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Flashlight Enthusiast
I saw this thing for sale on St. Louis craigslist. The last year of the glorious B-body, before it was replaced by the SUV. Something hit me and I decided I just had to have it. Even though it was about 900 miles away. Probably crazy. But I went anyway.
Tons of mods, too much to list, beginning with engine cam and gears and internals too. An Impala-zed wagon. All the goodies, 5.7L LT1 motor, fast ratio gear box and stuff.
The idea was to fly there and drive back. I got a dirt cheap plane ticket, 90 FRNs.
The planning phase began, I pondered which one of my Malkoffs I should take with me. I had visions of the lights going out in the plane and me bravely navigating the plane back to the airport and the landing strip with the mighty Malkoff M60L. I took a dozen spare cells with me and even more AA Lithium cells for the GPS I had constantly on.
Anyway, the trip itself turned into a nightmare, kind of. The first flight was fine but the connecting flight got canceled. Weather problems in St. Louis, I heard reports of tornado. I hanged out for a while on the floor of the airport, then after 2 hours they canceled the flight. They did have another one through Atlanta, I got on it and it was something from Final Destination. Horrible weather, the plane bouncing up and down. I think I saw lighting or maybe it was that flashing bulb on the wing. At one time it dived down so hard I jumped in my seat and felt weightless for a second - scary.
I wondered what the people on that collapsed French flight felt, when it went down last year. I wondered if I should have called my wife and told her where I buried the coin. Come to think of it, nobody knows and a little accident like that will ensure they won't find it for a long time, if ever.
This is the first flight, the 2nd one was nowhere near as nice.
Anyway, did not get a chance to use my lite. No exciting accidents, no blackouts, no tornadoes, no TSHTF and I never dropped anything in the dark. Actually the only lite related problem was, the lite in the hotel bathroom burned out and I was showering with the lite pointed at the wall. That's about it. Of course you never know, driving a car you just picked up 900 miles through the mountains of West Virginia, in the night.
That too was rather uneventful other than it would have been much nicer during the day and without rain and fog - it rained the entire trip non-stop.
3.73 gears in that wagon are way too steep. Fast as the devil in the city driving but entirely too high RPMs on the highway. I think I was turning 2700 at 70+. the gas mileage reflected that, I think I got close to 18mpg. It does need alignment badly so that might have contributed.
I think I am going to swap gears for 3.23 which is the lowest gear I can tolerate but it's also rather snappy, maybe then I will hit 21MPG. I hear that the difference between 3.08 and 3.73 is about 3MPG which is huge for a wagon that doesn't get good MPG to begin with. With a pretty tall 2.56 gears that some of them came with, I heard reports of 24-25MPG on the highway but it's a total dog in the city plus towing is impossible with anything under 3.23 rear gear ratio.
These low gears like 3.73 or 4.10 are great in pickup trucks. Or else in 6-speed sports cars like Camaro but not 4speed autos. If I had to drive on the highway with 4.10, I would lose my mind, the thing is entirely too noisy.
The only other thing that annoyed me to no end was my stupid smart phone, that thing went through batteries like I go through Kleenex. It always does it but this time it was even worse. Maybe it got bad reception up there and discharged. The Garmin GPS was the same way. I kept track of where I was with it. Very cool tool and a must-have, of these " I wonder how I ever lived without GPS". I had some Eneloops with me. I noticed that after a while, it was constantly dropping the connection. I would put in fresh cells and it worked better. The higher voltage of L91 would have worked much better. I had it in the NiMH setting but even if the cell is not discharged, should replace it anyway. Weird. Anyway.
It got me pretty accurate readings on speed, man what a scary thing it is to land at 165MPH. The top speed of it was something like 550MPH and the altitude was 9KM... well, for my some reason it couldn't get an accurate reading.
Tons of mods, too much to list, beginning with engine cam and gears and internals too. An Impala-zed wagon. All the goodies, 5.7L LT1 motor, fast ratio gear box and stuff.
The idea was to fly there and drive back. I got a dirt cheap plane ticket, 90 FRNs.
The planning phase began, I pondered which one of my Malkoffs I should take with me. I had visions of the lights going out in the plane and me bravely navigating the plane back to the airport and the landing strip with the mighty Malkoff M60L. I took a dozen spare cells with me and even more AA Lithium cells for the GPS I had constantly on.
Anyway, the trip itself turned into a nightmare, kind of. The first flight was fine but the connecting flight got canceled. Weather problems in St. Louis, I heard reports of tornado. I hanged out for a while on the floor of the airport, then after 2 hours they canceled the flight. They did have another one through Atlanta, I got on it and it was something from Final Destination. Horrible weather, the plane bouncing up and down. I think I saw lighting or maybe it was that flashing bulb on the wing. At one time it dived down so hard I jumped in my seat and felt weightless for a second - scary.
I wondered what the people on that collapsed French flight felt, when it went down last year. I wondered if I should have called my wife and told her where I buried the coin. Come to think of it, nobody knows and a little accident like that will ensure they won't find it for a long time, if ever.
This is the first flight, the 2nd one was nowhere near as nice.
Anyway, did not get a chance to use my lite. No exciting accidents, no blackouts, no tornadoes, no TSHTF and I never dropped anything in the dark. Actually the only lite related problem was, the lite in the hotel bathroom burned out and I was showering with the lite pointed at the wall. That's about it. Of course you never know, driving a car you just picked up 900 miles through the mountains of West Virginia, in the night.
That too was rather uneventful other than it would have been much nicer during the day and without rain and fog - it rained the entire trip non-stop.
3.73 gears in that wagon are way too steep. Fast as the devil in the city driving but entirely too high RPMs on the highway. I think I was turning 2700 at 70+. the gas mileage reflected that, I think I got close to 18mpg. It does need alignment badly so that might have contributed.
I think I am going to swap gears for 3.23 which is the lowest gear I can tolerate but it's also rather snappy, maybe then I will hit 21MPG. I hear that the difference between 3.08 and 3.73 is about 3MPG which is huge for a wagon that doesn't get good MPG to begin with. With a pretty tall 2.56 gears that some of them came with, I heard reports of 24-25MPG on the highway but it's a total dog in the city plus towing is impossible with anything under 3.23 rear gear ratio.
These low gears like 3.73 or 4.10 are great in pickup trucks. Or else in 6-speed sports cars like Camaro but not 4speed autos. If I had to drive on the highway with 4.10, I would lose my mind, the thing is entirely too noisy.
The only other thing that annoyed me to no end was my stupid smart phone, that thing went through batteries like I go through Kleenex. It always does it but this time it was even worse. Maybe it got bad reception up there and discharged. The Garmin GPS was the same way. I kept track of where I was with it. Very cool tool and a must-have, of these " I wonder how I ever lived without GPS". I had some Eneloops with me. I noticed that after a while, it was constantly dropping the connection. I would put in fresh cells and it worked better. The higher voltage of L91 would have worked much better. I had it in the NiMH setting but even if the cell is not discharged, should replace it anyway. Weird. Anyway.
It got me pretty accurate readings on speed, man what a scary thing it is to land at 165MPH. The top speed of it was something like 550MPH and the altitude was 9KM... well, for my some reason it couldn't get an accurate reading.
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