Long Distance Winter Trip Advice

[BlackBart]

We are back, we survived. Betty ran perfectly. Great car, great engine, great tires. I am wobbly.
Dramatic weather - Film at 11.

[BlackBart]

WUT a trip. Easy cruise down, visited family, met Matt, did chores, and an eventful weather day coming back home.

We were making flying time coming home - empty roads, sun & wind, flowing along a few hundred yards behind a new pickup at 85+. Betty glides along, not working hard, under 3000 rpm, perfect tracking, comfortable, tons of torque to just squirt around a semi when you need to... we were having a lovely day. But we knew something was coming, weather showed a wall of cold in northern WY and that could mean lots of things.

It turns out it did. The tug-of-war with 40mph SW crosswinds turned into bitter cold headwind and sketchy roads. My 12 hour trip turned into a 14 1/2 hour endurance run.

Standard crosswind gusts from Cheyenne to Casper (especially Casper) and north, but as you bend north at Casper they're sort of off your left quarter and you get a bit of push. Dry and sunny, above freezing. Near Sheridan WY, there was a strange-looking low horizontal cloud E-W across the horizon. In a matter of 10 or 15 miles, the temperature dropped over 30 degrees F, to zero or -2. Frozen fog on everything. Fuzzy haze. Cold headwind from the north. A lot more snow on the ground. Ice patches on the freeway.

At a tiny place called Hardin MT, edge of the Crow Reservation, we gassed up and ate some lunch. Very pleased with our progress so far. It started to snow. Within a few miles north, it was snowing hard, but so cold that it's fine dust like flour, and doesn't stick to anything. Big trucks are taking it easy in the slow lane, so are we, fast lane is solid white. Hard to see very far ahead. Then of course some yayhoos have to blast past in giant pickups which are apparently immune to physics. The road is a giant cloud of pure white, you can't see anything. Rear fogs on, people have their flashers on, we're crawling. Still, people insist on passing. It's literally a white-out. Big trucks are crawling.

To our surprise, it only lasted 10 miles, no one crashed, and then it was just light snow and cold. Did that off and on through that region.

Zipped past Billings MT and on west. M-I-L was tucked in her nest with a coat and a down blanket. My wife is doing a live impression of Books-on-Tape with a book she brought. Covered a lot of ground still, until Livingston (famously windy) and short but nasty Bozeman Pass. Saw our first flashing blue lights of Highway Patrol and wreckers where someone had spun into the ditch. By then it was hard, shiny, rutted, packed snow across the whole road. No real sign of any sand or brown anywhere. They had plowed the deep stuff off. That was the first of about four wrecks we saw.

In contrast to what you usually see, traffic across the Gallatin Valley was just crawling. No yayhoos, no flyers, just people trying to get home in their wannabe winter suvs with generic tires, and they were scared. Even Subarus. Starting to get dark. About rush hour Bozeman. Cars going 40, flashers on, riding the shoulder. A long train of cars going very slow, no one wants to risk switching lanes to pass. We thought, that's weird, they live in Bozeman where it snows a lot! We went around them at 60-ish, it was just packed snow....

So, BB of course has to check the oil at every stop, and while my passengers scurry though the below-zero breeze into the Costco restroom, I popped the hood in brutal cold and heard a funny CLICK maybe just ahead of the handle. Handle was very stiff. Maybe the latches were frozen shut, I don't know.

Well, the oil is just fine thank you, but the hood won't latch. I fussed and fiddled with cold hands, PB-Blasted the latches, pushed and tugged with a screwdriver (see, tools did come out of the back!). No effect, it won't latch. That used up valuable time. We decided the safety latch is designed to hold it shut in the event it's not locked, so we tested that to about 60mph or so. (Later I realized I had rope in the back and could have tied one of the steel loops down to the frame - too late)

We headed out into the dark, watching the hood flutter for miles. The scenario in my small head was a hood flying up, smashing the windshield, and we go off in a snowy slide into the ditch - Bad Vacation.

But it held just fine, and we drove the last 200 miles at 60-65, getting hungry and punchy. Funny, though, it was too dark and slippery to go any faster than that anyway, so it didn't matter. Delivered Mom-in-law to her cozy house, we unpacked and flopped into bed.

So the car was flawless, ran perfectly. It was the operator, who did a dumb thing with mechanisms in bitter cold!
It's kind of amazing that a modern car can cruise along the highway at 90F, coolant needle right in the center, no problem, and then cruise along with -5F air coming through the radiator, blowing tons of heat on the passengers, and the coolant gauge still sits right in the middle. Betty ain't fussed.


TL/DR Summary:
Great road trip car, beautiful tracking and traction (put real snow tires on). My only worry should have been weather, not the car - she was ready.

I'll add some snapshots in the Road Trip forum.
Thanks,
BBart

[matthew1]

Thanks for posting the follow-up, BB. I'd like a post-mortem on the hood latch. That's interesting. Was the latch simply frozen and wouldn't flip into lock position?

[BlackBart]

The two latch hooks will move up and down with a screwdriver. They won't click down as if it was grabbing the steel loop. They're spring-loaded. The pull handle isn't broken (the plastic) and I can feel the cable behind it with my finger, but the handle is fairly loose now. It may have been just cold, but I heard a distinct click forward of the handle when I pulled it. I had my wife hold the handle out, I pushed down the hood, then she let go, hoping that might grab it. No go.

[BlackBart]

OOOOFFF

CASPER, Wyo. – Interstate 80 between Cheyenne to Evanston is closed on Monday morning due to winter weather conditions, according to WYDOT.

We saw the closed message signs as we approached Cheyenne and said UH oh...
But that seemed to be mostly I-80 to the west. That Laramie stretch is often bad.