GOOD GUYS SPOKANE WA.

In August we had planed a trip to Coeur d' Alene Idaho to met up and visit with my daughter and grand kids and Karen's daughter and her grand kids it turned out that the Good Guy's car show in Spokane was at the same time and decided to take the Starliner for the 3 day show. The trip was 22 hours of driving and 1800 miles one way (long trip.) Spokane is about 30 miles from Coeur d' Alene and I would drive the Starliner to the show each day. Friday morning I picked up my son in law and drove to Spokane for the first day, all went well.

 The Spokane Fair Grounds is very nice with lots of trees and grass and we got the car parked and cleaned then went for a walk to see the other cars.

 Took very few pictures on Friday as we would have 2 more days for them and Saturday has the most cars at the show.

 This is a DeSoto 2 door with a Fire Dome (hemi) in it. I had a 57 DeSoto Fire Dome in my 50 Ford in high school.

 Friday afternoon about 3 PM we started the car to drive back and had our first problem, the car would not go into gear had no reverse and no drive but it went into gear in low. we got out of the show into the parking lot and  checked the shifting linkage  and still just had low.Started out and found it would shift to all 3 gears so drove out to the freeway and got about 10 miles when the car died running at 65 and coasted to the shoulder. Tried every thing I could think of to get it started with no luck and burned up the starter solenoid in the process. Was able to find a tow truck that would get the lowered car on it without damage and took back to the RV park where we were staying. Loaded the car into the trailer using the wench and called it a day. That night I started some internal bleeding and took it easy on Saturday, that afternoon the bleeding continued to get worse and Karen took me to the Hospital where I spent Saturday night, Sunday and Sunday night. They got the bleeding stopped and I got out Monday morning.

 Monday afternoon I felt OK so we went with my Daughter (below) and grand kids to a gold mine about 30 miles out of Coeur d' Alene.

 Grand kids and son in law on the tour of the mine.

 Some of the old tools left in the mine.

 Karen in the gift shop buying post cards.

 After the mine tour went out to an area setup with tubs of sand and stones in water to learn how to pan for gold.

 Karen and Charlie enjoyed the nice weather.

 We all tried our hand at panning for gold with little success but found a lot pretty stones.

 Karen and my Daughter drove me home that took another 22 hours and 2 days. 

 After a few days home I worked on the Starliner to find out what went wrong. First installed a new starter solenoid then installed a new electric fuel pump at the gas tank to make sure the Fitech tank had gas in it then called Fitech after trying to start the car several times. The tech had me run some tests and found that the high pressure pump was not working and that,s why the engine die,ed (ran out of gas). I fabricated a spanner wrench to get the Fitech Tank apart to install the new pump they sent me. The engine fired right up with the new pump.

 Last problem was the transmission. After checking everything outside the transmission I dropped the pan and found that the shift rod had come out of the shift arm. There is a stop on top of the shift arm that has warn out over the years and must be removed to weld a new stop on it.

I found a transmission shop in Kingman that is willing to come out to the house to do the repair but will have to wait until next Saturday for him to have the time.
A long trip with a lot of problems but it was nice to see the family.