Sunday afternoon was CORSA of Baltimore’s second annual Fall driving tour. We were scheduled to drive to two wineries with a visit to an apple farm stuck in between. Three Corvairs showed up at the departure point. We waited another ten minutes or so to see if any other travelers would appear before starting our cars’ engines and heading out. Lucy got to the exit of the parking lot and then her engine died. Hmm. Shades of last weekend. I hopped out and waved the cars behind me around while I opened the engine lid and verified that, indeed, the carburetors were out of fuel.
Vapor Lock (for those of you with modern cars and electric fuel pumps) occurs when an old car is turned off and the engine compartment is hot. The gasoline in the inlet line to the fuel pump vaporizes, and since a pump is designed to move liquid (it is not a fan), everything just sits there until the engine compartment cools off and the gasoline vapor condenses. So that’s what we did, waited. Of course we had to keep ourselves busy while we waited. Gary (the local Corvair guru) was one of the participants, so he and I removed the brand new fuel to verify that it was not at fault. As far as we could tell, it was functioning, but Gary felt that it was not as strong as he’d like to see. He also pointed out that the oil pressure switch was beginning to fail and warned me that when it goes, it’s not pretty – lots of oil gets pumped out quite quickly.
With the fuel pump reinstalled and some fresh gas poured down each carburetor throat, Loriann turned the key and Lucy’s engine came to life. After conferring with Gary, I convinced Loriann we’d be okay to continue. We were. At the first stop, Cygnus Winery, I opened the engine lid to let the heat out while we went inside the tasting room. As we entered, we were met by three more folks from the club. We tasted six different wines and then moved on after buying a bottle of the Port.
Lucy started right up and kept running as we followed the convoluted directions I’d come up with using Google. My aim was to keep us off the main highways. It was really apparent that I’d succeeded when one of the roads I’d chosen turned into gravel – this was not part of the plan. It became a paved road again in less than two miles, so we pressed onward. After another four turns, we were again on a gravel road. This was the last road to our next destination, so the three Corvairs continued. We arrived and I immediately began apologizing. It wasn’t my intention to subject these nice cars to gravel roads. No one seemed angry, so I guess I’ll still be allowed to plan these events.
Loriann and I stayed at Baugher’s Apple Orchard longer than planned (as did the rest of the party), so we never made it to the second winery. On the drive home, Lucy began running roughly. Not threatening to die, but her engine was missing. At one point, as we pulled away from a stoplight, I decided to run the revs up pretty high before shifting with the intention of sucking through or burning off whatever was causing the problem. Sure enough, the engine smoothed back out and we drove the rest of the way home without issue.
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