The automotive curse of Oklahoma

can you light it on fire will you please light it on fire i have insurance so in 2015 two things that i really love collided one cannonball we did the 2015 the 2904 that was the year that monsieur ed bullion joined and destroyed the race and the other thing is i had look i've been looking for and finally found a gmc rv from the early 70s why six wheels love six wheelers and this was kind of a dream vehicle of mine for a long time and i was looking for a short wheelbase version which they only made a few hundred of and i couldn't find one in california or on the west coast and i looked and i looked and i found an orange one in wonderful 70s orange in maryland so i sent my brother to look for it and i'm like you gotta go check this out he knows nothing about cars but he's a great observer and and sent me tons of pictures and he's like it's uh rv so i bought it and i had to try to figure a way of getting it across the country so i figured perfect i'm gonna bring it across the country in the 2904 because it makes total sense to take an ancient rv that you know nothing about get it running and send it barreling across the country as fast as possible in the hands of a stranger so that's exactly what i did we took it up to pennsylvania my good friend galway bravely drove it up to pennsylvania barely running and took it to the east coast expert apparently in these things and i say apparently because it didn't work out so well he put on new tires and the rear airbags and got it ready for the 2904 a few days in time for it we get the rv ready and we bring it down to brooklyn for the party and i've got a couple of friends of mine who are willing to drive it across now karina and her crew and lori and the bunch those all they're fantastic ladies from brooklyn and they were like we'll help you get it up and get it going and karina's like i'll get a little crew of brooklyn hipsters and we're gonna drive it across the country and have a party and play guitar on the way and the whole thing is all great they'll go nice and slow you know they're not really racing there hadn't been an rv in a cannonball event since the cannonball famously there was the travco rv that ran in the original cannonballs and the the great spaghetti incident happened in that which you'll have to look up so i was thinking great brooklyn hipsters big orange rv they'll be fine i just had spent like three thousand dollars on it it's gonna make it so they set off we that year were racing in our oldsmobile silhouette dressed up as the star trek shuttle and we were going to beat ed bowlian uh amg in an oldsmobile silhouette we were going to do it foiled by the rv i'm sure we would have done it if we hadn't been foiled by the rv but the rv set off and immediately i start getting phone calls of it's not going very fast it's losing air here on the airbags we got a gas leak somewhere and they would stop every hundred miles and something worse and worse is going with it and i'm thinking how far is it gonna make it and like we're doing 55 that's about all we can do we're doing 50 that's all we can do and it started slowing down and finally broke down and it's the middle of the night and we're racing across the silhouette behind them i'm like oh no please please make it and then i get a call and slightly panicked rv's on fire what yeah it's on fire the fire department's here and i'm thinking it's burning the ground really at that point i was like is everybody safe good is it burning the ground great let's get some airline tickets and get you home but no what had happened is they had a backfire i found this out later looking underneath the rv which we named orange julius and shall go by that name for all time julius had backfired and blown the mufflers open on the top right right underneath the rear floor and it heated up the rivets that held the floor to the frame the rivet then got so hot it ignited the carpet under one of the seats which then just burst into flames which they put out with like sprite and water or something and threw in there and then but the fire department saw somebody called it in and i'm like just don't let them go inside with the hoses and ruin it they're like okay everything's fine the fire's out uh we'll get going again they get going again in about a short period of time later it stopped again it's not moving it won't start i'm like what's wrong and they're not mechanical they're wonderful people and i love every one of them but they you know i feel a little better i sent them with a tool kit and no knowledge of the car across the country but there you have it like yeah we're we're gonna i'm like we can call a global mechanic or something to come look at it and at this point they're in oklahoma now there are quite a few people who know me that know i'd never ever want to set foot in oklahoma again in my life here's the reason why julius breaks down outside of uh tulsa and this guy comes and fix it and he isn't literally an angel he's like he rebuilds the carburetor on on it it's barely moving he can't get it running right and finally we're behind catching up and i'm like okay uh just park it we'll have a toad and get a motel room so we come flying in with the the silhouette and take a 45 minute detour to unload me put two brooklyn hipster guitar players in the back of the silhouette and send them off for the most terrifying ride of their lives and i stay in this room with five people that rammed in one motel room overnight to take care of julius some of them take off the other day next day we get julius to an rv center and then we find out that oh this what we don't we work on rvs we don't work on that and like it's an rv it's got a toilet in it and all kinds of stuff and they're like nope too olds don't touch it don't do anything about it so that sweet angel of a guy comes back the next day and i'm i pull we get a new distributor for it we get it running just barely we go through the calibrator again it's not moving all the whole driving crew from brooklyn has now been sent off and it's just me and him and i'm stuck in tulsa oklahoma tulsa oklahoma is not a place to be stuck i take it for a ride and it only goes 30 miles an hour and he's like i know a guy who fixed one of these once i'm like well that's good news let's take it to him we pull up to this guy's shop and he's like i've worked on one of these before pop take off the lid that's between the driver and the passenger and he goes and does a test and we have no compression turns out my specialty guy in pennsylvania did one of his specialty tricks on the carburetor that only he knew about that really brought these old rvs to life that he re-jetted it for special traveling and what that meant is it sent so much fuel through the carburetor it washed out the cylinders and the oil and the cylinder walls were just shiny and polished it had just ruined the engine and this guy's like oh yeah we've changed these engines before now to give you an idea you can't this is not an engine you can like take out of the hood it is inside you have to take it apart pull it through the floor carry it through the rv and out the door to get it out and it requires a special crane and he's like oh i got one of those cranes we did one once and sure enough sitting in the corner mysteriously is an gmc rv engine removing crane like i'm in the right place so i left it with him and a month goes by and he's all like well we got the engine rebuilt i'm like great i'll pay for that and he's like but now we have a problem with the gas tanks like gas tanks because it ran literally over a thousand miles to your place now there's two big 25 gallon tanks in it we got to pull the gas tanks out everybody who's restored a car has gotten to this point where you just kind of like i don't care anymore just just spend the money or put it in the dumpster so i'm hoping again it's catching on fire so or somebody steals it we get both gas tanks done and he's like you know the front end on this thing's really loose and i'm like yeah he goes i got a buddy who fixes the truck front ends if you send the parts he can put him on i'm like great will that get me home fine so six thousand dollars later about on all that work in this rv i bought for four thousand dollars that is now thirteen thousand dollars into i guess and i could have been a really nice one for thirteen grand and again i do classic cars all the time even i make these silly mistakes because you get emotional about these kinds of things i was very emotional about orange julius and i dove with both feet in to being foolish so and that's for my wife i was foolish but she supported me anyway the julius he says is done and i'm working at canapa and it's an intense environment i can't just take like a week off and go get julius so i send the person who worked for me at canape because i was like oh yeah he's taking some personal days and i paid him some money and zach todd headed off to oklahoma to bring back orange julius i got his ticket and i'm like it's going to be fun and he actually was the one who went and grabbed the silhouette for me that we bought it in kansas and he's the one who drove it out to california to get ready for the run and he's one of the greatest guys on the planet so i'm like go he gets it he calls me this isn't working so well well what's wrong it's not running right well where are you he goes i'm a hundred miles west of tulsa like are you out of oklahoma yet he's all no i'm approaching texas and it stops i'm like can you light it on fire will you please light it on fire i have insurance so he calls a tow truck company 770 tow back to the engine guys and they're like oh well you know uh it might be your carburetor because the carp they start blaming the angel guy who rebuilt the carburetor there's something wrong with the carburetor and we'll just fix it and they take another month of hemming and hawing and they're like it's done i go will it drive to california because it drove really crappily to oklahoma and at this point i am convinced and i to this day i believe there is like a cabal of witches in oklahoma that have like past curses on you when you come over the border and you were you may never leave like you were trapped in that state for eternity i think everybody who lives there actually came from somewhere else at some point and never were allowed to leave and they're all stuck in oklahoma and they just there for the cheap gas i fly there and i'm like does it work yes it works it doesn't work i get 40 miles out of time and it starts cacking and bulking and i'm like i i don't care i i lost all feeling of safety or caring of anything on the planet and i was just like i'm driving it if i'm driving 45 miles an hour california i am doing it and it cacks and cacks and it's driving 55-ish around there and it's not running well and it's it's not overheating everything else seems it's got an exhaust leak the exhaust they just put on which i found out later they didn't put an exhaust gaskets on it okay and it's cacking and like i'm gonna kill somebody and i swear i swear that the moment i crossed the oklahoma border into texas the julius went from cat cat cack to and i was doing 65 70 miles an hour as i crossed the line there's the sign it started running right i escaped the witches of oklahoma i escaped the curse somehow i broke away and i started going across the panhandle of texas and i'm like this is not running too bad we kept julius for the next five years and had the best trips in him he was the best rv ever we loved him i couldn't stop at a gas station or pull him around a corner without somebody stopping and asking me what he was or their uncle had one and that is the beautiful thing about owning classic vehicles you come to learn owning a gmc motorhome that if you have one you're more likely going to end up with two or three they have a tendency to multiply so i drove mine to work from julius to work to show everybody the ridiculousness i had gotten into and i park it i come out at night after work and there's a business card on the front seat somebody had come inside and put their business card on the front seat so i call the number and it's this older woman and she's all like is that your rv i'm like yeah she goes ah is it for sale and i said no she goes well i have one i'm like good for you do you want to see it like okay she goes we're selling it like then why did you ask if i was selling mine like i i got to find out what's going on so i took lunch i go over and sweet old couple the guy who owns it is a 92 year old retired church organist and he in his house that he built from scratch is a full-blown church organ with the pipes and everything where he used to practice he was awesome so we go out and look at this rv it's half covered in moss but it's got some great parts on it that julius doesn't doesn't he had the aluminum wheels and headers on it i'm like i could just get the parts off of it if i get it cheap enough and get it running and he's like well you know do you want it i'm like well maybe he goes i need to get it out of here it's got to go to the side yard blocking the side guard we're going to do some construction i'm like well i can probably get it out of here by the weekend he's all great but i have to charge you for it i'm oh okay he goes one dollar and i was like excuse me he's like one dollar said reach my pocket i thought it was all kind of a joke i pulled a dollar and i'd give it to him he's all like good he turns around and he gives it to his wife he turns back to me and goes she doesn't trust me with money and i'm like all right so we named that rv bill for the dollar bill he cost me and i brought it home and i lent julius to my friend scotty and scotty took it to the monterey historics and loved it and he's all like how much for bill and i'm like you take bill i took the bits off of bill and he took bill bill ended up being traded to another friend of mine for a trailer and then bill disappeared so why bill is in these transition moments and again i went across the country for a 23-footer and there was one five minutes from my work i'm driving to work and this is maybe six months later i look in the side of the road and there's another 23-footer just like mine side bath which were relatively rare and i'm like i got to pull over and take some pictures of it because maybe you can give me some ideas to fix up mine so i go over i take some pictures of it i put my business card on it just to chat and i get a call hey you interested in buying it like no i just i was just taking pictures i'd like to see it well come on over another older guy and he had bought it to travel across the country but now he was in a wheel like one of those little mobile mobility scooters and his son wanted him to sell it and he's like well i'm going to sell it i'm like great sell it on craigslist i go i took a bunch of pictures of it i'll give you my pictures and you can make a craigslist and i felt you know you want to be generous towards people in the hobby and to older folks and i was like listen i'll help you and i helped him make a craigslist ad and he wanted like 8 500 bucks for it he just done the carburetor and all kinds of stuff i'm like that's totally worth it very drivable and its name was ondago because the license plate was on d go and i'm like i just want to buy your license plate tell you the truth that thing's awesome he calls me up a month later nobody wants to buy it they're all idiots blah blah blah he goes you want to buy it i'm like no i don't i don't want to buy it i don't i have one spent a lot of money don't want to buy it and so i helped him again with his ad i went in and rewrote more pictures and he calls me like a few weeks later you still you still want it i don't want it and then his son calls me and he's all like you have to take it i'm like i don't want it i have one he's all just name a number and just to scare him away i was like four thousand dollars and he's like fine i'm like oh no and i had this idea of doing uh an rv rental but not to drive them to be parked in your driveway for extra rooms in the holidays and i was going to call it rvnb and we bring rvs to you and it's an extra room when you need it and that way i don't worry about people driving them and wrecking them you just set them up really nice do a cool little kitsch little camping setup someone's driveway and so i'm like well maybe i'll buy them and do that so again the wife was like all right so we brought home ondago now i have three rvs and now everybody's like oh you're the rv guy you're the gmc rv guy i know i don't want to be the gmc and i start getting more phone calls people offer i'm like i don't want any more of these stop and stop and stop it bill was on his way we brought ondago and julius back to our new home and then kovit hit and the idea of rv and b kind of fell apart so it was time we sold onto go he found a great new owner in fresno california who's gonna pit like a martini or gulf livery on it which i was wholly behind a big porsche enthusiast and a little sad to say two weeks ago we sold julius and after you put so much emotion and time and family time it's a really kind of it's interesting to sell them because i've sold tons of cars and different things but you're like bye julius thank you thank you off the record can help you find a speeding ticket or traffic citation no matter where you get it you just download their app take a photo of your ticket and they match you with the best local attorney to achieve the best possible outcome they can help you avoid costly insurance premium increases points on your license and other issues and when you register use the code benwicki for a discount on their services if you don't have a ticket that you need to fight right now go ahead and download their app and register using the vinwiki code and that will reserve your 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Channel: VINwiki

Views: 665,164

Keywords: John Ficarra, VINwiki, Ficarra Classics, The 2904, Top Gear, Ed Bolian, Mercedes, AMG, GMC, Motorhome, 1970s, orange, Julius, Canepa, vintage cars, oklahoma, cannonball

Id: Bf3lCTPZyyI

Length: 19min 19sec (1159 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021