Silly first voyage....
Discussion
I just read the very funny report by an Ariel Atom owner who decided to pick his new toy up from Belfast recently. He returned via Dublin? and carefully selected the worst possible driving weather....snow, fog, projectile ice, demonic attack and the rest.
It brought to mind the fun I had when I collected my lovely old Elise S1 111S from Liverpool in 2007.......
Here it is.
"I went, last Wednesday, to the UK to collect the latest great-value addition to the Fester car stable, an Elise S1 111S (DVA 200+bhp).
This epic adventure saw me soaring above the clouds to Liverpool, which was doing a very convincing impression of being the wettest place on earth when I arrived.
I was supposed to be picked up by the vendor, but he was delayed in traffic and so I had the great good fortune to be able to examine the facade of the John Lennon Airport arrivals building in minute detail, and I have to say, it was a very worthwhile and most fulfilling cultural experience for a 'plook' like myself from the French Desert.
Eventually Mark, the vendor, turned up, and we then spent another hour at walking pace crossing Liverpool as the documents were the other side of the city.
This wrecked my schedule, as I had planned to pick up the hard top in High Wycombe the same evening.
I eventually got to HW at about 11pm, and had an excellent curry cooked by the hardtop vendor.
I then set off at about midnight to a local hostelry which I'd used before, the High Wycombe Travel Lodge, which was most inconveniently unable to offer me a bed.
By now somewhat knackered after fretting about the flight the night before (I detest flying in commercial airliners for some reason) I decided to head for John H's renowned "Pitlane" Seven Preparation facility, where I was due the next morning to collect a clutch and flywheel.
I figured I would stay in the hotel at Crappets Lane Services on the M25.
I somehow managed to get to Crappets Lane, only to be told that the nearest bed would be Eastborne!!!
By now I was so far gone I decided for lack of any other bright ideas, to kip in the car.........
Thus, I "awoke" from a two hour semi-doze, at 4am, as it was getting lightish, and anyway I'd proved beyond all reasonable doubt that it's impossible to actually 'sleep' in an Elise.
I had been aware of growling noises from some sort of hotted-up cars during the night, and lo and behold, I found myself amidst a gathering of the "White Rabbit Racing" crowd. Who these characters are, I don't know, but some of the BMWs they use have 'much bigger wheels' than any BMW racer I've ever seen!
They seemed friendly though, and explained how I would best get on the road to Ardingley .
Off I trundled, a red-eyed and wild-haired wreck.....yes I'd forgotten a comb.
I arrived at John and Susans establishment at the ungodly hour of 6am, thinking they would doubtless be up and about shearing cattle, milking sheep, and generally doing the things farming folk pretend to do before breakfast to make the rest of us feel inadequate, but they appeared to be sound asleep!
Same at 7am!!!!
Same at 8am!!!!!!
At 9am I struck lucky, and had a lovely and very welcome cup of rosy with the extremely charming and affable Mr H and his equally charming and welcoming wife Susan..... thanks guys for being an oasis of sanity in what was to become the trip from Hell......
After gassing for a while, I left for Dover at about 11am, for a 12 noon booking-in session for the 1pm boat to Calais.
20 miles from Ardingley,on the M25 yet again, a godallmighty BANG woke me up....and the battery light came on! I assumed the alternator belt had broken and hit the rear bulkhead.
I had no choice but to carry on to Dover, where I got the car on the boat with no great problem.
I arrived at a rained-out Calais and holed up in the Bonsai Hotel.
Next morning the full horror of the situation was finally revealed in a local garage....to even see the alternator on an Elise, you have to remove the rear right wheel and the inner wheelarch, after which it's possible to see the mounting point for the tensioner through the air intake hole, if there's sufficient light in the engine bay.
There was enough light to see the bracket had snapped, and the bolt was sheared off very close to the block, as well!!!
So, I bought a new battery, and headed South, after having checked with Norm V....as I'd intended kipping overnight at Norm's to give the batteries a good charge.
Norm was at LeMans, but invited me to drop in, as I'd be able to charge up there, in camping Bleu.
The life of even a new battery, without input from a generator, is somewhat limited. It has to pump petrol, run the brake lights, ignition, indicators, etc....and wipers, as it was raining on and off.
I noticed the engine becoming unresponsive to sudden booting of the throttle, which is the first symptom of impending battery collapse, so pulled into a services which was full of exotic cars on their way to LeMans.
I had to push the Elise to a disabled parking bay after gassing up, and heard some clowns in Porsches commenting "oh look, the Lotus Position haw haw haw....." b
dS you know who you are!
I then discovered the alarm goes off and can't be disabled, when you change the battery.....and the Gendarmes who were watching were very helpful once they realised I wasn't pinching the car. Two of them helped me remove the bits which have to be taken off....rad shroud, washer bottle mounting plate, etc.
I broke down again 30 km north of Le Mans, and had to call out a local garage.....they used a booster to get the Elise going and I followed them to their garage, and there bought another battery!
They also replaced the Peugeot rear foglight switch, as it had become jammed in the on position from when I'd had to discourage some zealot in a white van the night before in the UK in a storm,with fog and almost zero visibility, as he was attempting to get into the boot of the Elise.......how handy it was that they were a Peugeot garage and had a dead 205GTi lying around, as they are the source for the light switches......
Finally, I arrived in Le Mans, to find myself in the first of many traffic jams. Even in the grounds of the track, it's one huge jam!
In the end, I walked 2 miles to find the Seveners, and Norm gave me new instructions, and I eventually got the car into the camping by skullduggery.
I hitched the battery to a charger, intending to switch to #2 battery at midnight, but as midnight came and went unnoticed such was the scale of the hospitality and the quantity of the beer, my second battery only got connected at about 9am the next morning.
I was given some much needed grub, and a Lotus Seven Club member of the gentle sex kindly sorted me out with drinking utensils and the like and generally was nice and made me feel that all was not doom and gloom......even though she had lost her voice more than somewhat through having been singing on stage the night before with the band ReVamp...hope it's back to normal now, LiR!
Some great old rock numbers were being banged out by ReVamp and another band who's name I didn't get, but both were good.
In my tent, 'supplied' by another female Club member and which had seemingly been vacated by its occupant due to his having found another, I found I couldn't sleep, as I had no covering, or mattress, and only my bike jacket with its lumpy armour as a pillow.
After lying on the hard ground wondering why I do these things, it occurred to me that I had a large upholstered bag for the hard top, rolled up in the passenger seat of the car!
I scuttled through the rain to get the bag, and after using it as a mattress, realised I could actually get inside it, and by lying diagonally, it made a superb upholstered sleeping bag!!!!!
So, amazingly, I actually slept very well, while the rain lashed down all night.
In the morning I failed to smuggle myself into the stands to watch the racing, so, after eating a fine breakfast with Norm and Harry Flatters, and admiring FastLady's Ferrari 328 GTE, and watching the catapulted balloons of water seeking targets amongst the passing traffic, goaded on by two loons dressed as Margaret Thatcher and someone in full evening dress, I sadly said my goodbyes and headed off into the rain buffetted Sarthe.
One incident in the next leg will remain with me forever.
I was nursing a dodgy battery and coming up to the Péage, when I realised I didn't have enough cash. I took my Amex Gold Master Card from its Personally Monogrammed in Gold Block Morrocco leather carrying-case and put it in the receptacle tray which Lotus so thoughtfully provide for such moments, at the front of the large 'doorsill' to my right.
I heard, almost subliminally, a faint 'thunk' as I turned to open the passenger side window (by hand winder, remember, as this is an S1).....I turned back to retrieve my card to find, to my utter bewilderment, that it had dematerialised totally!
It simply was not there.
On examination, I noticed at the front of the 'tray' where it abuts the door pillar, a slot about as deep as a credit card.
Yes, indeedy, my bank card had gone through the slot and is now, as I write, still inside the deep aluminium chassis beam of the Elise!!! (actually as I realised later, it was in the GRP sill section and could have been fished out from behind)
As my other card was malfunctioning, I was rather at a loss, and 2 euros short of the required 8 euros. "My card isn't working, and the other is inside the chassis of this car....."sounds pathetically unlikely, doesn't it?
There were Gendarmes there, grinning like loons, as I struggled to make my predicament clear. Fortunately the Péage lady was made of stern stuff, and commanded your narrator to give up his "inoperative" card immediately, which I did, and the card bowed to her iron will and coughed up 8 euros without quibble.
Mind boggling!
On I went, and eventually broke down again only 15 minutes from home. Another Peugeot garage boosted and quick charged my original battery for an hour, which eventually got me, bedraggled, filthy, red eyed and dishevelled, back to an empty house, the girls having gone out partying.
Ho hum! "
It brought to mind the fun I had when I collected my lovely old Elise S1 111S from Liverpool in 2007.......
Here it is.
"I went, last Wednesday, to the UK to collect the latest great-value addition to the Fester car stable, an Elise S1 111S (DVA 200+bhp).
This epic adventure saw me soaring above the clouds to Liverpool, which was doing a very convincing impression of being the wettest place on earth when I arrived.
I was supposed to be picked up by the vendor, but he was delayed in traffic and so I had the great good fortune to be able to examine the facade of the John Lennon Airport arrivals building in minute detail, and I have to say, it was a very worthwhile and most fulfilling cultural experience for a 'plook' like myself from the French Desert.
Eventually Mark, the vendor, turned up, and we then spent another hour at walking pace crossing Liverpool as the documents were the other side of the city.
This wrecked my schedule, as I had planned to pick up the hard top in High Wycombe the same evening.
I eventually got to HW at about 11pm, and had an excellent curry cooked by the hardtop vendor.
I then set off at about midnight to a local hostelry which I'd used before, the High Wycombe Travel Lodge, which was most inconveniently unable to offer me a bed.
By now somewhat knackered after fretting about the flight the night before (I detest flying in commercial airliners for some reason) I decided to head for John H's renowned "Pitlane" Seven Preparation facility, where I was due the next morning to collect a clutch and flywheel.
I figured I would stay in the hotel at Crappets Lane Services on the M25.
I somehow managed to get to Crappets Lane, only to be told that the nearest bed would be Eastborne!!!
By now I was so far gone I decided for lack of any other bright ideas, to kip in the car.........
Thus, I "awoke" from a two hour semi-doze, at 4am, as it was getting lightish, and anyway I'd proved beyond all reasonable doubt that it's impossible to actually 'sleep' in an Elise.
I had been aware of growling noises from some sort of hotted-up cars during the night, and lo and behold, I found myself amidst a gathering of the "White Rabbit Racing" crowd. Who these characters are, I don't know, but some of the BMWs they use have 'much bigger wheels' than any BMW racer I've ever seen!
They seemed friendly though, and explained how I would best get on the road to Ardingley .
Off I trundled, a red-eyed and wild-haired wreck.....yes I'd forgotten a comb.
I arrived at John and Susans establishment at the ungodly hour of 6am, thinking they would doubtless be up and about shearing cattle, milking sheep, and generally doing the things farming folk pretend to do before breakfast to make the rest of us feel inadequate, but they appeared to be sound asleep!
Same at 7am!!!!
Same at 8am!!!!!!
At 9am I struck lucky, and had a lovely and very welcome cup of rosy with the extremely charming and affable Mr H and his equally charming and welcoming wife Susan..... thanks guys for being an oasis of sanity in what was to become the trip from Hell......
After gassing for a while, I left for Dover at about 11am, for a 12 noon booking-in session for the 1pm boat to Calais.
20 miles from Ardingley,on the M25 yet again, a godallmighty BANG woke me up....and the battery light came on! I assumed the alternator belt had broken and hit the rear bulkhead.
I had no choice but to carry on to Dover, where I got the car on the boat with no great problem.
I arrived at a rained-out Calais and holed up in the Bonsai Hotel.
Next morning the full horror of the situation was finally revealed in a local garage....to even see the alternator on an Elise, you have to remove the rear right wheel and the inner wheelarch, after which it's possible to see the mounting point for the tensioner through the air intake hole, if there's sufficient light in the engine bay.
There was enough light to see the bracket had snapped, and the bolt was sheared off very close to the block, as well!!!
So, I bought a new battery, and headed South, after having checked with Norm V....as I'd intended kipping overnight at Norm's to give the batteries a good charge.
Norm was at LeMans, but invited me to drop in, as I'd be able to charge up there, in camping Bleu.
The life of even a new battery, without input from a generator, is somewhat limited. It has to pump petrol, run the brake lights, ignition, indicators, etc....and wipers, as it was raining on and off.
I noticed the engine becoming unresponsive to sudden booting of the throttle, which is the first symptom of impending battery collapse, so pulled into a services which was full of exotic cars on their way to LeMans.
I had to push the Elise to a disabled parking bay after gassing up, and heard some clowns in Porsches commenting "oh look, the Lotus Position haw haw haw....." b
dS you know who you are!I then discovered the alarm goes off and can't be disabled, when you change the battery.....and the Gendarmes who were watching were very helpful once they realised I wasn't pinching the car. Two of them helped me remove the bits which have to be taken off....rad shroud, washer bottle mounting plate, etc.
I broke down again 30 km north of Le Mans, and had to call out a local garage.....they used a booster to get the Elise going and I followed them to their garage, and there bought another battery!
They also replaced the Peugeot rear foglight switch, as it had become jammed in the on position from when I'd had to discourage some zealot in a white van the night before in the UK in a storm,with fog and almost zero visibility, as he was attempting to get into the boot of the Elise.......how handy it was that they were a Peugeot garage and had a dead 205GTi lying around, as they are the source for the light switches......
Finally, I arrived in Le Mans, to find myself in the first of many traffic jams. Even in the grounds of the track, it's one huge jam!
In the end, I walked 2 miles to find the Seveners, and Norm gave me new instructions, and I eventually got the car into the camping by skullduggery.
I hitched the battery to a charger, intending to switch to #2 battery at midnight, but as midnight came and went unnoticed such was the scale of the hospitality and the quantity of the beer, my second battery only got connected at about 9am the next morning.
I was given some much needed grub, and a Lotus Seven Club member of the gentle sex kindly sorted me out with drinking utensils and the like and generally was nice and made me feel that all was not doom and gloom......even though she had lost her voice more than somewhat through having been singing on stage the night before with the band ReVamp...hope it's back to normal now, LiR!
Some great old rock numbers were being banged out by ReVamp and another band who's name I didn't get, but both were good.
In my tent, 'supplied' by another female Club member and which had seemingly been vacated by its occupant due to his having found another, I found I couldn't sleep, as I had no covering, or mattress, and only my bike jacket with its lumpy armour as a pillow.
After lying on the hard ground wondering why I do these things, it occurred to me that I had a large upholstered bag for the hard top, rolled up in the passenger seat of the car!
I scuttled through the rain to get the bag, and after using it as a mattress, realised I could actually get inside it, and by lying diagonally, it made a superb upholstered sleeping bag!!!!!
So, amazingly, I actually slept very well, while the rain lashed down all night.
In the morning I failed to smuggle myself into the stands to watch the racing, so, after eating a fine breakfast with Norm and Harry Flatters, and admiring FastLady's Ferrari 328 GTE, and watching the catapulted balloons of water seeking targets amongst the passing traffic, goaded on by two loons dressed as Margaret Thatcher and someone in full evening dress, I sadly said my goodbyes and headed off into the rain buffetted Sarthe.
One incident in the next leg will remain with me forever.
I was nursing a dodgy battery and coming up to the Péage, when I realised I didn't have enough cash. I took my Amex Gold Master Card from its Personally Monogrammed in Gold Block Morrocco leather carrying-case and put it in the receptacle tray which Lotus so thoughtfully provide for such moments, at the front of the large 'doorsill' to my right.
I heard, almost subliminally, a faint 'thunk' as I turned to open the passenger side window (by hand winder, remember, as this is an S1).....I turned back to retrieve my card to find, to my utter bewilderment, that it had dematerialised totally!
It simply was not there.
On examination, I noticed at the front of the 'tray' where it abuts the door pillar, a slot about as deep as a credit card.
Yes, indeedy, my bank card had gone through the slot and is now, as I write, still inside the deep aluminium chassis beam of the Elise!!! (actually as I realised later, it was in the GRP sill section and could have been fished out from behind)
As my other card was malfunctioning, I was rather at a loss, and 2 euros short of the required 8 euros. "My card isn't working, and the other is inside the chassis of this car....."sounds pathetically unlikely, doesn't it?
There were Gendarmes there, grinning like loons, as I struggled to make my predicament clear. Fortunately the Péage lady was made of stern stuff, and commanded your narrator to give up his "inoperative" card immediately, which I did, and the card bowed to her iron will and coughed up 8 euros without quibble.
Mind boggling!
On I went, and eventually broke down again only 15 minutes from home. Another Peugeot garage boosted and quick charged my original battery for an hour, which eventually got me, bedraggled, filthy, red eyed and dishevelled, back to an empty house, the girls having gone out partying.
Ho hum! "
top story , and thats how i try to look at any f**k ups or breakdowns now , at the moment it happens its the worse thing in the world , but what i keep at the back of my mind is in a few weeks time it becomes a tail to tell with mates probably over a drink or two , and ya probably end up laughing about it
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