by Paul Quiniff
Before the last board meeting we had a Mini Tune-up Clinic with George Neumann's Elan coupe. The car had been brought back to life two years ago at the Spring Tune-up Clinic. Since then he had been driving it around the neighborhood only to keep the motor in running condition. Last fall the Elan mysteriously stopped. We had a board meeting earlier this spring at his house but couldn't get it running. It was decided to have another meeting later in the year to fix it. The August meeting was set to do this.
Bob Herzog and I got there early, after an hour of loading the necessary things to fix the car. First we put my jumper battery system on his car with the charger running. The second thing was to pull the plugs and check their condition. They were not fouled. Next we checked for spark on all cylinders. This was OK. This meant that there was not a bad coil when everything was cold. Bob made sure that the distributor was tight.
Next, the fuel line was detached at one of the carburetors to check for fuel flow. This showed good fuel flow. Then we put the plugs back in and put the wires hack on. We tried to start the car using ether sparingly. The car only wanted to run only on the ether.
Bob agreed with me that it had to be had gas. This gas was not too old, but something was wrong with it. We pulled out an electric fuel pump out of my van from hell, to pump the tank empty. We then put two gallons of fresh gas in the tank. Then we pumped I quart of fuel through at the carburetors to flush the system. Then we reattached the fuel line and gave the carbs a little ether to start the car.
The car started OK. The tired rings and valve guides let plenty of oil into the combustion chambers. They didn't have to worry about mosquitoes that night! We then aired up the tires and Bob told George to take it out for a drive around. Some of the neighbors came over to cheer.
After our success, George and Claire served up a nice dinner of chicken, rice and biscuits. Thank you George and Claire! George now has a running car again. All of this appeared to have been the result of some had gas from a local gas station. George wants to attend to the tired motor in a timely fashion. This was certainly a successful night.
