Warning, long read and boring to some but is a simple blog of the final purchase steps and taking possession of my new CMC 3rd gen Camaro. Please skip this post if you dont like reading. As soon as i posted it i looked for the delete button but couldnt find it.
Wow what a trip! With my brown wife (she is Honduran and we joke about our skin colors being so contrastingly different), flew Seoul to Abilene TX (my hometown), retrieved our Excursion in airport parking where my sister had delivered it the day prior (she is awesome), and immediately drove 19.5hrs straight to Bakersfield only stopping for fuel, food, and bathroom breaks. I had strategically overdosed on sleep medication on the long flight from Seoul to get 11hrs of sleep during the flight and then used my jet lag to propel and slingshot me to California without any sleepy nodding off at the wheel.
It all started with a 7pm departure from Seoul on the 19th, connection in Dallas, a walk through immigration and a final arrival in Abilene at 6pm on the 19th (same day). Yes, we travelled back in time like a time machine. Then drove 1300 miles through the night and next morning to Bakersfield to meet Mike Plum arriving there at 11:30am on the 20th. He drove 3hrs to meet me in Bakersfield and a big thanks to him for this shaved 6hrs off my drivetime and made it all possible. But still OMG, what a LONG drive, but the landscape was different and beautiful. My wife several times spotted old motorhomes in the desert and yelled out “Breaking Bad” in excitement. Driving like a madman at 80mph most of the way with nasty headwinds got an average of 16mpg in the 6.0 Excursion. Not too shabby. With no winds and at 70mph it usually achieves about 19mpg always calculated at the pump. I have found the 6.0 to be an economical engine producing good performance and fuel economy. (Just cost a lot initially to bulletproof but is a worthwhile investment)
Met up with Mike, fired up the purple monster and it roared to life (in the trailer). Interesting setup with a hotstart swith to fool the ecm to richen the mixture for subsequent restarts on a hot engine. Cant wait to get this thing on the track! My wife and I were on a strict timeline and had to get back to Texas so we couldnt visit with Mike too long. We hooked up to the 20ft enclosed trailer (trailer is part of the deal) and I was immediately surprised at how smooth and easy the trailer pulled. I have a another 40ft bumper pull and have pulled many other trailers in the past but this one seemed so much better. I am a little disappointed I forgot to take a handshake picture with Mike in front if the car. Was in such a hurry I forgot.
The only picture i got :( https://1drv.ms/u/s!AlGb9rjS1IErgbpeN5j2aQmqdT9Mgw
Now you’d think we’d stop and sleep but its noon at this point and jetlag is definitely kicking my butt. We push on carefully with the intention of making it back to Arizona before stopping for a hotel but i had to stop around 5pm in Needles, California. We felt so gross. We hadnt had a shower and there is just something about being on an airplane for 14hrs that makes you feel gross. So the shower we had in this cheap cockroach motel we stayed in was glorious and my brown wife jokingly says that it was like a light shining down through the heavens and angels singing. We could only sleep for 5 hours as our timeline was tight. And I didnt even have my windows smashed in or the trailer broken into in this ghetto place.....awesome! I had to get back to San Angelo to pick up my kids for our Christmas visit. Our jetlag wouldnt let us sleep anymore waking up around 11pm and packed up and back on the road around 11:30pm.
Drove for about 4 hours and caboom! Trailer tire blowout! No big deal mike included two spare trailer tires with the purchase but he himself had already had a blowout bringing it to Bakersfield. This left me with just one spare thankfully. So Now i just need a jack and tire iron.....my excursion has that right?? Never used it before. If it has a tire iron for the big lug nuts on the Excursion will it even work with the smaller lug nuts on the trailer?? Have owned this rig for 6 years but now sweating bullets hoping its all stowed where its supposed to be. YES! Its all there! And the tire iron was close enough to the right size. Phew! With the help of my brown wife, changed the tire. But when the tire was off now i realized why the trailer pulls so smoothly.......torsion axles.....never experienced them before. Hit the like button! The rest of the tires looked like they were in good shape. Good tread, correct pressures, no dry rot or cracking. With no spares we pushed on and discussed finding a place to buy some new trailer tires or just chance it the rest of the way. I wanted to chance it with 800miles left to go but my wife thought better of the situation and wanted to replaced both spares. No argument here. So as we pushed on and shopped online for tire shops ahead in our direction of travel. Found a place that was reasonable and had two new D-Rated trailer tires mounted and balanced for $160. Not bad. Set us back about 1hr but we were ahead of schedule so not a problem. My Excursion was sagging just a little even with the weight Distribution hitch and over the bridges occasionally would bottom out and jar the crap out us and the whole rig, so while i waited on the tires i backed up to their air hose and pumped up my rear air bags to 55psi and now it was perfect (i dont have onboard air). Back on the road and riding really nice! That bulletproofed 6.0 turbo diesel purring smooth and getting about 12mpg at 65mph with 7000lbs behind me and many mountains to climb. It really did great pulling up and down the Rocky Mountains up to elevations of 7500ft. Trailer brakes and engine breaking was perfect for the downhills. Excursions make good tow rigs especially when you put hellwig sway bars on them and good shocks n tires. After the rockies on flat ground and now with a nice tail wind for the rest of the trip we got a nice 14mpg @ 70mph, best towing economy Ive ever seen. Tailwinds rock!
Lubbock, caboom! Another trailer tire blowout. Its weird....tires looked great and had good pressures in them, and running cold too. Reminds me of parts on the Apache helicopter. There are Time Before Overhaul (TBO) components that get replaced and overhauled regardless of their condition at a specified service life even if they are in great working order, Retirement Change (RC) components that after its specified service life it simply gets removed and thrown in scrap metal pile for destruction even if its in perfect condition , and Condition Change (CC) components that you change only when they are out of tolerance. I guess trailer tires should be treated like RC components and replaced without regard to their physical appearance by visual inspection . Anyone know what the service life would be for this? 5 years? 7years?
Anyhow, my wife is so cool that the words “I told ya so” didnt even enter her mind. We needed gas anyways and this time the tire only threw its tread and while warped and steel belts showing, still holding air we limped to a gas station. Now my brown wife learns fast and while i was filling up that 44gallon fuel tank on a really slow pump thinking she was in the truck texting or watching youtube on her phone i looked inside.....where is she??? Walked around the passenger side to see that she was back there jacking up the trailer and loosening the lug nuts while the fuel pump is slowly trickling fuel down the fill pipe. Wow what a woman! All i had to do was pull out one of the fresh newly mounted spares (thanks to her) and give it to her. I love a woman who doesnt mind getting her hands dirty! The tire was changed and nuts torqued, jack removed and tools put away before the pump was finished. She is gonna be my pit crew haha! Teamwork! Awesome! Finished filling the tank, draining the bladders, and on the road again.
Arrived to pickup my awesome kids from the x-wife on schedule in San Angelo at 6:30pm on the 21st and back to Abilene to spend Christmas with my family. One of my boys will probably be a pilot like me and the other will be racer in some form whether it be motocross or kart racing, formula 1, ect. They already effectively help me turn wrenches and they are only 5 and 7. Im a proud father blessed with awesome kids and an amazing wife! Anyways, about the trip, my wife and I had traveled 10000miles in less than 72hrs (64hrs to be exact), 7400 miles by air and 2600 miles by Excursion, 1300 miles of that with a 7000lb enclosed trailer in tow having 2 blowouts, drinking $650 worth of diesel fuel, and having good times making memories along the way. This trip marks the beginning of my CMC experience and I hope to make many more good memories along the way. Cant wait til April at Eagles Canyon.
And for now, sadly on a plane back to South Korea to finish out my time there. I am sooooooo looking forward to when I PCS to Fort Hood. Just hours away from all my family and I’ll be able to wrench on cars, see my kids much more often, teach them kart racing and wrench turning, do some HPDE and maybe get my comp license while my wife will be in flight school working towards her airline pilot license.
Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! I know we did.
