Was a quite drive and again not too much traffic, it is always good at this time of year as there are no road crews blocking lanes with maintenance along the way, so no delays. I stopped briefly for fuel at Gundagai and thendecided as I have often passed the mid way point of Tarcutta, well midway between Sydney and Melbourne (where Canberra should have been built, except there is not enough of a water supply there for it to have been), and have never actually been able to get a picture at that point I should stop and remedy that situation.
It really is a shame that the red reflector from the boot emblem managed to fall off the car on the Parkes trip, actually surprised that it managed to last there that long actually, I notice it missing every time I walk past the car.
Anyway as you can see in that pic the sky had clouded over by this time and by the time I made it to Albury there had been a bit of rain, though not too much, mind Albury must have had a bit before I reached there as the ceiling at the Lavington petrol station had fallen through and dripping still as I had a bit of lunch. After the refueling and then the lunch break, for the first time in a very long time and for the first time on a long trip, the Count refused to start!
Luckily I had parked the car out of the way, which saved having to push it anywhere so it didn't matter how long it took to rectify. It was surprising as I had only refilled the tank not more than 30 minutes previously, then started it, moved it and parked so I could have lunch and when I came back plenty of fuel and plenty of power, just no spark. I tired he leads (have a spare set in the boot) and checked the rotor (electronic ignition has been fitted), but still nothing. The electronic ignition module was warm to the touch which was a bit odd, but I resorted to calling the RACV ( I am a member and have top cover roadside assistance, which I have for just such a situation, though have never used it before.
Had a few conversations with various people while I waited for the NRMA man (RACV had passed it on as I was in NSW, less than about 10 kilometres from the VIC border) which was interesting. When the NRMA man arrived he touched the coil and recoiled in horror as though he had just stuck his hand in a fire, it was very hot to touch, so we definitely had a problem. Mr NRMA announced that there was noting he could do (yep looked at nothing else) and went off to call a tow truck to take it to an auto electrician. This was taking some time and as it had taken so long I tried to start the car once again, it started! I called the tow truck off (the Count has never been on a tow truck whilst I have owned it) and drove to the auto electrical place and even though they a\were very busy they had a look at the Count for me, though to be honest they weren't too sure about it as they weren't used to working on something as old as the Count. After various tests and lots of electrical sparks it was decided that anything could be causing the problem so we'd just go for the most obvious to start with and we installed a new coil, I say we as I did a fair bit of the installing of it. Once in the car started and I was away, blind faith and ignorance that the problem was solved.
To be honest I am not sure that the old coil would not have kept me going all the way home, but the new one certainly did and I had good cause to test it out as I had to stop quite a few time from the border onwards. It started to rain and while it was never all that heavy it certainly was necessary to use the wipers, which have never been fantastic on the Morris, even by the limited standard of their nature. The passenger side wiper decided that as a rare treat it would wipe more that half of the windscreen pane that it clears (usually it only does half of it) and started wiping the whole screen, though it seems it became a bit too enthusiastic as it started wiping right to the side of the screen and managed to dig itself into the windscreen rubber, which stopped the both wipers completely. I had to stop and pull it back a number of times to "reset" it's sweep, though by this stage it had a mind of it's won and decided that it would be more exciting to wipe the A pillar rather than the screen. I finally managed to re-position it on it's spindle and it went back to wiping just half of the passengers screen again, though at least it was working.
I had been warned that the storms in Melbourne has been quite intense, but never had much along the route. Just near Euroa though the police had closed on lane and had lowered the speed limit to 40, so even I had to slow down! There was some minor flooding over the highway though the police were still waving the cars through, so off into the water we went. Unusual situation driving through water that at times we up to the sills of the car (the Count is by no means a low slung vehicle), not able to see the road surface and feeling the water flow tugging at the wheels, while the water is hitting just under the floor of the car. All was well though, no great drama, and if it was at all dangerous the police would have closed the road all together, so happy they had not!
After that there were no further incidents or delays and finally managed to get home at 10 minutes to 11 pm after the 0730 start for what should have only been a max 10 hour drive at 80kph. It had started out so well too, oh well it happens sometimes...
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