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Mark Duder took his Alpine across to South Australia for the Classic Adelaide rally. He
emailed me with this description of their travails on the event. As Robbie Burns said: "The best
laid plans of mice and men..." Mark also sent some photographs.
Hi Bob,
A summary of our Classic Adelaide event which Greg Humphries and I competed in. It was
a 6800km round trip for us and we took 3 days to get there and the same back again.
After getting across the Nullarbor we spent 2 days doing a run over each stage as they are
very close to Adelaide city. Good roads and very twisty and a number of the stages are used
up to 3 times in a day.
Scrutineering went well on Wednesday morning apart from SA has rules that LHD cars
have to have a sticker indicating that on the rear. Luckily a signage company did that for me
overnight.
Then the event itself didn't get under way until
Thursday evening with a 400 metre prologue dash on
the circuit which also included a hair pin bend and a
60kmh zone????
On Friday the first few stages went well, but then the
Alpine started missing and back firing badly, and I had
difficulty starting it and keeping it running too. After a
slow run on stage 7 Corkscrew Gully, I decided that we
couldn't continue anymore, so pulled off to the side.
I removed the carbie and cleaned all the jets, replaced
the plugs and checked the leads. Still nothing.
(Competitors who passed us on the stages, later said the
flames coming out of the exhaust were quite dramatic).
So we coasted down hill in angel gear into suburbia and
found we were on a bus route. We decided Greg would
catch a bus into Adelaide and bring back the trailer, so
we could take the Alpine to our friend Colin Redmond's house which was only a few km
away. (Terry Le May would remember him.)
As I waited for Greg, a couple of locals stopped to help. One went home for a spare coil with
we tried, but was not the answer and we also checked the fuel filter and fuel pump. Another
person who stopped, went home for a dwell meter which he put on and thought it was a
timing / electric problem. (Of course he knew Colin. He worked with him 20 years ago)!!!!
Once at Colin's he took over, after finding out what I had already done, he decided it may
be the timing that was out. Spark plugs out, rocker cover off, inside hatches and centre of the
roll cage out, and then timing lights on. Once
the timing was done and everything put back,
nothing!! Inspection of the distributor and a
change of the centre carbon contact as it was
very short, no cracks in the cap and the rotor
looked good. Nothing.
By this time it was getting late. As a last resort
Colin then thought it might be the condenser, so
he rang a friend and went off to get one at 9pm.
Let me tell you it is not an easy item to replace
2016 Classic Adelaide by Alpine A110
Mark and carburettor, what my old
dad would have called: "The joys of
motoring".