Tales from The Other Side 1: The Chase Car Sets Out!

When we last wrote, the bus wasn’t working and the chase car had toodled off for events and adventures on its own, tearfully leaving the bus and crew behind. The car, however, wasn’t without mechanical uncertainty of its own. In the words of Brent:

One of the great adventures of converting a vehicle yourself is you can never be entirely sure how it is going to work. There is always the potential for problems that are unforeseen. For instance if your diesel filter becomes plugged, it can cause a failure in the diesel pump. No problem in a duel fuel system right? Just switch to veg, problem solved. Well, one would think so, but the problem with the unforeseen is that it is almost always just that, unforeseen.

Brent, Frances, Collen, and Chris left Denver at three in the morning. Running just on veggie oil the engine took a small amount of prompting (a rolling start) to get the fuel warm enough for driving. The eight hour drive was starting well, Chris was driving, Brent was telling bad jokes, Frances was practicing her contortionist routine for Cirque de Soliel, and Colleen was asleep. We were winding up mountain roads, enjoying the views allowed by the 1000+ foot cliff faces when we experienced our first encounter with the unforeseen. The car stalled. It might have been the veg was still running a little cold, maybe an air-bubble had formed in the fuel line, hard to know. The reality was, there we were, stranded on the side of a mountain at seven in the morning. At least we were on an incline. After pushing the car around to face down the mountain Brent hopped into the driver seat, kissed his St. Christopher medal and disengaged the parking brake. After a strong push from the remaining three he began his role down the mountain, picking up speed immediately. In a matter of seconds the rest of the crew’s faces, hopeful but worried, had disappeared from the rearview mirror and the real fun began. It brought back memories of soap box derbies, pinewood races, and dropping pennies off the side of the Sears tower. The speed increased with every passing yard. Dropping into third slowed the car, but it still refused to start. Cars going uphill slowed warily as the Volkswagen with no lights and limited power-steering plummeted past. And then the miracle. A drop into third, no different from any of the previous produced a rev, then a roar, and we were back in business. To say that pulling back up the mountain to rejoin the crew, leaping and whooping at the sight of their returned Sam (the Chase Car’s new name), will be the highlight of my summer is an understatement by as many miles as it took to get her running again.

- brent


The chase car crew on a sunny mountain side!