Buick Le Sabre near The Grand Staircase, Utah

What’s that noise? I opened the hood. The serpentine belt was fraying –Ah, heck, I should be able to fix that. Hmm, it looks like the reason it is deteriorating is because coolant is leaking onto it from somewhere. I check the web for possible solutions. It turns out the upper intake manifold in this engine is notorious for failing every 60 k miles and leaking coolant in all sorts of inappropriate places — I guess it makes sense, a stock feature of an old man’s car would be prostate problems . Anyway, the cure is to update it with better designed parts. Well, this is a little more  of a repair than I was thinking I wanted to do,

Point Reyes, CA

….but, because it is a common problem, there are some very detailed instructions on how to do it available on the web. One upper intake manifold, one lower intake manifold, water pump, timing chain cover, fuel injectors, spark plug wires, oil pan gasket, etc, etc, and one serpentine belt — and two years later, I got it back together. Miracle of miracles, it started right up! Only problem is, it only wants to run at 3500 rpm — putting it in gear doesn’t seem like a good idea. Back to the web — it’s gotta be a vacuum leak, but I can’t find it. I talk to a repair guy in town, he says it has to be a vacuum leak as well. I try various methods every now and then for six months trying to find it. I call AAA and have them tow it to the shop. It wasn’t a vacuum leak. A couple of new sensors and $480 to the repair shop later, the car is finally back on the road.
So, what does this have to do with photography, you may ask. For five years, my old buddy George Daly and I covered over 100 k miles of the Western US in this car and I was shooting thousands of pictures along the way. It is a great road car, very comfortable and  with six cylinders, gets better mileage than my  four cylinder Toyota Tacoma.  I was getting 30 mpg on a regular basis and got as much a 34. I’m looking forward to some new photo expeditions in this car. I’m sure George will be smiling down on us.

George Daly at Mt Rushmore