The Confessional

[benymazz]

Forgive me Father Chapman, for I have sinned...

First, I must give credit where credit is due, I got this idea from Meg and Steve after reading the posts in this thread which I stumbled upon today viewtopic.php?f=19&t=26840. Since we're all in quarantine/lockdown I thought it might be a good time to share some (more) stories of Elan ownership that are humorous, humiliating, embarrassing, I-barely-got-away-with-my-life, et cetera...

Seeing as I'm starting this, I guess I'll go first. I've only been driving my Elan for 1 year 7 days but I've managed to rack up a fair number of... incidents.

1) April 2019 The day I got the Elan back on the road I took it for a 5 minute jaunt up and down my street. When I returned, I noticed more oil drips on the driveway than I was expecting. Like, a drip every 3 feet. Pull into the garage, check the dipstick. Almost bone dry - halfway into the danger zone. I found out that I had forgot the square section cork gasket that goes between the front of the sump and the bottom of the timing chest. I dropped the sump as far as I could the next day (non removeable cross member) and after much swearing got the gasket in place with a little RTV and bolted the sump back up. No more leaks from that spot.

2) Early May 2019 A couple of weeks after I got it back on the road, after a meeting of my high school robotics team, I was giving a fellow teammate a ride home. At the time I was also attempting to get her to go on a date with me. I dropped her off at her house, turned the ignition off and removed the key so I could open the trunk, she retrieved her backpack and went inside. I get back in, turn the key - click. No problem, I'm sure the solenoid is acting up again. Open the hood, push the button on the solenoid. Click. Crap—she lived at the bottom of a hill, so I had no chance of push starting it myself. After I let all of my pride and will to live exit my body, I ended up calling her and she and her dad came out. They gave me a jump start and I was on my way home. I later discovered the problem was that I had done a lousy job tightening up the generator bolts so the belt had gone slack enough to drive the water pump and just run the generator fast enough to put the ignition light out, but not fast enough to actually charge the battery - especially at night, with the headlights on. Needless to say, we never ended up going on a date

There are many more - I'll write some more of them tomorrow.

-Ben