It's hard to believe that it's been almost a year since I've posted anything to this blog! Miz B has been the most reliable little car. She has taken me all over the state of South Carolina with our local club, the Palmetto A's of South Carolina. We visited Edgefield, Sandy Run, and Eutawville. These trips were uneventful, as far as automotive issues went.
We made an 800 mile journey, in late March, to St. Augustine, Florida! The trip to St. Augustine was more than eventful! We drove down with the Petty's, Booth's, Prince's, and the Austin's - all in our Model A's. We were definitely the distraction on the highway going south. Not a lot of traffic until after we crossed into Florida. Then we were on the main highway into St. Augustine and of course, all the trucks were as well! We decided to take the trip down easy and stay over night in Jasper, Ga. That evening, the guys decided to switch out my carburetor with Bill Prince's spare. Seemed to help, but the car was still backfiring and skipping. The issues kept our speed down to around 40 mph, which made the day a little longer than we had wished. We finally arrived in St. Augustine around 3 pm and of course, the hood went up as soon as the car was parked. There were lots of Model A enthusiasts and parts vendors on hand to try to figure out what the problems were with the little car. We borrowed a spark plug, and bought a new wire for the coil, borrowed a distributor cap, discovered the polarity was backward, and added SeaFoam to the oil and gas! Hopefully it was in pretty good shape to make the return trip to Columbia. We enjoyed the weekend in St. Augustine. We toured the city in our A's and took a driving tour to the Daytona Speedway, down in Daytona Beach. Soon, it was time to head for home. We had planned for a two day trip, but decided that if we were up for it, we would do it in one. All went well until we were about 20 miles from South Carolina. The skies opened up and it poured buckets and the temperature dropped from around 80 to 50 degrees. It was cold! But, we pressed onward toward home. We took a brief stop for coffee and some warming up about 40 miles from home, then we were off again. Soon, we were all peeling off in different directions for our homes. We turned off through the town of Lexington to cross the Lake Murray dam. We were about 3/4 of the way across the dam when we heard what sounded like a gunshot under the hood of the little car! We coasted through the light and into the gas station to see what was the matter. Oped the hood and there it was - a fan belt that had decided to start fraying. I guess the big bang was the first part hitting the hood! We decided to limp home, going very slowly, just 6 miles left to go. Home never looked so good! The next morning, John decided it was a bad alternator and he would have to wait until Monday to go to our local Model A parts store.
The new alternator is now installed along with a new fan belt, new ignition coil, rebuilt carburetor, new spark plug, changed the oil, put on a new set of tires and gave the little car a bath! John said maybe we should have just unscrewed the radiator cap and driven a new car under it and screwed it on! All in all, it was a great adventure to St. Augustine. We learned that no matter what can go wrong, these little cars just don't quit! They are reliable even when they aren't running their best!
