sometimes just getting to the lake is the problem

[J White]

Well, since you guys aren't posting much, thought I'd tell about a
trip we made awhile back - me and my buddy from the "catfish massacre"
story. We were headed to the lake one fall day, about 10 AM if I remember
correctly. We were towing with a '75 El Camino a friend of the family
had given me just to get it out of the yard. The car had been sitting
up for years, so I had fixed a few problems, mainly cleaning the sludge
out of the drainback holes in the heads and oil pump pick-up screen.
It was running like new, so I thought what the heck, go to the lake in it.
We had went about 15 miles with me watching the oil pressure and temp
gages like a hawk, no problem. Just about the time I was getting relaxed,
we started up this long hill - about 2/3 of the way up, it started rattling,
you know, like low octane fuel or too high ignition timing. I backed out of
the throttle a little, and looked at the gages again - temp is rising quick.
I say to myself, when we get to the top, I'll pull over. But before I got
there, all of a sudden something went BANG under the hood, then
POP POP POP on and on - I thought it had blown a gasket out from under
an exhaust manifold, it was obviously an exhaust leak. Finally made the top,
and pulled into a bait store/gas station, and came to a stop. Suddenly
smoke starts boiling out the cracks between fenders and hood - it becomes
apparent that this ain't steam - SMOKE! Jumped out and popped the hood
and flames billowed out from underneath. Ran back and grabbed the
extinguisher out of the boat and put it out. About this time, two 4x4's
come pulling in behind me, and get out to investigate, said they were at
the bottom of the holler when I started up the hill (in the woods) and
it sounded like my car had EXPLODED. Looked and found a spark plug wire
dangling with the porcelain end of a spark plug still in it. My buddy had
a AC 45 sinker on one of his catfish rods, so we finally got the rest of
the plug out with a pair of pliers, opened the gap back up
on it and screwed it in hand tight, and it fired right back up on all 8.
Still hot though - finally figured out the thermostat had stuck, causing it
to run so hot it started spark-knocking so hard it blew the stuffings out of
the plug, but raw gas was still being blown out the hole, and the dangling,
madly sparking plug wire had ignited it, and then all the Quaker State
build up from the leaking valve covers - Took the top hose loose and tried
driving a screwdriver through the thermostat, but screwdriver is too short,
about this time the rural route mail carrier pulls into the station, they are
known to carry tools and 2 or 3 spare tires - so we borrowed a socket set
and took out the stat and tightened up the "new" plug. Whew! Finally made
it to the lake, but was so concerned whether or not we were gonna make it
home under our own power that we didn't fish long, think we caught a couple
or three dinks. Made it home fine though. I ended up doing a lot more work
on the old Camino - friend gave me the dash, console,sport steering wheel
and swivel bucket seats out of a '74 Laguna S3 - I really liked towing with
it - normally I hate automatics, but it had a SWEET built Turbo 400 in it,
only auto I have even remotely liked. About the time I got it really road-ready, gas prices went through the roof, and I just couldn't justify 10 mpg
towing when I had a 3/4 ton diesel sitting there that got 19