Day 8: September 30, 2014 Clayton New Mexico

We cruised back into our home state of New Mexico at around 5 PM today.  It was a much better than average day.  We made about 410 miles, traveling mostly on US 54 and US 56 along Kansas and the Oklahoma panhandle. 

I got up early to attend to the LaSalle's distributor.  I decided the surging problem was likely the dwell setting on the points.  I closed the points ever so slightly, increasing the dwell angle from 31 to about 36 degrees.  How do I know?  I did pack a dwell meter, an old school electrical gadget that deduces the dwell angle from ignition pulses.  It easily measures very small changes in dwell.  Amazingly enough, this small change did the trick, the car ran smoothly all day.  This fits with my experience with Cadillac flatheads -- they are very, very sensitive to point setting,

The Super 8 in Eldorado was packed with workers gathering to overhaul some sort of local refinery.  One resident pointed out that the LaSalle attracted quite a crowd of curious car guys the night before. He researched the car on the internet and noted how rare and unusual these cars are.  Yes, they are, I have only seen a few of these convertibles anywhere on-line or off.



Top view of LaSalle.  Quite a shape

We managed to get on the road around 8:30.  Route 54 merged with US 400.  This produced a much improved four lane road.  Very smooth and wide, we easily maintained 60 mph most of the time.  As we proceeded, Kansas got flatter and flatter.  Winds were brisk and buffeted the LaSalle.  Before long we made it to Dodge City.  There, we switched to US 56.  This road was much narrower and rougher.  This lowered our speed a bit but traffic was light and we kept moving.  We got to Clayton around 6:30 local time.  We had more daylight but since the next town (Springer) was 80 miles away, we decided to stop for the day.

Hotels in Clayton are not plentiful, but we did find a clean looking, cheap Super 8.  It was full.  We opted for a much more expensive Best Western.  This hotel was very well maintained.  We were off to dinner at a local steak house and ready for bed early.  Our last day is ahead, just 270 miles to Albuquerque!