June 1, 2014: Day 1 to Shamrock, TX

1974 450 SL Mercedes in Albuquerque

 This is one of our longer trips. We are headed to Bar Harbor, ME for the VMCCA Chrome Glidden Tour on June 8-14. It is going to be about 2500 miles each way.  With side trips to relatives, points of interest and the tour, we may rack up 6000 miles before we are done.
We are taking a relatively new car this time.  It is a 1974 Mercedes 450SL which is a mere 40 years old.  It is incredibly modern compared to the usual old cars we drive.  It can easily cruise at 75 mph. It has a marginal air conditioning system.  It handles surprisingly well on curving roads.  It has four wheel disc brakes that are just excellent. In most respects, it is a modern car.  It has a mere 90,000 miles, considered low mileage for these cars.

The bad news is I have only had this car for about 5 months.  I have done a lot of prep work to get it running well, but it still is an unknown quantity to me.  It is a rather complicated machine and there so much I don't understand about it.  I feel much more confident driving one of our prewar cars or our Austin Healey. (these links will take you to some of our earlier old car travelblogs) .  I have driven our older cars thousands of miles and I can usually diagnose and fix their failings simply and quickly.  Not so with the Mercedes:  It has new fangled stuff like transistors, relays, vacuum actuators, and  a very early form of multiport electronic fuel injection (called D-Jetronic by Bosch).  The only good news is there are many of these cars on the road today and very active internet forums devoted to understanding and preserving them.  Hopefully I can learn enough about Mercedes on this trip to keep it moving.  Of course, if it croaks badly, I can always sell it and start a new life in another state.


On the road, first attempt to tighten the belt.

Our plan is to take I40 for 1400 miles all the way to Knoxville where we will visit Nance's sister Holly.  Normally we avoid interstates in our travels.  But considering the distances we have to cover and the capability of the Mercedes, we will taking some interstates on this trip.

Day 1 has been eventful.  Nance had other commitments and decided at the last minute to not leave today.  She will fly instead and join me in Knoxville on Tuesday -- assuming I manage to make it there.  I finally got on the road about 10:30 AM.  The temperature was in the low 90s by noon.  Suddenly, one of the Mercedes fan belts started to howl and slip if the rpm was over 3000 (about 65 MPH).   You would think this is an easy fix, but tightening the double belt on the fan did not solve the problem.  I guess I needed a longer crowbar to stretch those belts, but I feared overloading the water and power steering pumps.  The belts looked rather worn, so I bought new ones in Amarillo.  Naturally, they are a rather unusual size but after some effort Auto Zone came up with two new ones.  I am going to clean to pulleys and install them tomorrow morning.  Hopefully, this will solve the problem.

FYI, the Mercedes has a viscous clutch on its massive shrouded cast aluminum fan.  I found it odd that the fan has two belts to drive it.  I now know that at high speed with the clutch engaged this fan takes a lot of torque.  I guess that's why it has two drive belts. 



Very nice café in Tucumcari.  Unfortunately, most of the
 town is quite depressed since I40 bypassed it.

The car managed to run cool throughout this hot day.  Temps were up to 96F but the water temp never got much over 190F.  That's good news, I didn't have much experience driving the car in hot weather and there is going to be plenty of heat on this trip.  The AC was rather underwhelming.  The air was tepid but it was cool enough to keep the windows up, making the trip more pleasant.  The aftermarket radio was also a disappointment.  It's fancy display must have been designed by a video gamer.  Very slick but impossible to read in direct sunlight.  The tiny buttons have even tinier, cryptic labels.  It was easier to write a text on my phone than fiddle with this radio.  But I did get a good signal for NPR in and around Amarillo.

Hope my repairs go well tomorrow.  See you later....

Bill, from Shamrock TX, 377 miles from home.