5.1.06
April Action car show, Moab, UT
My boys and I (5 and 7)
decided to jump in the 'ol Plymouth and take a road trip to Moab, UT
for the April Action car show. Moab is about 600 miles away from
home, or about 9 to 10 hours of driving. We'd been to the show
before on several occasions, but have never done it with an old
car. I use the Plymouth as a daily driver during the summer, and
have not had any issues with it other than the faulty fuel pump, so I
figured it would make it there and back without any serious failures.
Other than the bias-ply tires following the ruts in the road a bit, the
car handles well at freeway speeds. I drove the car between 65
and 70 mph, and it was comfortable and easy, not unlike any other
car. Of course, it isn't a modern car, so you have to actually
DRIVE it... It won't drive itself down the road while you chat on
the phone or look for that CD that fell under the seat... Even
though it is 56 year old technology, the car is very drivable in just
about any conditions. We never held up traffic on the freeway or
mountian passes, and the "old-school" drum brakes never felt inadequate
down long grades or in heavy freeway traffic. The temp guage
stayed at it's normal reading throughout the trip through the desert,
and the oil pressure stayed at 50psi. The car accelerates at
speed better than I imagined, jumping from 65 to 75 with ease.
I checked the gas milage on three tanks, and consistently got 17.5
miles per gallon. We didn't stop the car for gas once where
someone didn't go out of their way to complement or ask questions.
Below are a pictures of the trip, we had lots of fun...
Enjoy,
Pete
The trunk holds alot of stuff, but never enough with little kids!
On the open road, out of the mountains and into the desert. Are
we there yet?
Clipping down the road at 70mph the engine is turning 2,500 rpms.
Our stop for the night was in Sandy, UT. Bill Ward of
OldPlymouths.com
lives in Sandy, and we arranged a get-together at the local car hop
drive-in.
When we arrived at Bill's house, he had his two '50 Plymouth Club Coupes
posed with a space in-between for our car.
From there we followed
Bill, his wife Betty,and his son Rick to the drive-in for a
burger. It was great
to see Bill's cars and finally be able to show him our's after five
years of correspondence about the cars.
The next morning, we were back on the road after a family breakfast
with the
rest of the clan that tagged along for the trip.
 
Once off the freeway south of Salt Lake City, the road winds up through
a canyon and a pass with a 6% grade. The car pulled the long
winding pass
without breaking a sweat. I was easily able to maintain 60 mph in
3rd over
on this grade. The engine has plenty of torque to maintain speed
even
on steeper stretches.
These shots are of the approach to Moab, and the red topography.
The next day, as part of the car show, the entrants to the show did a 2
hour rod-run
up the Colorado river canyon. The tour ended at a local winery
for lunch.
I think the factory should have named the paint color "moab brown"
instead of "malibu brown"... It was a pretty close match.
A very long line of cars taking the tour.
Driving through Castle Valley.
A few post card shots of the car along the Colorado river canyon.
Hot rod Homeys.
One of the days was spent parked in the park for the show. There
was
a steady stream of folks checking out the car.
Lots of great cars in the park. We were parked under a nice tree
right in the center of the
show, hundreds of cars all around.
My two little helpers, drying the car after washing off the tree sap
and bird
droppings from the shade tree, before heading home on the last
day.
We made a bee-line home from Moab, making the 600 mile trip
in about 9 1/2 hours. The last four hours was an endurance test
with high head and cross
winds making it very loud in the car. Can't wait to get the
interior finished in the car
to quiet it down. All in all, we had a great adventure, and
already looking forward to
doing it again.
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