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Driving from Portland, Oregon to Redmond, Oregon is a trip of about 170 miles. The high point of the journey is the Santiam Pass at 4817 feet. If you examine the photo to the left (click to enlarge) you can see that my 1960 BT7 decided to make an unscheduled rest top just at the summit of the pass.

It was running beautifully for over 100 miles, purring along, when at the very top of the summit is started to miss and then die. Fortunately there was plenty of room on the side of the road to pull over. To make a long story short, it was about 105 degrees F. and the result was vapor lock. John Carter and Mark Schneider continued on, leaving me to wait for the car to cool off. It takes a while to cool off at 105 degrees. I finally got going again and pulled into our destination about an hour after everyone else. At that point I think I was suffering from vapor lock. There was a tub of ice with bottles of beer in it. I skipped the beer and shoved my hands into the ice.

So this was my first experience with vapor lock. Googling it gives this definition at wikipedia:

Vapor lock (also known as vapour lock) is a problem that mostly affects gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines. It occurs when the liquid fuel changes state from liquid to gas while still in the fuel delivery system. This disrupts the operation of the fuel pump, causing loss of feed pressure to the carburetor or fuel injection system, resulting in transient loss of power or complete stalling. Restarting the engine from this state may be difficult. The fuel can vaporize due to being heated by the engine, by the local climate or due to a lower boiling point at high altitude.

The last sentence tells the story: Austin Healey (not a cool running car), 105 degrees outside and 4817 feet. So what do you do about it. Well once it happens you typically have to wait for the car to cool down enough. But being at a club meeting, it was expected that there would be some suggestions made. Especially since the next day I was going to drive back over the pass. But I have to admit, I was somewhat skeptical when it was suggested that I used wooden cloths pins on the fuel line. Not that our club members would ever stoop to a practical joke.

Well further googling found plenty of people saying the same thing. That clothes pins act as heat sinks to dissipate the heat from the fuel line. Of course half the people claimed it worked and half claimed it was an old wives tale. Since it didn’t get up to 105 on the return trip I can’t say one way or the other.

More permanent and rational fixes are replacing your mechanical fuel pump with a low pressure electric one, adding an electric fan with a heat sensor, and not driving over passes on 105 degree August days.

References:

• http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-vapor-lock.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vapour_lock

Thank You’s:

• To John and Mark for the moral support on the side of the road.
• To John Wilson who first suggested Vapor Lock
• To the club member whose name I forgot (after standing in 105 degrees for an hour) who pulled over to help.
• To Gary Jackson for the bucket of ice, bottle of water and other first aid when I showed up at his house soaked in sweat and babbling incoherently
• Jack Jacobson for lending me his cell phone and pen. I owe him a pen, I returned the phone.

The day began cloudy and guess what? It pretty much stayed that way through the tour. We began our tour at Milepost 7 on I-5 at the Burger King at 10:00 am with tour guides John and Judy Carter. After a short stint on I-5, we re-gathered at Milepost 27 at the Rebel Truck Stop. We then began our back roads tour to Centralia.

This is the old Pacific Highway which pretty much parallels the freeway. But most of the time, you wouldn’t know it for the trees, farms, etc. We drove north through the towns of Kalama and Carrols, then through the heart of Kelso. We continued north, paralleling the freeway until we reached Castle Rock. This was our lunch stop. Hattie’s Restaurant graciously accommodated our large crowd (15). It is a lovely, ‘country’ style restaurant, decorated with hat paraphernalia (hats, hat boxes, etc.) We took our time and had a great visit, then time to go; John and Judy had arranged a tour of the old Jackson Pioneer house, so we had to get going. Unfortunately, John had lost the ignition key for his Healey somewhere between parking and eating. While several looked outside, some had time to check out the gallery next door. Luckily, John found his key on the sidewalk, so it was back to the highway. This time we headed east on Highway 504, toward Mt. St. Helens.

We travelled past Silver Lake and through the town of Toutle. I really enjoyed this part as it has been several years since I have been in this area. It was amazing to see the banks of ash still in evidence. Just east of Toutle, we took a left onto Highway 505, which took us west through beautiful valleys of farm land, ending in the town of Toledo. At Toledo, we turned north and connected with the Jackson Highway. We passed through Lewis and Clark State Park and then just short of Hwy 12, we arrived at the Jackson House, considered to be the oldest pioneer home north of the Columbia.

“Not far south of Hwy 12 is the Jackson House. This well-preserved 1848 cabin served as the home of John R. Jackson and was the first “white-man” house north of Vancouver. Well worth a stop, if only for the history explained on the signs and stone posts at the gate. John Jackson settled here around 1844 and the house became a famous stopover on the trip north. It is said that the governor of Washington once stayed here while traveling to Olympia in 1854. The house also served as a courthouse for a time in the 1850’s.” (Northwest Ramblings, Friday, May 26, 2006)

We were treated with a tour by a Parks employee. Since you are only allowed access to the main room on the ground floor, this didn’t take long, but our guide was sweet and informative. We saddled up for our final push up the Jackson Hwy (not sure if it was named for John Jackson or Governor Scoop Jackson). I have to admit I can’t remember the time we arrived but I think it was around 2:30 or 3:00. We were all able to park (7 Healeys and one vintage Mercedes Benz) in the public parking lot right next to the Hotel.

After checking in (each room is named for an infamous character that had notable association with the hotel, the club or surrounding area), we gathered for ‘Happy Hour’ in the Club. We shared info about our rooms’ namesakes (ours was Floyd Duell, a regular at the Olympic Club poker tables between 1940s-60s. He also did some numbers work for the betting racetrack up in Seattle.) Some went out antiquing, most visited, including a few of our friends from the Cascade Club who came down from the Seattle area for the afternoon. The Olympic Club was established in 1908 as a ‘gentlemen’s resort’, which posted signs “Ladies Patronage Not Solicited”. Lot’s of booze, poker and what not above the main floor. A lot of bootleg liquor made its way from Canada to this very spot. Easy to understand, as in 1926, the county sheriff himself was arrested on bootlegging charges.

By the way, I want to note that the Olympic Club Hotel was a railroad hotel, one block from the train station. We noticed early in the evening that trains were coming by about every 15 to 20 minutes and began to worry about being able to sleep! Not to worry for most! Many of us went to dinner across town near the freeway at the Country Cousin for another down home meal (meatloaf, stew, and liver and onions were ordered), then back to the hotel for night caps. Let me back track a bit, John Carter had planned a ‘car’ movie for the guys, using his DVR in the afternoon. Unfortunately, no one could make it work. So in apology by the management, they brought us 3 bottles of McMennimin’s Edgefield wine. So after much visiting and drinking our apology wine, sharing stories, etc., most of us retired upstairs to the hallway outside our rooms, where we visited for another hour. We were still hearing train whistles on a regular basis!! Those of us in the hall retired at 10:30, promising to meet in the morning for breakfast. The trains kept coming.

All in all, the facilities were great, the trains romantic, the company beyond compare! In the morning, we coordinated on getting home, some on tour via the Monaco’s, some on their own. It was a great Healey experience and I hope the Carter’s will plan another for next year!

Aug. 2008 Healey Northwest Newsletter

Issue posted at http://issuu.com/healey-oregon1/docs/august_news

Description: Heavy enamel, approximately 3 inches by 3 inches, comes with two mounting screws to mount to grill badge.  Requires a mounting clamp.

To order or get more information contact via email Jaci Koeber or Carole Trenko

More photos are in the gallery. Click on the album thumbnails to view each set of photos.

Dear Skip and Tom,

Finally got a view minutes to send you a message. The last view months it was like a madhouse overhere but the event is behind us and it was a big success for everybody. The hospitality tent on the campsite worked fine and the weather was also good. On the inner field we made a hospitality tent where the people got to pick up paper coins for free drinks and the track lap tickets next to a lot of goodies.

There where about 5000 classic cars on the Le Mans grounds and over 350 racecars on the track competing in six different Grids.

I raced in grid 3 and we did very well and became 7^th out of the 69 cars. If you go to this link you can look what we left behind us. I want to thank you for the shirts I received from you.

Have a look at the Le Mans website for the results, some pictures and small movies.

Regards Hans van de Kerkhof

The weekend of July 11-13, 2008 held the Historic Races at the Portland International Raceway. Two members of the Austin Healey Club of Oregon presented race ready Healeys.

Steve Rux had set up his pit area on the grass west of the larger pits. I found Steve’s 1962 Sprite in amongst a group of Sprites with their owners all wrenching away and preparing for qualification runs and eventually competition.

When I took the first shots of Steve’s car he had just found a broken Panhard rod and was making plans to get it up to Richard Mayer’s shop to do a little welding. From the picture of Steve sitting in the cockpit trying to keep cool under his bumbershoot and later exiting Turn 2 of the “Carousel” he must have gotten the suspension repaired.

Click the “read more” link to see the other Healey…





The other AHCO member I talked with and photographed was Doug Escriva. Doug’s nicely turned out 1957 Healey 100-6 was pitted nearer to the PIR Rosecup Room and Official’s tower.

Doug volunteered his car to participate in a special activity of the Historic Race weekend, that is, taking kids for a ride around the racecourse. I caught one shot of one of the happy youngsters after Doug helps belt him in for the ride.

In other Images Doug’s car is sitting on the pre-grid waiting for a qualification run and then departing the pre-grid for the racecourse. Close inspection of the picture reveals that Doug had spotted me with my camera as he accelerated onto the front straight.