So if any of you have been following my other thread about the 47 liner and it's recovery part of the trip entailed bringing this car home along with the
1961 Sovereign that was at Frank's Trailer Works in Baltimore Maryland.
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Frank is a great guy. Not only did he do a fantastic job getiing the 61 ready for the trip here, he also assisted me by driving the caddy from Baltimore to my place.
The ride back here was wrought with mechanical problems on the car. It was only due to Frank's perseverence and driving skills that it made it in one piece.
The first difficulty was that the water pump was leaking. Now you can't just walk into Pep Boys and pick a water pump off the shelf for a 54 caddy. So we set off with several jugs of water and antifreeze and checked it every 100 miles.
The controls for the heater have been removed so for the entire trip there was no heat in the car and no ability to defrost the windshield either. We set off at 3:30 AM and the ambient temps were in the low to mid thirties. Poor Frank was frozen solid and had some harrowing experiences travelling into the valleys in PA when the windshield would fog up and would only clear up once he drove to higher elevations. Later towards mid day that was no longer a problem and he kept himself thawed out with several large hot coffees.
The gas guage was not indicating properly either. We found out that the tank is 20 gallons and worked on the assumption that the car would get 10 MPG. Therefore we could travel 200 miles before running out of gas. We set a threshold of 150 miles to refill. As it turns out it was getting 15 MPG and each fill up was never over 10 gallons so we were never in any danger of running out of gas.
The water pump leak seemed to slow down also and we once added some stop leak which stopped the leak almost entirely.
The third difficulty we encountered was the braking system failed entirely in northern PA. We stopped at a truck stop and added an entire bottle of brake fluid which seemed to recify the situation some what. Frank felt comfortable carrying on so we set off again.
Now somewhere in NY while travelling along the interstate which was concrete and has expansion joints every 20 ft one of the rear tires developed a problem. I think a belt seperated and the car started to vibrate violently. So much so that the trunk lid shook so much it began to pop open. We then had to drop the speeds to down under 50 MPH to lessen the effects of the vibration. This made for a very slow and much longer reminder to the trip.
It took over 2.5 hrs to clear both US and Canadian customs. So we set off for the last portion of the journey on CDN soil late in the afternoon. We were travelling along a very busy expressway at slow speeds and motorists very visibly upset at us. Lots of single digit salutes were directed towards us.
Now if we (meaning Frank) didn't have enough to deal with it started to rain. The wiper system on a 54 Caddy is vacuum operated and the cable from the switch to the wiper sytem is missing so to use the wipers you need to open the hood and start the system manually by pulling the control by hand. To his credit Frank persevered through the worst traffic without the wipers and by now it had gotten dark out. We did stop once we were off the expressway and turn them on and a refuelling stop so he had wipers for the remaining 2 hrs of the trip.
About an hour from here the brakes started to fail again and as we were now on a rural highway with less traffic Frank decided to carry on using the manual hand brake to stop the car. The last 1/3 of the mile we almost collided with each other. I was telling Frank about the up coming turns and hills via walkie talkie. The last portion of the trip to my place entails several turns and one steep hill. At the bottom of that hill is the turn off to my place. I was telling Frank about the hill and turn and trying to observe in the mirrors how he was doing at the same time he was trying to tell me to get out of the way as he was unable to stop the car. He had to swerve out from behind me and carry on down the road while trying to avoid the idiot behind him who was tailgating. This guy was upset about waiting behind us as we were travelling slowly on the highway. It's only down to Frank's skills as a driver that an accident was avoided.
The entire trip took 17 hrs and according to google maps it should ahve been only 10 hrs.
We were both exhausted upon arrival. We ate a quick meal of take out pizza and got some sleep. Frank commented that while trying to drop off to sleep his entire body was still vibrating from the continued exposure to the tire problem and the vibrations it caused to the car.
I can't express my gratitude to Frank enough for all his valiant efforts to get this car back here. A lesser man would have given up much sooner. It speaks volumes to his character as a man.
Anyway the car looks cool and despite the few problems will make a great tow vehicle for the 55 Overlander once repairs are made. I am sending it to my mechanic for the repairs and several upgrades to the braking system and upgrade to other systems as well.
I will replace the front brakes with a disc brake setup and replace the single tank master cylinder with a dual tank setup. The wiper sytem will be upgraded to an electric system. I also plan to replace and retrofit the steering and suspension with new and upgraded parts to make this car reliable and safe.
Here are some pics of it I shot today.
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