Life is Great with a 6.0-liter V8
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  • Post-GONE: Day 8

    Posted on September 19th, 2011 tcorzett No comments

    I’ve had really awesome luck so far when it has come to weather and road conditions, and today was no different. There were showers forecast for this afternoon, but other than a few little drops on the windshield, there was no rain to spoil the drive.


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    This morning I started a little slow, and was actually having a difficult time wanting to get going in the twisties. Fortunately I was awake enough to avoid the group of turkeys foraging along the side of the road… and the family of bears (Mamma and three cubs) crossing the road. Seeing all of the wild animals has been very cool… especially the things that I don’t normally see in California.

    By far my favorite part of today’s drive was on Highway 311 between West Virginia and Virginia.


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    The best this about this part of the drive was that I had a completely empty road for the ascent and decent. Paired with the 55 mph speed limit… I was able to fly through the corners! Most were sweepers, but there were also a few tighter corners and even a hairpin or two.

    The G8 really performed perfectly through the corners, going both up and down the mountains. The torque from the TVS1900 supercharger was great out of the corners, and holding 4th gear (due to the 3.45 ratio) made maintaining 55 mph on the decent easy. The Bridgestone RE-11’s worked very well, despite cooler temperatures (~60°F), and I had zero traction issues… even with some gravel on the road.

    After Highway 311 the driving went down-hill (not literally), as I ran into a whole bunch of road construction. I guess being Monday all of the road crews are back out, and I think I hit a half-dozen areas that were reduced to one lane controlled by a flagger or stop light.

    To make things worse, after one of the construction zones my car threw another P2135 DTC. I was able to quickly pull off to clear the code, but getting back on the road I completely bottomed-out on my sub-chassis braces… I seriously doubt that there is any paint left them. Fortunately, that was the only DTC that I received today.

    I think I’m getting an idea of when the DTCs tend to happen, and I was actually was anticipating the one that occurred. It has always happened when the car is being driven near idle, especially after longer stretches behind slower cars. Today I took some care to keep the RPMs higher, run in a lower gear, blip the throttle every so often, etc. I believe it made a difference, but I’ll see over the next few days.

    Just to make sure there wasn’t something “stupid” causing the DTCs, when I stopped for gas I spent some time looking under the hood for any problems. I also took some time to check the oil level (everything was good) and to empty my catch can (for the first time). I’ve driven quite a while without looking in my catch can, and was shocked to see almost 1/4 cup of oil in it! Normally all of that oil would “spit” into the intake to be burned-off in the engine, so I’m really glad that I installed the catch can.

    Towards the end of the day I ran into another issue with the roads my GPS was telling me to drive on. After turning onto Virginia 785 (aka. Blacksburg Rd.) I had a feeling like I was not on my originally planned route… when it turned into a one-lane road I knew I needed to turn around. After spending some time checking maps, I decided that I should just head directly to my hotel on the interstate.

    Tomorrow there is a very high likely-hood of rain. No matter how lucky I have been so far, I don’t think I’ll be able to dodge all the thundershowers tomorrow. The weather for the rest of the week doesn’t look so great either, but hopefully that will keep the “tourists” off the roads.

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