I once did a trip from Portland to Southern Missouri.
A friend of mine bought a car, sight unseen, from a guy in Oregon. We flew out there to drive the car back so that he could rebuild it.
The engine worked fine, the tranny was a bit grindy, the shocks were completely dead. The control stalk snapped almost the moment we got into the car, ripping out some wiring. That left us without a tachometer or heat.
We made it about 90% through Oregon just fine. Stopped in some town for dinner, then headed up the first mountain of the next range. We stopped to look at the view, and noticed the catalytic converter was blocked and glowing red hot.
After a phone call with his mechanic friend, we headed back down the mountain in search of a power drill. That was the easy part; finding a power outlet wasn’t. We had to run the tire air compressor at a gas station to cover the noise of the drill, as we put a hole in front of the catalytic converter so the exhaust could escape.
The next major incident was driving through the beginning of the Rockies past Grand Junction, CO. I-70 is windy, narrow, and visibility was awful. I came around a corner and there was a fresh deer carcass lying in the road. The tires were fine, but the shocks were dead… that left me with two options: 1) drive over the carcass, 2) attempt to avoid the carcass and risk sliding into the side of a mountain. So I hit the deer.
The front bumper cleared the carcass just fine, the car bounced a bit, and then we heard and felt the most godawful rattle I’ve ever experienced in a vehicle. We pulled over, took a look, but couldn’t see what was going on. We slowly, and shakily, got the car to the next exit. We left the car at the top of the overpass and walked to the nearest gas station. All they had to work with was a mechanical jack designed for trucks.
We manged to get the car up, but still couldn’t tell what was going on. It was about 4am at this time, and pitch black. We gave up looking and just decided to lower the car, return the car, and wait until it was light again. But… the jack wouldn’t go back down. We flagged over some guy at that exit, and he gave us a hand. We lifted the car off the jack as he pulled it out, and then lowered it as gentle as possible. He then offered us a ride to the next town, 18 miles up the road. That was the closest mechanic.
We ended up hanging out a truck stop until the shop opened. When they finally opened, they said it would be about 4 days before they could look at it.
We decided to head back to the car now that it was light out. Unfortunately, nobody was able/willing to give us a ride. We set out on foot, hiking back to the car through the mountains. We attempted to hitchhike with every passing truck, but nobody was willing to pick us up in their work vehicles. We eventually got to the point of holding out money, trying to get a ride… still no luck. We did get a ride for about 6 miles of the entire trip, but we hiked about 12 miles by foot.
Without water.
We left the water in the car. That was stupid.
We finally got back to the car, and with the daylight could see that there wasn’t any real damage. We bent the protective cover over the U-joint, and it was getting caught in the joint with every rotation of the driveshaft. Less than 5 minutes with a ratchet and we were back on the road again.
Eastern Colorado and Kansas were awful. We had 10 or 15 gallons of extra gas in the car, and so the windows were open. We had drilled that hole in the exhaust pipe, so exhaust gas was coming in from outside. Then there was a chilly 40+mph crosswind for most of the drive… and as I said, we had no heat. We were tired, cold and miserable, constantly exposed to the fumes of gasoline and exhaust.
About halfway through Kansas, we got pulled over by a state trooper for speeding. This was by far the best officer I’ve ever dealt with. He separated us, patted me down, and questioned us.
We had Missouri licenses, driving a car from Oregon, that had Arizona plates (and we learned those plates were never for the car), without insurance, and the car basically looked like a junker from the outside. The car was 20+ years old (Toyota AE86; the rear-wheel drive one), had random drill holes in the side of it, some of the body panels were rusted, etc. etc.
He split us up, questioned us independently, and took a look in the trunk. (He didn’t really look, he just wanted to make sure we weren’t BSing him.) He said technically he should impound the car, but that would have left us abandoned in the middle of nowhere. So he said he should at least take the plates… but that would mean going through the whole ordeal over and over again. So he just wrote us a couple tickets, advised us to call and get insurance ASAP, and sent us on our way, shaking his head and laughing at us.
The highlight was him complimenting my knife.
We made it back to KC fine, and he took his car, I took mine and we headed down to Springfield. I thought things were over by then, but we ended up run off the road during rush hour due to some bad construction signage. Fortunately without incident, but just when we thought we could relax. We both got back and slept for about 15 hours straight.
It was quite a trip. Learned a lot about myself.
I think the drive time was right around 35 hours.
