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10 July 2011
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11 July 2011
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12 July 2011
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17 March 2012
Today I picked up “Happy Tail! Being several thousand dollars lighter here is how we went.
Firstly the bloody train was half an hour late which kinda threw the plans out the window. Catching the bus to a suburb I hadn’t been to in daylight in twenty years and going in from the other side from which I would drive ended up in my having to walk a mile back to the workshop. I’d almost forgotten what she looked like, nice and clean and freshly washed after a several month holiday. We went through the solutions to the problems and basically the covered some of the areas I had already done but it came down to the injectors not working correctly after an initial period. This was easily solved by buying six new injectors, I finally ended up with two extra new ones and 12 old ones, in America and getting Peter to express ship them to the workshop. They were $340 each here and we paid about $75. With a higher capacity fuel pump this solved the running lean problem. The next one was finding the problem in the ignition system as the car warmed up. It turned out to be the pulse generation in the distributor. This only cost $434 and I could buy one in America for $103 to $131 but by now we were on a really thin time line. I ended up buying a new spare from Turkey delivered to Peter in America for about AU$27!
That is the bad news. So lets here the rest. I opted to drive her home, about 100 miles, through heavy traffic, expressways, twisty down hill and up hill and the occasional blast through the gears in 30 degrees Celsius. If there going to be a problem to-day would be it. She was amazing! Faultless. I opted for Kangaroo Valley because of the twisty, steep country road and if there were any hidden problems they would come to the surface. The biggest problem was it is a public road. Just out of Fitzroy Falls, where the police often are, I picked up a RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) Holden ute. Or he picked me up. We had a derby down into the valley and I think the tyres were about the only limiting factor. The acceleration in second and third gears to pass the occasional semi was outstanding. Through the Valley we behaved ourselves and it was blast up to the summit at Beaumont. By then I had well and truly lost the ute, found understeer on a wet corner and hammering up the really steep part in second and third when I saw the red and blue flashing lights at the hair pin at the top. Bummer. They must have heard me coming! Hang on it’s not me! The little old lady had broken down and there was the normal amount of chaos as they were trying to move her. A gentle run down the mountain to Cambewarra and an even more gentle run to the garage to cool things down and she was tucked away. Life is pretty good.
2 June 2012
We survived the weekend at Winton. The times we reasonable (best of 1:56.88) without trying to break the car or me. The oversteer did not arise I think due to the semi slick tyres and the rear tyres being wider. Body roll was a feature. At one stage the water pump leaked then stopped so I left it alone and will have a look at in the shed. Overall a great weekend and I guess the message is there were not that many stock E12s (other than the rims and tyres) running around a circuit anywhere in the world. One guy was wrapped and took plenty of photos, a lot of others said they had one but it was a 2.8. Over dinner on the Sunday night one of the 2002 guys said it was a pretty rare car which in Australian speak is "I have never seen one before and I think it's great."
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