Photography by Chris Tropea
After a few years of faithful service, our Nissan Frontier let us down when we needed it most.
While our Nissan Frontier is our camera support vehicle every time we go to our official test track, the Florida International Rally & Motorsport Park, it was time to test how it does on a road tour.
Typically, our trusty Honda Ridgeline is the vehicle of choice for running support on the Classic Motorsports Road Tours, but this time we put our Frontier into service.
And you may be thinking, why would you be taking a truck on a classic car tour? The simple answer is that we need something that can carry supplies and be able to go off-road to park and shoot photos and video of the actual cars on the tour.
We would be going on the Classic Motorsports Orange Blossom Tour that would take us on a few hundred miles of backroads through central Florida to see private car collections, old Florida attractions and some spectacular driving roads.
For the first three days, it was smooth sailing in the Frontier. It picked up and transported tour supplies to the host hotel and was slated to tow our trailer full of supplies from Daytona beach up to Amelia Island for our Amelia Island Kickoff party. Over the first few days of travel, it was looking like it was a perfect companion for our tours.
Unfortunately, on the third day of our event, the Frontier started showing signs of impending doom.
After getting into the truck after our lunch stop, we noticed some coolant on the passenger floorboard. Leaking heater core.
Luckily it was a slow seep and not a catastrophic failure, so we checked our coolant level and kept a watchful eye on the temperature gauge till we got to our final stop for the day.
Knowing that we had a tank full of coolant and noting that the heater core would only leak after the truck sat parked, we headed home to swap out the Frontier for the Ridgeline.
As a temporary fix, Jesse at Spiker Motorsports bypassed the heater core. When we have some time, we’ll replace it.
Why not just have the shop knock out the repair while it was there? We will detail more on that in our next update.
I'm glad you were all close enough that you could swap support vehicles.
And yeah, never seems to happen at a convenient time...except for that one time I hit a rock, poked some holes in my car's gas tank and still managed to drive it home.
That did turn out to be pretty convenient since I made it home.
It looks like those heavy rubber floor mats with the turned-up edge saved your carpet, and kept your cab from smelling like coolant forever.
In reply to Danny Shields (Forum Supporter) :
Good point, I didn't even consider that.
I'll take this as a sign that I should probably upgrade my floor mats...
In reply to Danny Shields (Forum Supporter) :
Yeah, I really liked my WeatherTech mats before I had this issue and not only did it save me from coolant smell but I think it also saved me from a bigger disaster with how soon I was able to see the leak since it wasn't going into the carpet.
Your 'Classic Motorsports Road Tours' always look cool and catch my eye, but I think I'm too young for the demographic in the pictures by about..... half. And I'm not exactly young myself! :)
I suppose by the time I don't have to worry about who's watching the kids for a week and also have the money to do it, I'll be the right demographic. :)
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