Back in the saddle again...

[Davidb]

And I was delighted to see you finish the event!

[Davidb]

Photos of the event were just published:

Being chased above the snow line by an RS America-I let him past a few minutes later and he got the speeding ticket!

[stugilmour]

Excellent stories David and Gary. Having driven the highlighted roads many times, they are absolutely epic two lanes.

Here is a link to the organizer?s web site. So would like to join you guys in my Plus 2, but unfortunately the date conflicts with a regularly scheduled event for us. The past entry lists from the various years shows a very impressive variety of funky classics! They are found under the BC Events / Spring Thaw menu link at the top of the main page. Our Elan Coupes would be positively luxurious compared to the Sevens along for the event!

http://www.classiccaradventures.com

Looks like they also organize similar events in other areas.

Well done guys!

Stu

[Davidb]

I was going to title this post "A Short Drive in the Canadian Wilderness", but actually it was 1000 miles door to door which isn't exactly short in an Elan.

The latest run organized by Classic Car Adventures was "The Rush to Gold Bridge" which doesn't go to Gold Bridge and is as rushed as you want it to be...

We set out from Hope, British Columbia-almost 100 miles east of Vancouver on the main road but shortly turned off onto quite rough gravel forestry roads-the Elan was not intended for this! I did almost 100 miles in the Elan last year in this event so I was aware that the car can stand it although the muffler/silencer takes a pounding!

Gary (gardog) and Tanya were on the trip also and I tried to get video of their car from mine while on the gravel but it just didn't work out-they also had the top down!:

We were not on gravel the whole time of course. The roads in BC can be spectacular but we are having a record forest fire situation this summer and with 600 fires burning in the province there were some areas we could not go for obvious reasons--when people are evacuating their homes they don't want to see a group of idiots in sports cars having a good time! However, we had a great run with rain on the final day which is starting to slow the forest fires.
I have video of us driving on the forestry roads but cannot figure out how to (a) get it into my computer and (b) put it up here!

The Elan is not as fragile as some believe.

[Gardog]

Thanks for posting David.

I agree ? the Elan is definitely not as fragile as I thought. Aside from a mis-fire due to a loose wire (thanks again David for your help diagnosing it) the car performed very well. Portions of the gravel sections were quite rough with lots of loose rock and big ruts. But the narrow track and short wheelbase gave us plenty of room to maneuver. And I was thankful on many occasions for the S4?s small muffler. We felt our share of thuds and pings from loose rocks and branches. Fortunately though, nothing got bent or broken. By the end of the weekend we were pretty dusty but agreed that a bit of dirt was a small price to pay for such a terrific experience.

Gary

[Davidb]

This past weekend saw the running of the 2019 Spring Thaw rally here in British Columbia (The bit of Canada that ends at the Pacific ocean).
We covered 1224 miles in four days.
Leaving home last Thursday to pick up my co-driver, who lives only a few miles away, the car ground to a halt only a mile from home-this after weeks of preparation and test driving! It was fairly easy to determine that there was no spark despite power to the coil. I had fitted a Pertronix distributor (also sold by Aldon in the UK I believe) a year or so ago and this was the source of the problem. Fortunately I had put the old distributor, with cap and leads, into the Pertronix box and put that in the boot. We fitted the old distributor and off we went.

The first night we were in Harrison Hot Springs, a rather ratty resort 100 miles east of Vancouver. From there we went through the mountains on great roads eventually ending up at the ski resort Sun Peaks near Kamloops. This is at almost 4500 feet. They warned us snow was expected overnight and sure enough we woke to about four inches of the stuff. I had fitted all-season tires in anticipation but not all had done so. It was gnarly (is that the word?)-that is an Aston DB4 behind the Saab:

The back-up car, a 1966 Mustang, driven by a mechanic friend to help out with breakdowns, tried to follow the main group down the mountain about fifteen minutes after we had left. Apparently he slid for hundreds of yards before finally coming to a rest in the ditch undamaged. The Elan was remarkably sure footed but I didn't try any heroics!
We were in and out of snow showers the entire morning but finally the weather cleared and we had spectacular mountain roads. Highway 6 through Lumby, Cherryville-started as a gold mining camp in 1863 and down through wonderful roads until finally reaching the section which is probably the finest Elan road in Western Canada: Narrow, twisting like a serpent, downhill and deserted before coming abruptly to a stop at the Needles ferry crossing over the Arrow Lakes-we missed the ferry by 30 seconds:

More to follow...

[74Twincam]

Fantastic write up!

I'm get to run in the Hagerty Silver Summit event with Classic Car Adventures this next month in Colorado. It's my second time at this event as part of the Hagerty team, and I have to give the organizer, Dave Hord, two thumbs up for putting together such a fantastic tour. These are ridiculous fun and a great chance to get out with other like-minded car nuts for a superb weekend. I think the people that attend make the events great- a tremendous amount of support and positive vibes the entire route.
Highly recommended if you get the chance to join in on one!

[Davidb]

Update: I just got off the phone with Carl at Pertronix and they will be sending me a new module to fit into the Pertronix distributor that failed before the start of this event. Since the distributor is two years old I think that is good-despite it having only 3000 miles on it.

[h20hamelan]

I would strongly agree with the best elan roads

[Davidb]

The ferry is a cable operated vessel and just runs back and forward-there has been a ferry here since 1913 apparently. We had to wait about thirty minutes for it to return. Then we pressed on over great roads through small towns: Burton, Nakusp and New Denver a former silver mining town and Slocan, which was the smallest incorporated city in the British Commonwealth when it was founded. Sternwheelers sailed from Slocan around to camps and villages on the Arrow lakes picking up and delivering miners and their finds. Eventually into the town of Nelson our stop for the night.


The last time the rally overnighted in Nelson there was serious concern expressed by the hotel staff over the party that developed in the parking lot. This year we were each provided with a stainless steel water bottles and we poured our beer or wine into those and two hundred people appeared to be very thirsty for a long time...

At 8.45 the next morning we set off for home-about 650 kms away. We stopped in Osoyoose (very close to the US border) for lunch and a brief awards ceremony and then we were back on the road, through the mountains to the coast. Here we are with a friend in a Lancia Fulvia:

It was a long day. The Elan cruises quite well at about 80 mph or so I am told but the noise level is very high in my car even with the 3.55 diff. One young punk in an Audi A4 got a surprise: He overtook us on a straight section that preceded a long very winding section-he was obviously perturbed to have the Elan right behind him even after a few miles and was starting to look like he was over his head. My co-driver asked me to slow down before the Audi driver took himself, and possibly us, out of the picture...

We made it home about 7.00 pm. The car was fine apart from the Pertronix failure, the seats were very comfortable even at the end of a very long day. My rebuild of the seats using the dense, thin foam intended for use under gym equipment to cover the springs paid off.

When is the next event?!

[Davidb]

Another update: Despite the invoice for the Pertronix distributor saying 12 months warranty I just noticed that on their web site they state 30 months warranty!

Also, re the road down from Sun Peaks that was snow covered (see photo) on Tuesday of this week a truck turned over on that road, killing the driver...

[Davidb]

The latest event was "The Rush to Gold Bridge 2019".
We started in Pemberton, about an hour the other side of Whistler the famous ski resort and went on gravel roads to Lillooet at the top of the pass.
It was rough!
I mean, I would have hesitated to take my all wheel drive Volvo on most of it-it was seriously rough!
My navigator was Ted Wilkinson, of Wilkinson Automobilia, who some may know. He is an experienced rally driver/navigator and would urge me on at the rough sections: "GO, GO, GO! Momentum, momentum..."
We had bloody momentum-the rear muffler looks like a garbage can after a bear finished with it!
But the Elan made it! And was first on the road throughout that run. But it was hard on the car.
We had two more days of driving on brilliant roads-sometimes unpaved but not like that first day. Swooping mountain roads for the most part and the Elan was brilliant!
We stayed in "interesting" places and had a great time.

The final run to the finish was from Kamloops to Boston Bar on mostly empty roads with a couple of unpaved sections-this is one of the nicest stretches:

We are doing almost 60mph but you cannot tell from the photo.

We got to about an hour from the finish and I noticed the oil pressure suddenly drop-I drive with one eye on the oil pressure gauge. I found that if I kept the revs up the oil pressure was not too bad-down from 50 to about 35-40 so we kept going running in train with a Porsche at about 75 mph.
We reached the finish at Boston Bar and had lunch and then I decided that with a cooler engine I should examine the cause of low oil pressure-only to find NO oil pressure on start up.

Subsequent strip down has found the following-the oil pick up pipe had cracked badly and #2 rod bearing is damaged and the crank is blued. Shit!

[Davidb]

Somebody had posted a video of the first gravel section we did in the Elan on you tube. They were in a 4x4. This was shot in 2017-it was much rougher last week!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceGsJMq ... JZlTH011gc

[trw99]

Really good to see you using (and abusing!) your Elan, David.

Thank you for posting. Keep it up!

Tim