drive across country - I made it!

[deathegg]

Hi everyone!
Just wanted everyone to know about my little trip across country.
This past April I decided to move to CA from Pittsburgh...my lease was up so i had to move anyway, why not move somewhere warm? So i called my friend who lives here and asked if i could stay with him for a while while I got my bearings, etc. "Sure, come on out"!

So I packed up my '88 L+ Festy and headed west. Would I make it?
I was pretty confident since my festy had rarely let me down before. My only worries were the fact that I had not changed the timing belt recently, and did not have the time to do it before I left, so i just wished for the best. Also it had been getting hard to start in the morning, but i didn't think anything about that.

Since it's only a 4 speed, road noise was pretty bad; I had to crank the stereo pretty loud to hear it. (music of choice: the Donna's, Veruca Salt, Dig Jelly, Brian Setzer, among others) I was used to 55-65 mph speed limits in the PA area....some places out west are 75-80! fortunately I had put in some Dynamat a few years ago, so that probably helped a bit.

I decided to take 5 days to drive there, with 4 overnight stays. the morning after my first overnight, in Illinois, it wouldn't start! Lots of cranking, but nothing else. I was about to call AAA but the hotel desk clerk told me that their handyman was good with cars, and to have him take a look. Well, free advice! ok, have a look. He took off the air cleaner, and told me my choke was sticking closed, so he used a screwdriver to open it for me while I cranked, and it started right up!
So, for the next few days, every morning, that's what I did to start it
(when I got here, I cleaned everything, and now it's fine)

So, along the way I got to see some good sites, such as some civil war sites, Old Town Albuquerque, NM, and the big Meteor Crater in AZ.
I averaged about 43 m.p.g. on the trip, but that's not too bad considering the load i was carrying ( my car was full) and the speed i had to go to keep from getting run over!!!

it's still running good, 6 months later, although I had a small fender bender which smashed a headlight and bent my hood. Went to a Pick-A-Part to get a used light ($34) and will fix it soon.

If anyone every tells you festys are crap... they have NO idea what they're talking about. As Comic Book Man on the Simpsons would say:

"Best ...car ...Ever!"

[todd00]

thanks for sharing your road trip with us. and welcome to the board

[project b6t]

cool, glad you made it! i know what its like to drive a rediculous amount (put about 2000 miles on my car in the last 6 weeks :roll: ). Welcome to ff.com :idea:

[Diego]

How did it do over the mountains loaded down?. I used to have a Toyota 4x4 that I would get passed going uphill on the freeway by semis in the mountains. That was quite embarrassing.

[freshtiva]

Great festiva adventure :!: Typical ending..... the festiva pulls through..

[TheresGabe]

OUTSTANDING!

I love the endurance stories! Sounds like quite the trip. I think the most I ever did was 900 miles in 3 days. I did however go 36,000 miles in six months on my '88 4-speed!

[deathegg]

I fortunately did not go the mountain-ous way,, my route took me down through OK, to TX, then interstate 40 from Texas to CA. There were some points along the way that were hilly, but nothing serious really. there were times when I couldn't go faster than 55 because of the hills (near albuquerque, NM, and right inside southern CA), but that wasn't too bad really. For the most part it was a flat drive. My friend who I'm staying with advised against going through the rocky mountains, as he did it years ago in his 3-cylinder Geo Metro, and said it was tough.

[htchbck]

as long as the car isn't full of stuff or people it will pull hills just fine. You can't ever really get out of 3rd gear, but in the mountains it wouldn't be safe to go that fast in a festy anyway

[geezerstiva]

great story man! how many miles do you have on it now? 43 mpg is great mileage i think. most i ever got was 47. and i was driving like my dad does! (incredibly slow) :lol:
welcome!

[deathegg]

Hey there!
just about to turn 180,000 this week. and that's with the original clutch!
if it lasts another year I will be happy. Not bad, huh?

I remember the days when the national speed limit was 55... I once got 57 m.p.g! Those days are long gone.

[warlocke]

i just turned over 133k in my 95 aspire automatic lol ill be putting atleast 40 miles a day on it for the next year lol, well 4 days a week and for the most part every week. some days i get off but not many

[deathegg]

Hey Warlocke,
I had a Gremlin too! years ago I had a brown '74 Gremlin X, with a 304 V-8. Great fun until you had to stop (four-wheel drum brakes!!!)
was too expensive to fix the brakes, so I had to sell it.
They are now worth alot of money on e-Bay.

[warlocke]

ya fun as hell to drive but it sucked on gas, had a 258 automatic in it, hat 78 chrysler cordobra seats in it from previous owner but was orgionally the levis edition, i sold it last month needed room and money and couldent drive it to school 20 miles cause id have to fill up every other day lol 7mpg is what it was getting. sold to a kid that had a 89 iroc and had it on the road a month and the engine blew lol. but he said he was gonna drop a 305 into it