, hight winds,
etc... It got bad enough that the FamCamp employee, a teenage girl
was walking from on RV to the next in a mild rain at the time,
warning us that if the base sirens went off we were to go to the new
brick building where the FamCamp office was located.

I had just recently read a negative review, on a web site dedicated
to people that use military FamCamps, criticizing in the authors
opinion the misuse of funds in building this new brick building here
at this FamCamp. I wonder what he would have thought of this building
if he had to use it for an emergency.

Since I have the radio alert set as a siren followed by five minutes
of weather report after the alert is given, I had experienced one of
those alerts while I was sleeping during my stay in Texas near
Dallas, so now I know that it will wake me up. I consider this
purchase one of the best I have made and recommend it to everybody.

One of my concerns about the weather radio, is getting out of range
with it, while all that I currently have for the antenna is the built
in telescopic antenna and where I have the radio sitting next to the
kitchen window is the best location that I could find with the
configuration of the kitchen where I have the radio located so that
it is in the center of the 'Bird and close to the bedroom. There is a
connecting point for an external antenna, but I have not been able to
locate an external antenna for it.

Last night the weather radio was active again, so it seems that this is a normal occurrence in this area, or at least it has been since I have been here.

I will leave here later this morning and head up to Bar Nunn, Wyoming near Casper to the KOA up there for an overnight stay on my way to Montana. I haven’t heard from Sandy and Karen Gee yet as they are also riding from South Carolina to Montana on their Harley to meet up with the rest of us there for our rides in the Yellowstone and Glacier national park areas, so tonight I will give them a call to see where they are at. I have a few 4% and 5% grades to climb on my way today, so I suspect that the performance will be very similar, even though the elevation will be lower than here in Cheyenne.