Rare1

I drive my truck or ride my motorcycle over Berthoud Pass almost every weekend in the summer because my boat is on a lake on the other side. The road is US 40 over the Continental Divide in Colorado and is 11,300 ft high. It is twisty with switchbacks, and a pretty good grade maybe 6 to 8% for ten miles either side of the summit. Today I was driving my truck back home after a nice weekend sailing and I was pushing pretty hard, as I always do, up the East side of the pass when a Ford dually diesel came charging up behind to pass me. The road is two lanes up and one lane down on each side of the pass. So I finished the hairpin turn and stepped on it and put a lot of distance between us. The next switchback the Ford closed the gap by screeching around the turn faster than safe. Again I accellerated away. This went on for several turns as I made each switchback at 15 to 25 MPH and then powered up to 50 or 60. I could see that the Ford was really trying to overtake me because of the huge black cloud following him and the way he was abusing his tires on the switchbacks. My truck doesn't smoke much. On the last straightaway before the summit a Suburban got in my way so the Ford passed me. I hope he felt good. I don't know much about Fords but it looked about the same year as my CTD. The silly thing about this was that I was carrying my Lance cabover camper which maxes out my legal load limit and the Ford was carrying two bicycles. TWO BICYCLES. I hope he felt good, I did.

Raspy

Cool. But now he has a story for his buddies about how he blew your doors off. Yeah, right.

Over and over we find out what Dodges really are all about. And the mountains tell the story.

John

PaulDaisy

I was driving down 285 yesterday and at a light saw a trailer in front of me, few vehicles ahead. Great, I thought, now I will get to crawl up the next hill! Not so. The trailer launched away so fast, the cars fell behind. I got a chance and passed all the cars on the uphill, and caught up with the trailer. It was something like 27 foot horse trailer, empty, pulled by a King Ranch Superduty. The Ford didn't smoke, didn't budge, just passed everybody up the hill. Of course I passed him too, but I was empty (well, some 1,000 lbs in the bed). I was very impressed with its performance.
-P

Rampage1967

Musta been some pretty d**m heavy bicycles. ;-)

Rare1

Saturday I was driving west on I-70 up the grade past the Mother Cabrini Shrine, and for those not familiar, this is just west of Denver into the Rocky Mountains. It's 6 lane freeway and pretty steep so lots of slow vehicles, I was in the fast lane doing 65 MPH, OD and cruise, easily keeping up with traffic. I passed a newish Ford diesel who was smoking pretty good and not doing too well in the slow lane. I know he was in a hurry because he passed me at about 70 MPH a few miles before where it was fairly flat. I was carrying my cabover camper, he was empty. These Fords don't seem to have much muscle, I doubt he would have made it up the hill with a load.

Rare1

Your first thought was a slow truck, but then it took off. As with CTDs, some run well and some don't. Most of the Fords I see in the mountains don't.

mj007

10-4 on what you said.

euroford

too funny that i found this post...

i drive the pass about twice a week to go mountain biking or skiing and can't help having fun blasting up that road, been doing it for about 5 years straight. i typically limit my top speed to 45-50 except for short bursts, but always try to nail the turns and accelerate out of the corners. abuse the tires as you say.

Don't remember you in particular, but its always fun when somebody plays along.

its an old 7.3, fairly well modified (injectors, turbo, fuel, studs, etc mid 13's at bandimere) with a 6spd. banging gears is particularly challenging and fun on that road. It does smoke a bit at altitude, particularly if i come out of a turn and lug it in 3rd for a moment before the turbo lights up instead of downshifting to 2nd.

Good warm-up for ripping trails at Trestle Bike Park.