Half-way across the US, on egg-shaped tires no less

So, in August of 2001 I purchased another Opel Kadett wagon after several years without an Opel of any sort. My now ex-wife had forced me to part with all of them early on in our marriage, under the stipulation that if I found a nice one for a decent price I had carte blanche to buy it. I had scrounged one up, it was reasonably priced, and I went ahead and bought it.

The story of this car is you're typical barn find story. Guy had it, stopped driving it for whatever reason, died, kids didn't know it was even there in storage, found it years later, sold it to some guy off the street for cheap. I was buying it from that guy with weak brakes, almost no working carb passages, no fuel pump, and the same bias-ply tires that were on it when it went into storage in 1978 with 68k miles on the odometer. The brakes and fuel pump are old Opel issues, well known and easily fixed, and any carb that sits for 23 years is going to need a little love. All told, though, it was a pretty nice car for $600.

I had gone to look at it in the wife's car, because it was a couple hour drive and I wasn't sure I was going to get it initially, so I had to get a trailer and fetch it the following weekend. This was easy enough, because at the time the local MWR (that's Morale, Welfare, and recreation, for you non-Navy types) had a car trailer I could rent for the weekend for $20 with just a flash of my military ID. Trailer and truck set, I went and got the car and brought it home, getting several thumbs-ups along the way, a trend that continues to this day. (I actually avoid taking it really public places, like super stores and malls, I get inundated with folks wanting to tell me their Opel stories.)

After bringing it home, I fixed the brakes (bad front brake hoses, a very common issue with old cars that no one ever thinks of first), rebuilt the carb, and installed an electric fuel pump. I drove it the 9 miles to work a couple of times, just to make sure it ran OK, and over Labor Day weekend I set out in it for SD from upstate NY having only driven it to that point 75 or so miles. I didn't do it blindly, I had packed along all the normal tools one would need for an Opel, made sure the spare was good, grabbed a good jack and a couple cans of fix-a-flat, tossed in some replacement bulbs and some wire and was pretty comfortable all things considered.

And it was a good thing I did pack all that stuff, because I sure needed it, but not for my own car. See, when you drive an old beater you can't afford to pass up the opportunity to get some good road Karma. I'm referring to stopping to help the stranded motorist's you normally scream past on the side of the road. Being a holiday weekend, everyone was driving somewhere, and knowing I had a nice hydraulic floor jack made it really hard to drive past someone trying to use a screw jack on their car. All told I stopped 11 times before getting across the state of NY, changing 6 tires and pouring out the contents of my gas can 3 times. Every one that trip was great, particularly one family from Cleveland in a minivan with a blown tire and a flat spare that took both of my cans of fix-a-flat. They waved every time they passed me stopped with someone else, and I waved back every time I passed them doing 50 mph on the donut spare. Sure it took me a bit longer, but several people made it home easier that night and I feel good about that.

Eventually, though, the vibration from the tires got the better of me and I pulled in to a Sprawal-mart to get the tires balanced. The guy put the first tire on the balancer and it almost broke the thing. The tires were all egg-shaped from sitting all those years. I had new tires waiting in SD, so I decided I could live with it for the rest of the trip instead of buying new tires just then, besides they didn't have the right size on hand.

Somewhere in MN I decided to see if the AM radio worked, and it did, but the only thing on AM any more is talk radio and gospel. What a shame, too, as everyone should have an old mono AM station playing poodle skirt music. IT only took a few minutes of talk radio to make me turn it off again.

All told, that leg of the trip was a roaring success. No mechanical issues what-so-ever, and a good time the whole way. Got 28-32mpg even, which makes me really wonder why new cars aren't all getting 50+. After all, my Opel's 40 year old technology. The trip back, on the other hand, was a nightmare. But I'll post on that trip later, just to keep you coming back for more.