I had a little time on Saturday to try and get together with Bennett between advent activities, so I threw some tools in the Scout and headed over to his storage lot. His plan was to get the Hudson running smoothly enough to swap it out for his other vehicle and drive it back to his house, which is only about 2 miles away. The last time he’d run the car he had some issues with the carb, so we got to work testing it to see what the issue was. We narrowed the culprit down to the accelerator pump and commenced to pulling the top half of it off; it’s an Edelbrock copy of an AFB carb so a lot of it was familiar to me from working on the FiL’s Chrysler unit. We spent a good bit of time trying to get the check ball out of the accelerator circuit with some duct tape and a dental pick. When we’d gotten those out he blew the lines out with carb cleaner and we reassembled the whole thing. Working with the idle linkage we got the engine to run a little better, but it was still very rough compared to how it ran in the summertime. He felt good enough about it to make the journey home, so we strategized our strategy and set to work.
I backed up to his trailer and pulled it out so that he could drive the Hudson off and swap it with his Scout. The Hudson was bucking and fighting him so he had to tinker with the idle circuit a couple of times, but it still wanted to jerk into gear or lock the brakes on him almost immediately. I walked back to his truck to put his glasses on his toolbox, and as I turned around I was horrified to see him rolling away on the ground from the Hudson as it took off backwards in a lazy circle on its own, the driver’s door open. I could only watch as it glanced off the tow hitch of one camper and then the door collected the next one in line, pinning the car in place as it bent the door backwards on its hinges. Bennett couldn’t get into the driver’s side so I threw open the passenger’s side door and killed the engine with the key.
After making sure he was OK (I thought for sure he’d been partially run over, but he’d just slipped on wet leaves as he was running to jump inside) we assessed the damage. The door is pretty well fucked; the tongue of the trailer was driven directly into the window crank and pushed the whole thing forward and down. We tried to take it off at the hinges, but the 70 year old Phillips-head bolts didn’t budge, even with my impact driver. So he pushed it forward a bit and I put my Hi-Lift jack underneath to try and lift it back to where it would line up with the opening. We got it closer to being closed but it’s basically trashed.
Reassessing our options, we set about reversing what we’d just done and pulled the Scout back off the trailer to make way for the wayward Hudson. With the idle being so sketchy and the brakes locking at every touch, I suggested we use the winch to get it all the way up, and Bennett agreed. With that complete he backed the trailer into the spot with the practiced ease of a man who’s dragged old cars out of fields for 30+ years. We secured the car with tarps and a cover, made sure everything was chocked down good, and headed for home.
By this point it was fully dark—the solstice was yesterday—so I was a little alarmed to see him slow down right after leaving the lot, get out, and start futzing with the lights on his truck. It turned out his headlights had cut out and he had two miles of very dark roads to navigate. After messing with the fuse block and main light switch to no effect, we decided he would follow me back to his house and we’d hope the cops weren’t paying attention.
Luckily they weren’t, and he made it back home without a present from Johnny Law. I aimed Peer Pressure for our house and was lucky to avoid major holiday traffic. I’m noticing, however, the telltale signs of what I think are another exhaust leak. It’s been getting louder and louder the last couple of weeks; I’m going to have to hunt down which side it’s on and see what’s happening over the break.
