The Best of France and Italy weekend began on Friday, Oct 30. Maureen packed up our 124 spider, and picked me up from work, then we headed out over a mountain pass to meet up with Ron and Krissy Luxmore in Lancaster. Here we're cresting a pass near Tehachapi, where the windmills are cranking out electricity.
We stopped for gas in Tehachapi, and traded stories with a fellow driving a 2005 Lotus Elise. He pulled out a fancy camera and took a lot of pictures of our spiders, while I admired his ride:
Continueing on, we took a really twisty mountain road (Caliente Bodfish Rd) that separated the high desert Tehachapi region from Lake Isabella. It was a good road for breaking our wives' nervous manner -- if they survived that road OK, they could survive about anything! We came down into Lake Isabella area in late afternoon:
Leaving the Lake, we continued on up the Kern River, a nice scenic road bursting with a little bit of fall colors. I came darned near disaster when a large doe jumped out in the road, but the brakes did good and both the car and the doe lived another day. This deer was big enough that it would have come through the windshield if not over the winshield! We got to our cabin up near John McNally's Lodge just as it was starting to get dark:
Headed up to McNally's, where we met about 20 folks from the Fiat America group that had been traveling all day from the San Francisco area. We all had a great dinner, then retired to Jack's cabin for drinks and story telling. Here's Larry Sacks whooping up a friendly hello, and there's Ken and Casey Haven:
Brian Paland was telling us about the drive down. That's Maureen in the background, talking with Ron and Krissy Luxmore:
I don't know if it was Brian's story, the drinks, or he was just plain worn out, but here's Larry 5 minutes later:
Slept well that night in the cabins. Next morning, I got up early and took a drive up the mountain with Ken Haven, and we enjoyed an early morning walk through some of the giant Sequoia's, then drove back down to meet everyone for breakfast in the little town of Kernville. I talked Chris Obert into trading cars for the drive back over Caliente Road, so he and Brookie took my spider (that's her sitting in my spider), and Maureen and I drove his X (shown here in this pic with Ron and Krissy). His stock 1.5 liter motor did well, and the X handles the curves superbly:
We pulled off to regroup at the end of Caliente, and swapped back into our own cars. That's Steve Bedillion's turquoise 124 wagon behind the 2 red spiders.
Somewhere along the way, I swapped cars with Brian Paland ('88 Alfa spider), and the caravan continued to the Mojave Airport for lunch. His car drives really smooth, and is quieter in the wind than a 124 spider, in my opinion. Here's a shot through his windshield of Brian driving our spider!
After lunch, we stopped in at a Classic Hot Rod and Airplane show, and I swapped out with another interesting ride. This one had a rather complex set of controls on the dash!
After the Show, we tooled on down the road to Palmdale, and pulled off the road to await the Fiat Multipla (Brett Melancon), that had been making its way accross the country on Route 66 for the whole previous week or so. The Multipla was good company for us, for the next few days. Here's a link to a fascinating blog about their trip: http://www.66inafiat.com
From there, I swapped cars with Pierre Benniston for the rest of the ride on into the LA area. Pierre's yellow '71 124 spider rivals Denise's '72 for the best handling 124 spider I've driven. He's got a 2.0L engine with high compression pistons, 41-82 cams, 44 IDF's, IAP progressive coil springs, 1" front sway bar + rear sway bar, koni yellows all around. It takes corners like nobodies business! Here's a shot through his windshield as we approach the Bouquet Canyon Reservoir.
Most of the caravan went on down to their hotel in Simi Valley for the evening. PIerre Benniston, Steve Bedillion, and Maureen and I went on back to our place in Ventura, with plans to get back down to LA early in the morning for breakfast before the BFI show. We spent the evening washing up the cars while Maureen cooked a great spread of spaghetti and meatballs.
Slept well again, and got everything packed in the cars for the BFI show, and got on the road at 6:15 (thank goodness the Daylight Savings time Change allowed us another hour of sleep!). Just gentle driving this morning, unlike the screaming up and down the mountain roads we'd been doing the past couple of days. Gentle as it was, we got quite the surprise 15 miles down the road when my head gasket blew! I had been experiencing a suspected head gasket leak for more than a year (a little weaker going up hills, and leak-down testing showed poor leak down between 2, 3, and 4 cylinders). There had been no water leakage anywhere, or oil leakage, just compression, and even then, compression testing showed over 200 psi on all 4 cylinders -- the only confirmation of a hint of a problem was the leak down testing, and pinging with acceleration in the low rpms. But not anymore! When it let go, it really let go. We ran a few checks, pulled the plugs, etc. to convince ourselves that it was the head gasket, then I decided to try to drive it back home, since I could get it cranked up and keep it running if I kept the revs really high (oil pressuer and water temps were normal). So, I limped home at 40 mph on 1.5 cylinders, and we again headed out to LA for the BFI show, this time we drove the family Honda Accord.
The BFI show was fantastic -- you've probably already seen some of the threads and pictures, including a picture with Jay Leno and Sam! After the show, we joined the Fiat America caravan and the Multipla for a breathtaking drive through the Santa Monica Mountains on Mulholland Drive, evenutally dropping down a canyon into Malibu on the coast for wine and cheese in a grassy park overlooking the beach at sunset. Maureen and I headed on up the coast in the Honda to Ventura as the sun was setting, and Pierre followed a little later.
That night, Pierre, Sam, and I decided to go out to the garage and fiddle with my spider for a bit to see if we could figure out what really happened. Here's Sam, getting some tools out. Hey, watch out Sam! You never want to turn your back to a gloved finger!
Sam helped us run a compression check on all the cylinders, and sure enough there was zero on #3 and #4, greatly reduced compression on #2, and normal 200 psi on #1. With Sam supervising, Pierre and I made quick time of pulling the head off to take a look. As suspected, the fire ring had blown between 3 and 4 and was partially blown betwen 2 and 3. The likely cause was probably just the fact that I had used a stock head gasket, but this engine has a high compression ratio (about 10.6).
With that, we went to bed for another good night's rest. Pierre bid is farewell in the morning, and Maureen and I (and Sam) took our Honda Odyssey to rendezvous with 1/2 of the Fiat America caravan on their last day's driving for the weekend. We met in Santa Paula, and drove through a beautiful mountain pass to Ojai before heading up some more steep mountains. Sam took his spot on the dashboard to keep an eye on all the Fiats.
Along the way, Sam got a chance to sit in a lot of Fiat's. Mike, in his beautiful '73 124 spider:
Richard, X-1/9:
Brian Paland, in the red Alfa
Mary Watanabe, in her Honda (Dan Yee and Casey Haven in the background):
Jack Silva in his yellow X-1/9 (origianl owner):
Dan Yee's X-1/9:
We met the rest of the Fiat America group for lunch at Mike's pizza in Frazier Park. They had been fortunate to tour Jay Leno's garage that morning, then had driven a direct route up the freeway to meet us. Here is Chris Obert and Brookie with Sam and lunch:
After lunch, we had another thriller drive on a mountain ridge road (Cerro Noceste Rd) for about 30 miles. Quite a site, and quite an endeavour to keep up with 20 screaming Fiats, with us in a Honda Odyssey. Somehow, we managed, but you could sure smell the tires and the brakes when we pulled over to the side of the road to get out and take some pictures!:
When we finally got down off the ridge at highway 33, we waved goodbye to the Fiat America group heading North, and we headed South, back to Ojai and Ventura. Back at home, Sam helped me take another look at the block with the blown head gasket, and the cylinder head as well, Here's a few more shots showing the damage to the head gasket, and one of Sam scoping out the cylinder head:
Later that night, I found Sam with our cat, Ringo, telling Ringo about his exciting weekend. Turns out, they became pretty good buddies in the short time Sam was here.
Wonder where he will go next???