A number of people have asked me what stuff I had Tom Smurzynski at Unique Fabricating do on my Atom.

There were a bunch of separate projects. Not everything got completed because of my fixed schedule for picking up the Atom, so some things are still in the works and Tom will be sending them along in due time.

First, the clutch was replaced with the LNF-based 19212712 high-performance clutch upgrade kit. That’s a new clutch, pressure plate, and throwout bearing. Tom also installed a new flywheel while he was in there. The old clutch was fine, but given that it wasn’t rated for 300HP while the 19212712 kit is, it seemed a reasonable thing to do pro-actively. Tom wasn’t happy with the way the pressure plate mounted (he felt there could be vibration issues), so after talking to GM Performance he made some special guide sleeves to achieve a perfect balance:

Next, he removed the A-arms and replaced the urethane bushing inserts with spherical bearings. That sounds simple, but is a bit more complex than it seems. This change means that the suspension actually has travel, instead of jumping from one point to another. On stock Brammo Atoms, if you lift the nose up, it stays up. This fixes that problem by vastly reducing stiction in the suspension. This picture is from the middle of the process, before painting:

Then he modified the thermostat housing and thermostat. A stock Atom has a loop of rubber hose (under heat tape) where the coolant line comes out of the thermostat housing and goes right back in. This is where the passenger compartment heater core connects in a regular car, but serves no purpose in an Atom. With things being so tight in the Atom engine area, this hose is exposed to a lot of heat from the exhaust header and over time can degrade and fail. Tom modified the thermostat housing to eliminate this loop by machining a channel inside the housing casting. He also drilled a series of small holes in the thermostat itself to let a little coolant (and a lot of air) flow past the thermostat when it is closed. This makes filling the cooling system and purging air a lot easier.

The last major project was having all of the suspension components magnetically inspected for hidden flaws. Since the car was completely torn down, this was quite easy. The only issue found was that one alignment thimble had a microscopic fracture. As a precautionary measure, all 6 were replaced with new ones from TMI. Here’s a picture of the car disassembled for inspection:

On reassembly, most hardware was replaced with new pieces rather than individually testing and inspecting each nut and bolt. The wheel bearings and studs were also pro-actively replaced, though the removed ones showed no sign of wear. All of the rubber hoses were pro-actively replaced with new ones, along with the Nylon fittings for the intercooler radiator.

As always, there were things along my route that I didn’t get to see – whether they were planned, big parts of my trip like Yellowstone, or smaller things I thought would be cool to visit. Each night, if I wasn’t too tired, I’d look through the “Area Attractions” display at the hotels and see if there was anything nearby that would be fun to see – that’s how I found the Pioneer Auto Show, for example.

There is always a bunch of other literature in those racks as well. There’s usually one for every “factory outlet” within 500 miles, as well as for the more oddball attractions, like “World’s largest ball of paint“. Sometimes I’d grab a couple of those for humor value. Here’s one attraction I decided to pass on – the official SPAM Museum:

I got into New York a little after 7 PM. Weather was great the whole way, though it got a bit chilly as the sun was setting. Total mileage now stands at 33,411. I haven’t unpacked the car yet, just parked it in the garage. I got a lot of comments from Tiger about going away and having my friend HJ take care of her for nearly a month.

Stay tuned for a surprise announcement in the next week or two…

Today was a beautiful, warm day in Dayton, Ohio. Still no sign of Nastassja Kinski, though the black leopard sightings continue…

As I drove through the center of Ohio, it got colder and darker, with lots of clouds overhead. By the time I got to eastern Ohio, I was driving through a light rain mist, and there was standing water on the shoulder of the highway. As I crossed through West Virginia and into Pennsylvania, the skies got even darker – everybody was driving with their headlights on – and lightning was visible in the clouds a few miles to the north.

So I decided to stop a little sooner than I had planned, in Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania. Of course, by the time I’d checked into the hotel, schlepped all of my luggage up to the room, and parked the Atom and got the cover on it, the clouds were parting and the sun was peeking out. It figures…

Anyway, this leaves me with 350 miles to go to New York City, and I’m going to try to do all of that on Wednesday – it’d be silly to stay somewhere when I’m only 50 miles from home or so. It is supposed to be sunny and in the 70’s the whole way to New York, so that should be good.

I decided to stay in Dayton another night, since the weather to the east is still poor. There’s a 40% chance of rain in western Pennsylvania on Tuesday, but that’s down from 100% today.

I spent the day wandering around in Mendelson’s. Unfortunately, while that is a great place to wander around and discover stuff, it is a lot less useful if you’re looking for something in particular. The pricing is also rather odd – some things are incredibly inexpensive, while others are way overpriced.

On the TV news tonight, the lead story was that there is another black leopard loose in the woods north of Dayton. It was spotted today about a mile south of the hotel I’m staying at. I can’t find a news story about today’s sighting, but here and here are some articles about previous sightings. According to one article, “…the leopard could have been among the leopard cubs sold at an uncredited zoo and rescue facility in Mount Hope, Ohio, about five or six years ago”. It probably won’t turn back into Nastassja Kinski, though.

The last few days, I’ve gotten stuck in huge construction traffic jams caused by “Oversize Load” trucks getting stuck in spots they have no place being in the first place.

Each state requires an Oversize/Overweight Load Permit for excessively wide and/or heavy vehicles to travel on that state’s part of the Interstate Highway System. Normally the permit will spell out the route being permitted, along with requirements for pilot vehicles. You’ve almost certainly seen those – usually pickup trucks with a huge “Oversize Load” banner, flashing lights, and a 14-foot (or taller) pole they use to detect undeclared low bridges. So much for the background…

The other day, it was in Peoria, just before the Illinois River bridge. Construction had traffic down to a single lane where the Interstate dipped down under an overpass. Which was all well and good, until an Oversize Load truck carrying a 120-foot-long wind turbine blade got stuck under the overpass. The truck made it down into the dip just fine, but when the road began to rise on the other side of the overpass, things came to a screeching halt with loads of sparks and pieces of overpass as both ends of the blade tried to achieve an elevation higher than the overpass.

Today, also on I-74, there was construction west of Indianapolis as they’ve decided to move Interstate 465 (the loop around Indianapolis) somewhere else. This apparently is a further refinement of the moving of the airport that they were doing last year.

This was well-marked for miles ahead of time, with many signs that said “Loads over 10′ 6″ must use next exit” and so forth. As traffic crawled for several miles, I saw what I thought was causing the delay – a tractor trailer with an “Oversize Load” banner stopped in the left (only) lane, with people milling around in confusion. It seemed to be some sort of air handler device for cooling an office building, and was signed as 12′ wide. As traffic slowly drove around it, there was another one stopped a few hundred yards ahead of it. That wasn’t it either – as traffic split left for I-465 north and right for I-465 south, there was a third one, wedged tightly between the concrete barriers of the I-465 north ramp.

Note the completely useless pilot vehicle between the first and second trucks:

Here is the third truck, wedged between the concrete barriers:

Now, Microsoft Streets & Trips (which I use to pre-plan my driving for the following day) lists these construction areas. In fact, the Indianapolis one has been listed in the S&T construction database since before the start of 2011. Presumably, both the truck drivers and the permit-assigning people have access to at least that level of construction information. And it isn’t like there were no signs in either case… Given that the cost of a single wind turbine blade of this size starts at a quarter million dollars and goes up from there, you’d think they’d take more care with the things.

Other random observations, mostly from out West:

It seems that something like 20% of the vehicles have cracked windshields, ranging from a simple diagonal crack to ones resembling spiderwebs. Being low down in an Atom gives me a unique viewpoint, and the cracks are very noticeable.

A surprisingly large number of passengers ride with their feet up on the dashboard. That doesn’t seem like a particularly wise thing to do, given the possibility of an accident. Either the leg bones are going to go through their torsos if the vehicle accordions, or they’re going to wind up with an ankle embedded in their skull if the airbag deploys.

From Oregon through South Dakota, there were a fair number of hitchhikers on the sides of roads. I thought that went out of favor in the early 80’s? Perhaps it has something to do with the economy… Once I got into Iowa, I didn’t see any more. There was a “Picking up hitchhikers prohibited” sign in Iowa that may have something to do with it. That doesn’t compare to the “Hitchhikers may be escaping inmates” sign that I saw in Kansas last year, though.

This morning at 5 AM at the Danville Hampton from Hell, I was awakened by the conga line starting up again upstairs and doors slamming across the hall, just like last night. Bleary-eyed, I wandered down to the front desk to complain. They just said they’d refund my stay if I wanted. Maybe it helped that at the same time I was dealing with the front desk, several young children were running around un-supervised. One yanked the house phone out of the wall while another was prying signs off the walls, while several more were running amok in the breakfast area, knocking stuff over, while the staff was trying to set up for breakfast. The hotel must be really desperate for guests if they’re willing to put up with all that. Anyway, this was the first time I’ve ever asked for my money back at a Hampton Inn, and I’ve been using them for years and am a Gold rewards member.

Anyway, after a very cold day I made it to Dayton, Ohio. That’s only a little over 200 miles from where I started in Danville, but it was a grueling drive. Even with a sweatshirt, knit wool sweater, a jacket and a winter coat on top of that, it was bitterly cold. The sky was overcast and the air was damp, which just made the chill worse. When I arrived in Dayton, the temperature had made it up to a whopping 48 degrees. I got a room for 2 nights (at another Hampton Inn, presumably much more civilized).

Sunday is supposed to be 56 degrees here in Dayton, but Monday should be 65. The weather forecasts to the east are currently quite bad – Washington, PA (western edge of PA) is supposed to be rainy and cold through Tuesday night, and so on. I’ll have to decide what I’m going to do, as driving the last 600 miles to New York in cold rain is not my idea of fun.