|
|
Posted by D Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 14:03:32 :
In Reply to: south bound posted by clueless [201.202.22.114] on Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 12:27:05 :
What would the whole route entail? Is there a car ferry from anywhere to C.R.? What does that cost? Would you still have to barge them over somewhere? Do you drive through Mexico as well as the US? Fuel alone is going to run you in the neighborhood of 70 cents/mile. So, it's not just a choice of "Pay $5000" or "drive for free". You will have to pay some even if you drive some. If you want to have an adventure, nothing wrong with that, but I'm not sure it'll be a money-saving proposition.
Also, it's one thing to get an old truck running and quite another to keep it going on a long road trip. Specifically, if you can get the engine running and the brakes working somewhat, you can drive it around the neighborhood, but for a long trip you need all the gear-boxes full of oil, which means the seals have to hold, and you need brakes that are good enough that the rotten old linings don't just fall off the shoes the first time you have to slam on the brakes. I remember driving an M35 that I thought was pretty good, with a trailer and a full load and having to slam the brakes hard when I was going 50 mph. They never did lock up, of course, and by the time I stopped, thankfully just in time. I was enveloped in a cloud of blue smoke so thick I could hardly see out of it. Apparently I'd just burned off part of a few decade's accumulation of oil from the brake drums and linings.
So, for your trip, figure on changing all the seals either right at the start or along the way as various ancient pieces of cow hide disintegrate. If the shafts are rusty, they'll eat up new seals fast too.
Lastly, you'll be doing all this adventure in California, where they are very picky about funky vehicles. Last spring CHP pulled me over 100 yards inside the state line for having a cracked windshield. Some years back I was parked over a ditch next to a gas station trying to patch a rock-hole in my oil pan and the owner of the station came out in panic ordering me to get it out of there right now because if any oil dripped into the ditch some environmental police would be all over him.
Also, you'd best look at a good map and make sure there really are "back roads" you can take. In the coast range, only the main highways run along the rivers or the coast. All the back roads go up and down over mountains. Long Mountain is probably your best "back road" but even then you're going up and down 4000 vertical feet, steeply and with nothing but tight turns. Really want to do that in a heavy, untested truck with a small engine and bad brakes? There are places where stretches of the old highway parallels I-5, 101 or Hwy 1, but periodically you're forced to get back on the freeway for a stretch and they're crawling with cops whose budgets have been cut.
If I was heading for Mexico from Northern California with a funky rig, I would try to go east as directly as possible (plenty of back roads around Shasta and Lassen, if you go in the summer) and either go down the desert side of California or go right on into Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, where there are lots of back roads that are straight and flat (and not a drop of water for 50 miles sometimes) and you can get away with a funky rig like that.
Follow Ups: