By Rock Jenkins, State Farm, The Drive Home II and III Driver
Day 2 found us moving up the eastern Florida coast from Ft. Lauderdale to Orlando. A leisurely 188-mile drive with six cars and our support vehicle, a 2016 Ford F-350 pulling a 36 ft trailer. Other than the usual I-95 weekday traffic it was a ho-hummer, except the El Camino seemed to struggle at highway speed with my pedal nearly to the floor and burp a backfire or two through the carburetor every so often in protest. When we made a stop, I reported the struggle to my partner Bill Hall and astutely asked why I was carrying 350 lbs of sandbags (for our displays) in the bed of my truck. I didn’t have a good answer so we moved the bags to the support truck trailer and it made a measurable difference in the El Camino’s performance.
Back on the pavement, we cruised up the road until Dave in the support truck reported a vibration that within an hour had been diagnosed as a catastrophic bearing failure in the front wheel. Off to the nearest dealership went Dave and the truck and trailer and we kept ambling north for a video shoot on the coast of A-1-A near Honest John’s Fish Camp that has been in business since 1888 (or at least that’s what Honest John says).
Click here to read the rest of this post.