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Against All Oddities: LA to Detroit in the Roo Chaser, Part 2
Now that we’re all back and as clean as a truck stop bathroom can get you, let’s pick up where we left off.
For those who don’t get the above reference because they haven’t read Part 1 of the Roo Chaser tale, I’ll quickly recap: It was 2011. I bought an Australian Ford Falcon ute, sight unseen, from Los Angeles Craigslist, over lunch, while at work on a Wednesday in Farmington Hills, Michigan. On Friday, my co-worker Andrew and I left for LAX with plans to drive it home. Andrew kept track of pace notes with my commentary reproduced here in italics. In the last installment, we described how after dozens of mini-breakdowns in desert heat, our hoodless XE Falcon got as far as Cadillac Ranch. Covered in sweat and grime, we were in desperate need of rinsing off.
As a reminder, my friend calls me “Fireball” at this point in our friendship. So continues Andrew’s road diary:
1215 miles in: We are now in Weatherford, Oklahoma. We are stopped at a gas station for our standard haul: water, fuel, bathroom, rinse-off, snacks, and Gatorade.
The first people we talk to are a carload of Australians. They are in Oklahoma for some conference but are spending their downtime looking for parts for a ’40 Ford and ’57 Chevy. They are more than excited to meet Fireball and pore over the Roo Chaser. The Aussies confirm that the $4500 Fireball paid was a good price, as most of the XE Falcons Down Under had rusted away or been crushed amid spikes in metal prices.
After that, we meet some locals. One larger man says that we needed to get “water glass” to put in the radiator to fix the head gasket problem. Further research suggests it’s also called sodium something (M: sodium silicate) or other—the stuff they put in the oil of the Cash for Clunkers cars to destroy the engines.
The toothless man we speak to next says that the only reason he can’t install head gaskets for us is that his wife had just twins. He is pouring stop-leak into his Chrysler K-Car, which also needs a head gasket. He too recognizes the Roo Chaser’s Falcon bones, claiming to have once seen the XF model that was built to run Baja back in the ’80s. Another bearded local gentleman gets out of a ’70s Dodge conversion van, hobbles over to us, and occasionally interjects bits into the conversation about country methods for fixing head gaskets. With more than enough advice and unserious offers to fix the Cleveland V-8, are were off.
1275 miles in: We see wildfires in Eastern Oklahoma, which explain the air’s incredible haziness. It looks almost like the sky does right before a tornado. Very eerie.
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1300 miles in: (M: While I piloted the right-hand-drive Roo, Andrew was passing the time and cooling off by gauging motorists’ reactions to him hanging his feet out the window, on the “driver’s” side of the car, while texting at the same time.)
1330 miles in: (M: We were just getting to Oklahoma City, Garth Brooks’ hometown of Yukon, and I was driving. Traffic wasn’t too bad, but there was construction that slowed us down, and the Roo Chaser decided that it wanted to overheat again.)
We’ve been seeing signs that I-44 is a toll road. That makes us nervous because stopping makes overheating much worse. We fill up with water on the side of the road, as usual, and keep rolling. We find a state park between Oklahoma City and Tulsa that looks like a good place to take a bath in the lake and grill out our brats.
1400 miles in: (M: Andrew is driving when two young ladies in a Honda CR-V pulled up behind us and linger in our wake. After several miles, they drove up alongside us and held out a sign that reads, “Say No To Drugs,” written in Sharpie. Given that we had three-day beards, hadn’t showered in as much time, had a car full of garbage, and were carrying a hood tied to a tailgate painted with a psychedelic mural, complete with tow straps and underwear… I couldn’t argue their point. They flipped the sign over and wrote, “How far to Vegas?” I motioned that I didn’t know, and they took off.
1440 miles in: At toll booth #1, I see the signs. I think about going through the I-Pass lane, despite not having a transponder, because we have only a temporary tag in the window and the camera probably won’t pick up. Cooler heads prevail, and I ultimately obey the law by entering the cash lane.
Matt wakes up to pay the toll, and as we roll into the toll booth, the car dies. After paying the toll, I tried to fire up the Roo Chaser. Crank-crank-crank-vrooooom-die….Crank-crank-crank-vrooooom-die….Crank-crank-crank-vrooooom-die…
The toll booth lady shouts, “come on BetsieQ!” Crank-crank-crank-POOF… a large cloud of fuel vapor blasts out of the air filter. This time I push the gas pedal way down, to make sure it doesn’t die again. Crank-crank-crank-VROOOOOOOOM! I’m holding it at about 4000 rpm and the toll station lady is looking confused. Angry, scared, perturbed, thankful that the car is running—we are all experiencing every emotion.
I go to drop it in gear and hit reverse. Tires squawk and we lunge backward before I slam it into drive. The Roo Chaser is still running and I’m powerbraking it like mad. From our weird car with no hood, right-hand drive, carrying two dirty-looking guys, Fireball yowls out the window, “Off to Detroit!” and we take off, leaving the toll booth lady in a cloud of putrid exhaust. I laugh that harder than I have in a long time.
1480 miles in: At toll booth #2, we begin exiting the interstate to go to the state park for our lake bath and grill-out. I am not going to let the Roo Chaser die again, so I keep on the gas as we approach. The engine cuts in and out. VROOOM—die-die-die—VROOOOM—die-die-die—VROOOM… The sound is very strange, an almost synchronous stalling of the engine.
When I am about 50 feet from the toll booth, I figure I’ll kick the transmission into neutral and coast in. Minor wrinkle: The shifter in this thing is far from stock and doesn’t work well. You really have no idea what gear you are in and it doesn’t shift predictably at all. I hit reverse and light the back tires up again. Obviously not ideal. So I try to go back to drive. I’m powerbraking it at the toll booth and Fireball’s trying to take care of the money situation. The toll booth operates curiously; the attendant actually asks for our receipt from the last stop to give us a refund. I don’t what’s going on started to take off as soon as Matt gives the ticket to the lady. The Roo Chaser is asking for more water before we make it too far from the toll plaza, so we pull over and refill again—enough time for me to walk back and collect our $1.50.
1490 miles in: I discover what is causing the synchronous stalling as I am getting ready to turn left onto a back road. When I have the brake pedal depressed and use the turn signal, the car stalls every time the turn signal bulbs are lit. From then on, the only turn signal I use is a verbal beep-boop-beep-boop under my breath. The car runs just fine.
As soon as we pull into a camping spot at the park—nearly 30 miles off the highway—a park ranger approaches us. He asks if we are spending the night. “Great,” I think “we just got here and are now getting kicked out.” Not the case. He simply informs us that the water was broken and tells us to enjoy our break from the open road. He even lets us grill out, despite the fire ban that’s in effect in Texas and Oklahoma amid the wildfires. Awesome!
Dinner is great. A cold beer has never tasted so good. The campers about 200 yards away from us are listening to Patsy Cline and square dancing. It was an awesome soundtrack to our cookout. After a beer, go down to check out the lake and take stock of any copperheads around the water. We discover that the water is not so deep, but the mud is much deeper. I wash up with hotel bar soap, standing up to my knees in mud, with only about 12 inches of water sitting above it. Horrible as it sounds, the swamp bath is, truly, amazing.
1610 miles in: Time for more fuel and water. We are somewhere around Springfield, Missouri. I am getting pretty tired, so Fireball takes the wheel.
1744 miles in: We pull over on the shoulder of an exit ramp to swap seats. When I go to drive away, something seems amiss. “We might be high-centered here,” Fireball says. I drove about a foot and stop, stuck. I try reverse—nothing.
Looking underneath, I see that the shock and spring perch are sitting on the pavement and the right rear tire is not on the ground. We try prying and pushing and breaking pavement out and everything else imaginable. Finally, we decide that getting sticks or boards or something is the only option left. We have no floor jack. I find a 2×4 that is propping up a street sign and snag it. We hammer it under the tire and Fireball is able to maneuver the Roo Chaser out of its predicament and back onto the pavement.
After all this monkeying around, it is time for yet another water refill.
1830 miles in: We are getting low on fuel, Fireball is out cold, and the Roo Chaser is not asking for water… which is strange. I pul off at an exit to get gas, finding the station closed. It is about 5:30 in the morning. This is not a normal get-off-for-fuel exit with a station within sight, so we have to cruise around on back roads to get back on the interstate. Fireball wakes up during this process and he is surprised (as am I) that the Roo Chaser hasn’t started overheating yet. When we do get fuel, the cooling system only wants about 1.5 quarts of water, and the overflow does not have much water in it.
Maybe the head gaskets… fixed themselves? Maybe someone put some “water glass” in the radiator when we weren’t looking? I let Fireball drive, because I am wiped. As I fall asleep I start dreaming about the lack of coolant consumption; I imaginine people coming up behind us while we are driving and injecting sodium silicate into a coolant port in the rear bumper. Crazy stuff. It sounds ridiculous when I tell Fireball about it, but I’m not entirely sure it didn’t happen.
2090 miles in: More fuel and water. This time the engine consumed water but didn’t blow any into the overflow. Fireball is beat again so I take over driving.
2250 miles in: We barely make it to exit 157 in Indiana, running on fumes. We are feeling pretty good about the trip at this juncture, almost back to Michigan with no major scars. Neither of us dare speak of our success thus far, for fear of spoiling our good fortune.
We cap off the drive by taking a nice backroad from I-69 to I-94, unwinding a bit and saving some distance on the highway. We top off with one more water fill-up just before the airport, where my car is parked. All I can think about is my current distance from a hot shower. It is near.
2305 miles in: (M: The car rolled up to my driveway in Ann Arbor, which was completely packed with tailgaters for the University of Michigan football game. I found a spot to park the car and poured myself out of it, immediately bombarded with questions and offers of beer. I accept the latter and enjoy the suds in the shower: a perfectly refreshing end to an unbelievable—and unbelievably lucky—adventure. Long live the Roo Chaser!
All in all, the trip was completed in 48 hours of driving, door to door. Ten hours outside that window were spent either eating, sleeping, contemplating, or fixing the car. Total budget for the trip: about $800.
To say the least, the trip was epic. It was also formative. The slapdash, seat-of-our-pants nature of it set the stage for many future adventures that you’re still reading about here at Against All Oddities.
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Matthew Anderson is a North Carolina native, professional engineer, car storage landlord, and devoted crapcan connoisseur. He owns a Holden, a Citroën, a Hobby 600 camper, a Moskvich, a Studebaker, an Isuzu, and he thinks that’s it. We don’t ask him too many follow-up questions. –EW
How did the color of the front clip continuously change throughout the trip pictures? Not challenging that it happened*, just curious how you did it!
* At this point, I’m pretty much open to believing ANYTHING about this car and this trip…
That minivan/SUV thing in the driveway doesn’t exactly look circa 2011 so I’m guessing some modern shots were sprinkled in
Mmmm, probably correct. Maybe we’ll learn more in Part 3.
All valid points! The nose swap is part of a future article for sure. Given it was was long ago, I lost many of my photos and had to add some color from as late as 2018.
This tale has me hankering for a road trip again. I may have to buy something on the West Coast this summer and drive it home.
I had a similar road trip experience picking up a F250 from Petaluma, CA and getting it back to just outside of San Antonio.
Fun road trip. I bet the right hand drive setup gave lots of people some concern with the feet out the window. Road trips are fun. A car with some “issues” and making it to the end still running feels like you just won the war.
One of the few writers left on any sight that I literally drop what I’m doing to read the minute I see a new article.
Agree!!
Really happy you like it. Matt will be here every other Wednesday as long he wants to be. Editing and publishing the environmentally hazardous stuff that oozes from his brain is a real pleasure.
This is probably the best compliment I have ever received on my writing. THANK YOU!
Okay, okay, Matthew, get your head down outta the clouds and get busy sending us Part 3…
I am in agreement with the above.
Your flair for writing and the awesome stories always steer me to your article first!
This entire trip was a terrible idea, and it sounds like something I would have done in the 90’s. Reminds me of me and my college roommate pulling a Chevy conversion van over the I-10 bridge in Baton Rouge with a green 70’s Corolla wagon because the van blew it’s head gasket. Surprisingly, we did not die.
That driveway shot is hilarious! There is no way of knowing that it’s not Australia. The 100 series, the cx5 and the outback are just as Australian as the other 3. We call that style of house a Californian Bungalow and it’s quite a common style in early last century. The only give away is the EB falcon and the VL are parked on the wrong side of the street for RHD – a bookable offence here in aus.