Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Hello!

So my Copilot flew from Paris Friday evening to do his very first rally with me. We had not seen each other for years so we had a lot of chatting to catch up!
We woke up very early saturday morning at 5:30 am. We had to be up in the mountain at la Colmiane for the start at 8:30.

In between we had to set up the tripmaster according to the organizer settings. Blunik, a company specialized in e-tripmaster, some kind of very evolved tripmaster, more a computer really... was there for reffing the rally and the score. The guy with the moustache and the funky trouser is the Blunik inventor.
So they would put some electronic device on our car to track us very precisely. No human check point this time...

The opposition seemed very serious to us with many rally cars coming from France Italy and Spain... Their equipment inside and out could not be mistaken... real pros! Roll cage, rally stickers... the complete set!

Some were really in full effect, making the show at every start...
We were impressed cause these cars seemed to be the XL size compared to us...

We are in france, so Alpine is the beloved brand you know....

This is what a roadbook look like when prepared... you try to add details to make the path to follow as clear as possible.
You also quote time you are suppose to respect when driving at the requested speed.

I know the speed seems ridiculously low.... but in the Turini pass and on the other deadly narrowed roads you can't imagine what it is....

Now it is time to get ready...

Get in the queue, and start to ask the silly questions...

Is the trip wheels on Zero?
Is the chrono reset and ready?
Is the clock set on the same time as the organizer clock?
Do I need to pee?

Weather was nice and sunny saturday. We had to face a technical problem...

If you try to open the windows, it would not and the tripmaster would switch off and reset, same thing would happen if the doors were opened or if any other extra electric device would suck current in the car....

May be a loosy negative ground?

The klaxon will honk each time I turn left... pretty convenient in the mountains to avoid incoming cars but really annoying in villages or when you follow another car...

So before a stage, we had to do a meeting to decide how wide should the window be opened... because after the start it was forbidden to touch anything electrical in the cockpit or we would loose the datas....

We froze to death during some stages high up in the clouds and during some other we sweat and smelled like dead racoons for miles....

We had lunch in Italy in a restaurant held by a former Lancia factory pilot... Loads of pictures on the walls signed by famous pilots... very nice place!

The food was greatly appreciated cause it was 16:00 pm !

The roads were really rough with holes, buses, sheeps, missing barriers close to the cliff.....

The afternoon had its loads of surprises.

We encountered cows during a stage... as the cow is bigger than the elan, they won and we lost a few seconds.

The mud flaps offered reasonable protection against cow poo....

We hit many times rocks on the road fallen from the mountain. I could not avoid them and they hit my exhaust can... Is was starting to regret my "fast road" springs from TTR.... may be a tad too low for this kind of exercise...?

So suddenly we heard the exhaust grinding the road behind us... we decided to stop before the next stage to see if it could be fixed...or not!

The strap at the rear had broken and the can was loose. What are we going to use? duck tape? mettalic wire? OUCH ! it is burning hot...!

Wait, hold on a second, is that a leather belt you have here?

Give it to me... (now sing the mac gyver music ) Tadadadada dada daaaaaaa

On sunday, it was raining and very slippery everywhere.

One competitor crashed his car. Some had flat tyres because of sharp rocks on the road...

We had done well saturday and we needed to avoid mistakes sunday and secretly we hopped others would fail!

The car proved to be reliable. The challenge for the radiator system was to cope with low speed (no wind) in the heat saturday while going uphill in second gear at high revs with loads of hairpins.... The double fans provided the air draft necessary to avoid a blown engine.
Some Alpine with rear engine failed there.....
The K&N air filter in the original canister (direct replacement for the paper one, same shape) allowed easy breathing when throttle response is extremely important to keep a steady pace in order to respect the speed required by the stage.
My mud flap mods protected rather well the freshly white painted bottom of "lulubelle"

We were delighted to hear our names during the award ceremony as we ended 2nd for the Saturday/sunday historic rally of Valdeblore!

Congrats to Eric, for a first copilot day, we can call that a success!
Thanks to Clive for its support!

Congratulations, a great result. Your English is excellent too but you may be interested to know that we call cow excrement "cow flops", so your mud flaps were, really, flop-flaps.
Jim

Great story! What a wonderful thing to see an Elan used as it should be. Congratulations on your finish in second place. A fine ending to an worthy adventure. Well Done!

I wanted to check the thick wire that ground engine to chassis...

You can add to the list of casualties one dead engine silent block.

The poor thing was brand new, hopefully the U shape hold the engine in place....

Now i am fixing the elan and getting ready for the jean behra historic rally.

Please contact me if you want to join. It is a fantastic week end!