[mocha07]

Originally Posted by ChesapeakeTeche

After 33 years of waiting I’m finally in a position to buy my first 944. After searching for countless hours and talking with many folks on this forum and others, I’m hopeful I’ve found a great car that will provide many years of enjoyment, and that the previous owner can feel good about passing on.
As luck would have it, this car is on the completely opposite side of the country. The car is in the Bay area of California, and the destination will be the Washington DC metro area - almost 3000 miles away. So what’s one to do when faced with this issue? Plan a road trip to bring the car back east of course! One of my lifelong friends and I will be flying out making the trip back together. We’ll be sure and post pictures along the way!
Having never undertaken a road trip of this magnitude, I’d like to gather some advice and recommendations from the folks on the forum. A few areas that come to mind include:

1) Does the route make sense?
Dates: March 11th - 15th (estimated)
We’ll be heading down from the Bay area south to catch I-40 east. This will take us through Bakersfield, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Memphis and Nashville. After that we’ll catch 81 North which will take us up through Blacksburg, Roanoke and up to the DC Metro area.

2) Lodging / Dining Recommendations
Any hotels / motels / AirBNB / Couch Surfing spots on that route that we should look at staying at?
Also looking for unique / great restaurants to try on the route.

3) Shop Recommendations / The Car
I’d be very interested in shop recommendations along the route. While crossing my fingers and preparing as best we can for no major issues, I think having a good list would be very helpful in case we need some assistance.

The car is a 1991 944 S2, with close to 200k miles and a good amount of recent maintenance:

-rebuilt top end and front end of engine 16 valve cylinder head with valve job, resurface, new seals
-fresh top end gasket set wide fire ring head gasket, new cam chain tensioner pads and chain. Sprockets on cams timed with dial indicator
-new water pump, belts and rollers. New spark plug wires and plugs, new filters and fresh oil change
-new K&N air filter and oem coolant expansion tank
-torque tube / clutch replacement in 2009

4) What to bring
Thanks to everyone who has made many useful suggestions so far. Here’s the list that we have come up with and are open to additional thoughts:

-Water (to drink and for the car)
-Food and Snacks
-Extra coolant
-Duct Tape
-Spare hose
-Spare DME Relay
-Spare DME (Thanks John Graves!!)
-Fix-A-Flat
-Porsche Toolkit / Extra tools
-Flashlight
-CB Radio / Ham radio
-GPS (iPad + 3 iPhones)
-Cell phones (3 iPhones, ATT & T-Mobile)

5) Attractions? Meet-ups?
While we’ll plan on making the trip back in 4-5 days, we’re looking forward to stoping off and doing some sightseeing along the way. Also, if anyone is local to the route and wants to meet up along the way, please let us know and we’d love to try and coordinate.

Thanks everyone and looking forward to the trip!

Good luck on your trip,have you checked the age of the tires,no place to have a blow out on the inter state.All the best,Bill