The Full Story (Denver
to SF Road Trip)
| To: gti-vr6@cobra.ccsi.com Subject: [gti-vr6] In other news. SF Road Trip (long) Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 01:52:03 -0600 From: Ian Frechette <frechett@rintintin.colorado.edu> You might have caught Kurt's post, but here are some details. Here's the short pictoral form: http://www.houseofthud.com/home/sftrip/sftrip.htm Here's the story. Kurt has moved to the bay area and he had a very short interval of time to get down there. He asked if anyone wanted to make the trip with him, and I volunteered. Other than helping him out, I also wanted to get back onto those cool fast and/or twisty roads in Utah which I'd covered last year coming back from LA, and I wanted to know what it was like to drive the Shine SRS suspension cross country on less than optimal surfaces. Colorado - Barney leaves us a present We left Denver at 5:30 pm Tuesday after waiting all day for the movers to get everything packed up. We rolled into Grand Junction CO, 300 miles to the West on I-70 exactly 4 hours later. Barney, Kurt's dog looked pretty calm and relaxed right up to the moment he puked on his blanket in the back seat while coming down from Vail Pass. From then on, I think we worked out what the warning signs were and managed to open a window and let Barney stick his head out any time he got queazy. He was a real trooper the rest of the trip. Utah - The fast bits. We spent the night in Grand Junction, and got up before the sun Wednesday and hit the road. An hour or so down I-70 we turned south onto SR24 and headed toward Hanksville. At 7:30-8 am in the morning this road is completely devoid of traffic. We could go 15-20 miles without seeing another car. It's also pretty much devoid of large animals and such as it's desert country. Cresting a little rise where we could see down the road for 5 miles into the distance, I tell Kurt, "punch it". The P-flow made a tremendous roar and the car eased on up over 120.. 130.. and creeped up on 140.. 141.. 143.. 145.. 146. All the while, I'm holding my camera just over Kurt's right shoulder taking one picture after another. The digital camera has a 5 second refresh cycle so I'm like.. "keep it going.. need another.. *click*.. wait.. hang on.. one more.. one more.. keep going... *click*." http://www.houseofthud.com/home/sftrip/spdo145.jpg |
| GTI-VR6 Content: We
noticed something about the SRS during this phase. While the car felt very solid, as in, not floaty, following the large road variations and curves with a real sense of control, it was also SMOOOOOOTH as glass at 145 mph. This is significant, in that we discovered that the SRS feels more tightly sprung at lower speeds. In other words, it soaks up rapid variations in the road better than slower heaves so on the same surface it was much smoother at 110-140 than it is at 75-80. More about SRS later. Utah - The slow bits Following 24, we went though Hanksville, turned West and headed into Capitol Reef National Park, which is increadible looking canyon country. At one point it crosses over to what's called the Devil's Backbone where you're driving on the knife edge of a ridge top no wider than the road with several hundred foot dropoffs on either side. That's followed by 13% grades and twisty cliff roads, then more canyons, Dixie National Forest, Bryce Canyon, and every possible shade of red, orange, and yellow rock imaginable. After that was SR 12 which was more of the same and somewhere in here Kurt got bored with the scenery and started lusting after long open highway. Utah - The long open bits We met up with SR89 and took it over to I-15 and then after a brief debate about whether to follow a little road or take a bigger boring road, I won and we took the small road. Utah SR 21 runs from I-15 diagonally up to meet Highway 50 just inside Nevada. This is where Kurt first experienced truly mind boggling distances. Where you'd come into a shallow valley and the road would run 5-10 miles into the distance finally disappearing somewhere in the heat mirages, and then appearing as a tiny hairline running, what appeared to be steeply up the next mountain range 15-20 miles away. Of course when we got down there, the road was in fact very gradually rising up out of the valley. Crest the next small mountain range and repeat scene from before. Kurt liked this road a lot. Nevada - The Loneliest Road in America We met up with Highway 50, described as "The Loneliest Road in America" set the cruise control at 100mph and left it there for most of the way across Nevada. 50 has many of the same straight stretches as 21 did but it's also punctuated by pretty good sized mountain ranges which supply some fun twisty roads and elevation changes which keep you from getting bored for long. We roll into Reno at about 6pm, gas up and decide to push on to SF. The Valentine 1 pays for itself. Over the Sierras and down toward Sacramento. As we're approaching civilization (after having passed umpteen hundreds of cars, including a white minivan that didn't want to pull over), we're dropping down off the mountain and the V-1 starts going wild. *BLARP* *BLARP* *BLARP*BLARP*BLARBLARBLARBLARP* Kurt hits the brakes and a few seconds later I see a car hiding incredibly well, way up off to the side of the road behind a fence. He couldn't get to the road, but he was radaring folks. 20 seconds later we spot a patrol car in the other lane just sitting on the shoulder and just about the time Kurt is thinking about getting back on the gas, the V-1 starts up slowly this time. But now it's from the rear, and it's getting stronger. 3 seconds later that annoying white minivan comes flying by doing about 85. *whoosh*.. V-1 gets more insistent. 15 seconds later a white, mostly unmarked trooper comes by doing about 95. *WHOOSH*.. Half mile later, he's got the minivan pulled over. That put a big smile on Kurt's face, to be sure. |
| Sacramento - Kurt finally gets
his fix We cruise past Sacramento where Kurt immediately calls everyone he can think of on his cell phone while we're driving. We'd been out of sprint coverage from Glenwood Springs, CO all the way to Sacramento so Kurt was in SERIOUS withdrawl. Kurt discovers what he had lost in Colorado. Somewhere around here Kurt also finds out what it's like to gain back 30 horsepower from the drop in elevation. He discovers that 5th is actually pretty damn useful, 4th is the "break their spirit" gear and 3rd is best left for those moments when you want to disappear so fast people behind you see a red shift. Kurt would tromp on the throttle, and after a few seconds of the sound of the P-flow blocking out the world, he'd look down at the speedo, let off and grin like he'd just got some and needed a cigarette. Fin. We rolled down to SF, over the bridge and down 280 to Cupertino where Kurt's staying at about 9pm. All told we covered 1100 miles Wednesday in 15 hours. Thursday, we run up to SF which was foggy, windy and cold (while San Jose was sunny, warm and hot), and do a quick tour which included a car wash to take the first 1/4" layer of bugs off the car, and a trip up to see Golden Gate Park and the bridge. After that we drove back down south, and Kurt dumped me at the airport where I caught a flight back at 5:50pm, and covered the entire 1400 miles of the trip we'd just driven in 1 hour and 57 minutes. Friday, I take my mom to dinner and a theatre performance for her birthday and hit a deer on the way home at night (relatively low speed, deer ran off), doing untold hundreds of dollars of damage to the GTI. Well, that was my week. Top that. Once again. Short pictoral. http://www.houseofthud.com/home/sftrip/sftrip.htm ian P.S. I said I'd get back to SRS. Driving 280 and 101 between SF and San Jose a couple times the SRS was not what I'd call smooth. It never bottoms of course but you feel the big road heaves and expansion joints hard. I'd really like to take the same road on a couple other suspensions (stock and otherwise) to compare before I pass final judgement. I suspect the stock suspension would have been a little smoother but somewhat unsettled. Stock plus Bilsteins would probably have been nice. I'm thinking about trying Uwe's Shine Lite setup, because I spend plenty of time on roads like that in Wyoming and Montana each year. 98 GTI-VR6 (long long week edition) -- For info on: how to subscribe & unsubscribe, the list's tech/how-to library, etc. see: http://www.gti-vr6.net/ |
