Tacoma to Sedona!

[andy]

I just drove my 1980 300cd 1500 miles from Tacoma Wa. to Sedona, AZ. Here's the story. First phase of the trip was 9 hours almost non-stop drive(my wife and I drove seperate cars and hers needed fuel more than twice as much as mine). We slept for the night and did the same thing for two more days. Thirty hours of driving. I checked the fluids at evey stop. I had a full tank when I started and I filled up three more times. Although I still had 3/4 of a tank when I arrived in Sedona. I usually filled up after about 450-475 miles per tank. The light came on at about 450 miles. There were lots of hills between Oregon and California and between California and Arizona. We drove through the Mojave desert in the middle of the day(no a/c). With the windows down, It wasn't bad for me. It was over 100 degrees. The car has a normal operating tempature of 85 and it never went above 90 going uphill in 100+ weather. I drove the car at about 70mph average. The car ran great!
The problem list is very short. When I first bought the car about 2 years ago, I didn't think the transmission would last more than a few months. When I changed the trans fluid and filter there were metal shavings in the filter. It shifted like crap. It flared between gears. But it didn't leak. Over the next few weeks I just fiddled with things and was making improvements. I found this site and had great success. Cleaning out the vacume lins and adjusting the key on the vacume modulator mad a major differance. The transmission now seems to work pretty good. I took my car to the shop to have the valves adjusted and the car checked. They said every thing seemed good. That the rear end was a little loose, but that it still should be fine for a while. During the trip I noticed that the transmission would leak about 5-10 drops after driving it hard and long. Just a few drops right off of the freeway. Is this normal? Durnig the whole trip it probably only leaked an ounce at the most. The engine did great. The oil went down from just below the top line to just above halfway between the lines. I don't know how much that is, but it's not much. There is a noise that comes from the rear end area every now and then. Not a death type noise, but a noise. I'll look into that.
I'm really happy with the way my car made the trip. It was a nice drive. andy