Day 0

In theory, today should have been pretty easy. Wake up 20 miles from the TN/VA border, drive a bunch of miles to Philadelphia.

In practice,  it would have been that easy, except right after getting onto the Washington DC beltway, I decided to start worrying about the nasty, creaky noise the front-left axle was making. I had noticed only 15 minutes earlier (while parked) that the CV boots were both damaged, so in fact the joint had been exposed to the elements for quite some time.

The good thing about a CV joint (aka front axle) failure is that nothing bad happens other than that the car will no longer be able to propel itself. No sudden steering problems, no crashes, no big deal.

We stopped at my friend John’s house north of DC (just off the beltway) to seek his advice on the axle problem. While I was looking at ways to get a replacement part lined up, he partially disassembled the joint to look for other problems and to make sure we’d be able to fix it in a parking lot after getting the new part.

So that’s all lined up, and what we’ll probably do is wait for the axle to fail completely, then repair it roadside. Basically just to see how nasty the thing can get before it actually breaks. (Don’t tell my mechanic!)

Long story short on the Day 0 parking lot party: Lots of good folks, lots of crappy cars. I took lead on explaining the rally to the police officer who drove by and asked “What is all this?”, and he seemed to be happy (amused) with the response. One team even had a brochure printed up to give to the officer.

This will be a fun week. More photos tomorrow…

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