Thanks again for all the complements and support.
Thursday morning Lee and Ted showed up at my house early. I gave Lee a GoPro camera so he could shoot some video from another perspective as I was planning on making another road trip video and had two video cameras with me. Everyone was ready and packed looking forward to our first several hundred mile drive leg of our planned road trip. We all had Walkie talkies, with me in the lead Ted in his Elan Sprint followed by Lee in his Elise.
Ted radio’s me right away and says my brake lights are hooked up to the reverse lights. Huh? I know I wired them correctly and even had my wife stand behind the car while I stepped on the brakes. Then it hit me that I had pulled the wiring to trace the reverse light circuit and had probably confused the wires I put back together. Well, at least I have brake lights.
The first 30 miles set the tone for our drive as we drove through rolling hillls and farm land. And then the Prince of Darkness struck. Going down a slight hill towards a traffic light my car just stops running.
I coast to the traffic light and park on the side of the road. Not a great place to break down as there is lots of traffic and not much room for a car parked on the side. Ted and Lee pull over next to me as I jump,out of the car and open the rear engine deck. Everything looks fine. Try several times to start the engine, no deal. The police show up as I’m in a dangerous area and after a couple of minutes ask us to move the cars. Ted and Lee move their cars to a empty bank parking lot and come back to push the Europa to the same location.
I removed all the luggage from the rear tray and the rear tray. Electric fuel pump is working, pulled the fuel line banjo’s to confirm fuel pumping to the Weber carbs. Pulled the jets out of the Weber’s to confirm they aren’t clogged. Check the floats to insure they aren’t stuck. Try and start the engine. Turns over but won’t start. Pull the plugs, they get spark. Two of the plugs had cracked ceramic so I replaced all the plugs with an extra set I had with me. Still won’t start. I call my friend Larry to see if he has any suggestions and he offers to come to where I am located to see if he can help.
By this time it’s an hour past our next stop to meet up with the rest of our road trip caravan. I had called them earlier to say we would be late and why. They went to a restaurant and had breakfast. I convince Ted and Larry they should leave to join the rest of the group and worst case I’ll get a tow truck to take the Europa back home and switch to my Elan S1. Will meet them at the hotel tonight. They reluctantly agree and take off. Larry shows up shortly afterwards.
I take Larry through the entire story and we check a variety of things and he suggest it’s ignition and not a fuel problem. I agree, but without a meter I can check anything. So I call a tow truck and send Larry home.
The flat bed tow truck shows up and I tell the driver the only way he will be able to get the Europa on the truck is to pull it up from the rear. The young guys says “I’ve been doing this for a long time, let me do my job”. Ok then. I stand back and watch him crawl underneath the Europa looking where to attach a nylon strap to winch the car onto the flat bed. He gets up off the ground and comes over to me saying, “I owe you an apology, your absolutely right, there is no way I can attach a winch strap without damaging the car. We will do it your way”. I get him to move the flat bed and show him the trans hoop and run the nylon strap to the winch cable. Then I ask him for two boards to put at the end of the bed on the ground as I know the front lip of the Europa will hit the ground when it gets to a certain angle. Got the car on the bed and strapped it with nylon straps through the wheels being careful not to be anywhere near the stick on balance weights.
The 45 minute drive to my house was a history lesson of Colin Chapman and Lotus Cars for the tow truck driver. He was very enthusiastic about the conversation.
It’s a little after noon and I’m right back where I started at 8am this morning, back at my garage. I think about just transferring all my stuff to my Elan as it’s ready to go and decide that I will spend another hour to trouble shoot the ignition system before I completely give up. I get out my multimeter and test battery voltage (12.53 volts)and then voltage going to the coil (11.73 volts). Then I call Petronix technical service and talk to a rep. He walks me through all the various way to test the distributor and the coil under load. I perform all the tests (remove tach wire, check that the distributor clamp is well connected for ground, run a jumper from ground on the coil to chassis ground and measure voltage again on the coil). Any voltage above 8 volts under load is acceptable. I had 9.3 volts.
Decided the coil was the cause of the problem. It was new and a .6 ohm “Flame Thrower” coil which was the right impedance. I had another new flame thrower coil at 1.5 ohms and confirmed that I could use that with the red module in the distributor.
Reconnected everything and the engine started right up. OK, that’s a good thing, but why would a brand new coil fail and will it happen again? I’m going to be driving hundreds of miles to LOG and on back roads so I don’t want this happening again. And now I’m alone, not with a group of cars. Called Larry to talk through as I had checked all the electrical circuits and wanted another opinion. He didn’t have any new insights until he said “you have been wiring and testing circuits for weeks and have been leaving the ignition on a lot. That might have stressed the coil and it finally gave out”. Well, I thought, that makes sense.
Reloaded up the Europa, put a multimeter in my tool box in the car and took a shower. Left my garage at 4pm and it was 92 degrees outside with very high humidity. Texted my friends that I would meet them at the hotel at 8pm. Was told Paul’s Europa broke down twice (fuel pump issue) and Chris’ rear shock had come through the top cap. But they still did the stop at the Woodstock museum in Bethel and got to the hotel.
The next 4 hours of back road driving was fun with lots of elevation changes and roads with lots of curves. And then it started to rain. I’m really being tested I thought. Lights on, windshield wipers on, and slowed down a bit as I don’t know the handling aspects of this car in the rain.
Just before I arrived at the hotel the rain cleared and i pulled into the parking lot just before it got really dark. When I was checking in the front desk said my friends were waiting for me at a restaurant in town. I took a quick shower and got an Uber.
Arrived at the restaurant to an applause from the entire group and drinks while the details of the story unfolded.
Good to be with Lotus friends. Looking forward to being with more at LOG39!
