Sales Under Special Conditions Tn 2004: Fill & Download for Free

If you do the math it works out to 38.4 minutes.I’m OFTEN on the road, going back & forth from my own home to stay with my best friend in Lebanon, TN in the spring due to my having a pair of autoimmune diseases that violently react to the cold, cold front passages (year round, but winter amplifies my issues by factors of 10, just like the Richter scale)So I “ll be heading back down for a Colorado Avalanche Vs Nashville Predators game just before 2/23/19….(GO AVS! # AVS RULE etc ) because it is radically warmer there through all of March through May than it is at my home in NE Pa…I fell in love with hockey in ’95 and Colorado was the team I picked as they were the 1st team I ever watched play the game….now I’m a rabid fan and thanks to having an awesome lifelong best friend i not only get to live with him for nothing (help out around the house) I get to go watch the AVS SPANK the Preds! I actually can’t dislike the Preds as they play my style of hockey, but back to the Point of this conversation)Getting back to tracking your average speed….the easiest way to ever figure out you exact average speed is to start a clock the minute you leave, or it is even simpler to write down the time on your clock/phone etc on a tablet and the exact odometer reading of your vehicle. Now, I figure, on average, IF traffic is NORMAL and there isn’t any accidents/road closures.major construction etc that I will get from Jenkins Twp, Pa to Lebanon, Tn (Lebanon is between exits 238–245 off of I-40 (I THINK)) (exactly 813 miles door to door) in roughly 11 hours, give or take… Now you can make yourself look like Jeff Gordon on your way from Pa to Lebanon, Tn in under 11 hours as you gain an hour thanks to the time zone border roughly 30–60 miles west of Knoxville. I have the exact mile marker written in my notes, but my notes aren’t on hand) but under the same token, you’ll take an hour longer (only because of the time zone, the actual time it takes you would never change if you timed yourself with a stopwatch as that will give you the exact amount of time it took you to drive from one door to the other….)Generally speaking I run 75+. I’m NEVER going to be the fastest car on the road, so the rate at which average trafic is moving is going to have a massive effect on the total time it takes me to get from point a to point b. Thankfully, 95% os the time I can find someone running easily over 90 mph, I let them get as far ahead of me as I can while still being able to see their car so I can see when/IF their brake lights go on as that’s often a good indication they just saw a Trooper running radar. I call faster cars a “front door”, and using a front door properly with no accidents/inclement weather/heavy traffic or construction I’ve made some incredible times going from point A to point B with my risk of being ticketed for speeding minimized by always having at least one car/truck gong faster than I want to ahead of me. Another EXCELLENT and nearly foolproof way to avoid tickets is to run a CB on the trucker’s main channel (#19)and simply monitor the channel as truckers seem to know exactly where every single “Bear” or “Smokey” is hiding and they’ll often even tell you which mile marker and lane they’re clocking.Now, these days I drive an older minivan. I’m disabled and being my sons were young when I bought this vehicle AND as a certified master auto/truck technician I can always fix my van for far less than a new vehicle would cost. I’m forced into this situation as I became disabled in 2004 and I went from always having thousands of $$$ put away for emergencies, but those days are gone so I have to stretch every dollar as far as I possibly can. Being a former top rated shop owner & master “mechanic” all of my professional life I KNOW FOR A FACT a new vehicle is by far the WORST possible investment anyone can make , but that’s a discussion best discussed at another time.With that being said, my ’98 Voyager isn’t going to be comfortable to drive at much past 80…..I don’t mean it isn’t physically comfortable, I just know that with the age & mileage running 85–90 would radically shorten the remaining life of my engine & transmission.The last time I ran this trip was right before Thanksgiving. One of my best friends (actually my best friend’s youngest Brother) had been looking for a hot rod worth buying for a long time, and I found him a pristine ’73 Cuda that had been 100% restored (also made to look like a ’72 instead of the ’73 model it actually is) but the car had been sitting (properly stored) in a garage and hadn’t been started or moved in 15 years as the gentleman who owned/built the car had recently completed the car when he found out his wife had terminal cancer. The two of them went through 4 or 5 years of hell before she found eternal peace, but you can’t simply throw a battery in a car that has ben stored that long as expect it to run. I’ll tell the story about this car further down as it isn’t relevant to the initial question. After his wife passed, the car never moved again.Driving down with Jason, we left at 6:30 PM to avoid the majority of the much heavier traffic you’ll see during the daytime. I was making excellent time as traffic was FLYING! I was running 82–84 throughout Virginia which is one of those states you do NOT want to risk playing with a police officer with a radar gun, but I was in a line with well over a dozen vehicles all running over 80. That worked out great until we ran smack dead into a massive cold front & heavy rain. You have to keep in mind that due to the autoimmune issues I’ve had since Jan/’04 radically affect me instantaneously with cold fronts, especially when the temp was in the mid 50s to begin with and it was down into the high 30’s after we hit the rain.To that point I had driven just over 450 of the 813 miles hen I stopped for gas & coffee….wrapped myself in every blanket & jacket I had so I could lie down and let Jason drive. When we got back on the road traffic had radically slowed (wisely) to where we were running 75 in traffic and Jay drove until we were within the last 100 miles of his Brother’s house as he had been awake since 4:00 AM that day and was exhausted. He had to somewhat suffer as I had to keep my heater/defroster on high heat/max blower to prevent me from getting jack-hammer-like chills due to my issues as once that starts I’m going to wind up hospitalized for at least 3–4 days.So in total we drove (including stopping for a quick dinner, gas & coffee 3x) a total of 12 hours, 34 minutes which is FAR TOO LONG in my book, but we have zero control over rain/wet roads and low visibility. So in essence, I INSIST on making the best time I realistically am able to on EVERY trip I ever go on, but I also rely on common sense as once you lose time due to a downpour (or anything else that forces you to slow down) so hard that traffic was running between 25–30 in the right lane, you literally can NOT make up that much time unless you still have 600+ miles to go….The one thing that never ceases to amaze me is that with the majority of the vehicles on the road throughout the downpour & fog, there were PLENTY of idiots flying by us doing well over 80+!!! I could hardly make out the tail lights off the back of the tractor trailer i was behind by roughly 100–150 yards, yet there are ALWAYS ASSHOLES trying their absolute best to kill themselves, and sadly, usually others. It is bad enough when it is dark and the roads are wet..add in rain so heavy that your wipers on turbo could only offer you split second glances at what was going on in front of you, yet there’s ALWAYS a bunch of idiots who certainly can not see any better than anyone else can, almost certainly have no specialized driver training in adverse conditions, likely have a vehicle with at least 1 or more reasons it would fail a PA State Inspection and it’s a miracle we don’t see more death & destruction than we already do on the roads these days. Knowing at least 1/3rd of these idiots have a phone in their hand as they’re driving blind at more than twice the average speed of everyone else and I can’t argue with police running speed traps much of the time…. though when it’s a local cop sitting 1/4 mile after the speed limit drops from 55 to 25, they’re nothing but assholes!Now the ride home was brutal for me as it was freezing and my heater core exploded on the highway….I have enough tools when on the road to fix most of what can happen outside of a major issue, so I had to connect the 2 heater hoses together with a 5/8″ socket to allow the coolant to circulate so I don’t “bake” the engine. I spent maybe 20 minutes coming up with the repair idea on the side of the road, at night, in the freezing rain and then grabbed 2 gallons of premix Prestone at Wal-Mart to replace all of the antifreeze that blew down the back of my dash right onto my right foot and scalded it pretty badly. Now I had no heat and I felt my body revolting…so I literally wasn’t UNDER 80 for at least 90% of the entire trip. That was by far the fastest time I ever made from John’s house to my own…..813 miles in 10 hours and 13 minutes! I did wind up slammed into my bed for nearly 4 weeks and should have been in the hospital (but after 50+ hospitalizations since 2004, I have to be near death or in such pain I seriously consider blowing my brains out!) I was very impressed that my poor van with just shy of 200k on a known “weak” engine (Mistu-shitsi 3.0l) that it responded to my pedal input with no issues. Being the Tuesday night just before this past Thanksgiving I didn’t see any police speed traps until i got into Pennsylvania, which to me means GOD was with me as in Virginia you can almost guarantee that if you drive I 81 from top to bottom (or vice-versa) to encounter at LEAST a dozen speed traps, and that’s on a slow day. I can only assume they were gearing up for the next day and throughout the holiday weekend when the traffic everywhere these days is simply undriveable, ESPECIALLY because 25% of all of the ASSHOLES on the road drive with their phone in their hands and are NOT paying attention to ANYTHING other than their phone…..and MAYBE they look up at the road a couple of times per minute!Now, as far as the Cuda Jason bought……. beginning a couple of weeks after he & Dave (original owner/builder of the car agreed to sell/buy, I had to make certain Jason wasn’t buying a “puss case” or something that was going to require so much work that the price would have needed to be renegotiated. Aside for the issues ALL cars will suffer from when stored (even when properly stored/under a quality cover - in a heated garage as this car was) so for me it was a matter of getting it to run, having new tires thrown at it, flushing the fuel tank.lines, replacing the filter & fuel pump (diaphragms deteriorate when dry over that much time) and then knocking the carburetor apart, tanking it in acid & throwing a basic rebuild on it so it would run reasonably well. being a 650 Holley with vacuum secondaries this carburetor will NEVER respond the way he expects it to (he’s never owned a carbureted vehicle in his life prior to this) so this way he could get the car home. I also flushed out the brake fluid, replaced the wheel cylinders & rebuilt the calipers (not stock, Wilwood!)& changed the transmission fluid/filter (pan gasket was dry rotting and leaking), resealed the center chunk on the differential (leak) etc etc etcI went over & through the entire car with a fine toothed comb for my friend Jason to make sure it was worth the money he was considering paying for the car. It took me maybe 8 hours to inspect everything on the car, flush the fuel tank, lines,remove the plugs & squirt some oil down each cylinder & then rotating the engine around by hand multiple times to makes sure the rings & cylinder walls we lubricated. I then used a home-made high pressure engine oil tank, tapped it into an oil pressure port on the engine and cranked the engine (with the ignition disabled so it could not possibly start) to get all of the necessary/critical parts lubricated and ready to fire. Once the engine was made operable the only items left to be done was to get Jason down there to pay Dave, have a bill of sale notarized until Louisiana sends Dave a copy of his missing title and then get the car prepped for transport to where Jason lives, just outside of Hershey.We then had fresh rubber thrown on the wheels even though the tires on the car had maybe 200 miles on them you don’t trust a tire that is 10+ years old, period. It isn’t worth the risk!Now Jason is also one of my best friends (I literally was at his house the day he was brought home from the hospital as his oldest Brother & I have been best friends our entire lives) has one hell of a beautiful car that has a lot of “snot” under the hood.The engine is a 340 block with a stroker crank that now has 413 C.I. The guy who built the car had every piece of paperwork from everything he ever did to the car including the dyno results that proved that when built and tuned the engine made 528 HP at 6800 RPM. In order to “put that power tot he ground” he’s going to need to completely upgrade both the front & rear suspension with traction bars at the bare minimum for the rear, though I’d rather see him go to ladder bars and a tubular arms, race springs with air bags (air bags set at very low pressure (generally 3–5 psi L/R, 7–11 PSI R/R) to counteract every vehicles tendency to twist on launch requiring a hair more spring rate on the R/R of the car. He also needs subframe connectors welded in and a different rear gear. When Dave bought the car someone had a B Body (I think) rear differential under it (allowed for slightly wider wheels as the rear that came with it was 1″ narrower than stock) so he came up with a rear out of a ‘Cuda but it has a 3.23??:1 gear ratio. Dave had no interest in racing the car and it has more than enough torque & HP to still run a respectable 1/4 mile, but a 3.73:1 ratio is ideal for his intended street usage as he’ll likely NEVER track this car. It also has no E-Brake at all, which is going to be a bastard so I’m trying to convince Jay to convert his rear brakes to Wilwood to match the fronts and have rear disc brakes which will make for far superior performance anyway.The only decision Jason has yet to finalize is if he’s going to take my adive and go to a multiport fuel injection system or simply buy an Edelbrock (either a standard issue 750 CFM w/electric choke, or the Edelbrock 800 CFM Thunder AVS carburetor…..plus the off-road needle & seat, high pressure/high volume fuel pump and pressure regulator, edelbrock carburetor calibration kit that comes with a wide assortment of needles, springs (to control when the secondaries open at “X” vacuum and lower), a wide variety of primary & secondary jets etc etc etc). Either way the car is going to perform far superior to his 2006 Mustang GT! No, I am not bashing the Ford’s…I’m a Chevy guy myself, but as a professional technician who is now disabled I do a LOT of hot rods/retrofitting the GM 5.3–6.0l injected engines into older iron etc as it keeps my mid sharp, I’m incredibly good at it and I truly enjoy doing every single aspect of this kind of work. I’d kill to have my health back so I could go back to wrenching full time, but my health issues being what they are I’m not going to cry as I am doing far better than I ever thought I would be after being bedridden for most of the 1st 4–6 years I had these issues.I DO stay current with my training and to this day probably still read 8–10 hours per week on new technology & what it takes training wise to understand it well enough to be able to work on pretty much anything I can get access to the proper equipment for.Now Jay can’t wait to “race” my ’78 Monte Carlo…but as his car is right now there is not a single aspect where my car isn’t vastly superior. I have less cubic inches but more HP & Torque. I have a complete tubular suspension on all 4 corners, massive brakes, full race headers into 3″ stainless steel duals with dump pipes & and “X” pipe. The only things to be completed on my car are to finish assembling the exterior as I recently refinished the complete body (2nd full restoration since ‘93-’94)…I also have the largest sway bars available front & rear on my car as my days of dragging the car are in the distant past. Now I want to run a hill-climb or two, just to see if I can drive this kind of car as well as I believe I can. The best thing abut the hill climbs is that sure, you want to have the fastest overall time, but that’s not realistic when you’re competing against guys in outdated indy type cars, super cars and cars with well over 6 figures into them….but you don’t have to be the fastest overall to win YOUR classification….and seeing what the competition has been at the Giant’s Despair hill-climb a mere 7 miles from my house, I’d be highly upset if I wasn’t competing for my classes title.Well, sorry about the “book” I’ve written here….I haven’t slept all night due to my headache having another monster flare….and this is among my all time favorite subjects and one that I am truly an expert on. besides, I have to send copies of this to Jason & a number of my other friends who now have cars I’ve either built for them or turned into monsters for them. When you’re disabled and often bedridden throughout the winter, ESPECIALLY around the holidays, spending time writing about one of my passions while maybe helping others out with my answers gives me another sense of purpose.