Day 4 Jefferson City, MO to Dodge City, KS

After a fun night at a local bar in Jefferson City, MO the girls were hurting a little at the 7:30 am line up. The night before they had met Leonard, he was running for congress against his wife out of a van. Yep you read that right. He even gave the girls some Missouri band hats. Why he had a whole van of them is still unclear. But the Rally North America crew left their mark at the bar before calling it a night.

Having already been warned about Day 4 being a 500 mile hike Team Mustang Girls decided to go rogue and do their own thing for the day. Courtney wanted to test a theory on the AC and try to figure out how to make it so they could use it while driving on the highway. Here are the facts of the case. Old Air Products hooked the car up with an amazing system including a huge aluminum radiator and dual electric fans. The system works great in traffic and when traveling short distances or under 55 mph. But when the car gets rolling over 60 mph for more than 30 mins or so the temperature creeps up to 220.

The exact opposite of everything normal! After having the same problem on Bullrun Courtney asked around and tried to find a solution to the problem. She did a test to make sure there weren’t any cracks in the block, check the water pump, checked the fan temperature sensor- nothing was wrong. A local shop had seen a similar problem and suggested that the coolant was not staying in the radiator long enough to cool it. After some research they cut open a thermostat and welded on a washer. Basically it would be running wide open all the time but the diameter of the flow hole had been reduced for 1 inch to 5/8.  This did help keep the average temperature around 200 instead of 215 which was great. And running around town wasn’t a problem with the heat but once rallying again the long distance driving brought the temperature back up again. Courtney has yet to solve them problem so any suggestions or thoughts would be great. It get’s hot on the road!

After turning on the original AC in the car, aka rolling the windows down, the girls were on the way to Dodge City. Along the way they made a few checkpoints of their own.  At one point they found a cool dirt road with a bunch of cows and stopped to take some pictures. Lea Anne got distracted and started picking some flowers and the next thing they knew the cows were putting on a show that wouldn’t even be allowed at a strip club. After catching their breathe from laughing so hard the girls made the final leg to Kansas for the night and were determined to get a good night sleep to make a final run at the podium the next day.