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2024 starts with the red Elan engine in the workshop for welding after a water leak into the oil. Initially we thought it was a warped front cover but further tests revealed a crack in the jacket of no. 4 cylinder. Hopefully that will soon be repaired and the Elan, with its own engine, can participate in the Atlas Rally in April. Whilst we plan further travels in 2024 they don’t involve Elans. One does involve hired 4WD into Tibet – the Road to Lhasa but sadly I fear that the aborted 2020 rally from Chengdu to Kathmandu via Lhasa was our only chance to get an Elan to Tibet.
2023 starts with a trip to Sri Lanka. There’s a degree of uncertainty about this following the disturbances and shortages earlier this year. Newsnight had a story last week and mentioned 20L fuel coupons – that won’t get us very far! We hope the car has arrived but shippers haven’t confirmed……maybe all will be well. See Sri Lanka to see how it all pans out. In September we took the yellow Elan to Ireland with Scenic Car Tours.
2021 has become history, various planned rallies didn’t happen but we did move house! Now in 2022, after a week’s holiday in Turkey (picking up Covid), we finally set out in a car – see Treasures of Italy.
2020 and not much has happened and the Lotii have pottered around locally in Norfolk. We had great plans for a rally to Tibet, starting in China in April and ending in Nepal. That got cancelled. Then a rally to Mongolia in 2021 with the same organiser was also cancelled as was our planned Scenic Cars tour to Italy. BUT – one rally has remained – with ROARR from John O’Groats to Lands End – what could possibly go wrong with that? The answer is the dog! The dog had an operation to remove a seed from well inside his thigh, general anaesthetic so he couldn’t go to kennels immediately afterwards. Thus to our great shame/pride/embarrassment we will start the rally in a dog friendly – Skoda! Read about it under Recent Posts to the right of the screen.
The first 2019 trip was to New Zealand in January. In the summer, it was “The Stans” with ROARR and another visit to the fabled city of Samarkand followed by the Pamir Highway. Now in September the yellow Elan has the leading role as we head to Moscow and St Petersburg…..See under Recent Posts.
2018 – two rallies this year – The Atlas Rally in March and then, well it was planned to be Indonesia but that rally was cancelled due to lack of support so we went to…….Switzerland instead! (and a non-car trip to Indonesia to see what we missed).
2017 – the year started slowly with a couple of changes of plan as things turned out to be more complicated than expected. In August the car was shipped to Newark and in September started on Scenic Car Tours’ Route 66 – see here for details of the route and itinerary. When we hit the Pacific we turned North along the coast then on the San Francisco and up the coast to Seattle. Continue to read under Route 66 above – I know its not route 66………
In September 2016 we went to Iran – Classic Persia – enjoy reading about it! Prior to that we went on Scenic Car Tours’ Arctic Highway Challenge
2015 is history but you can still read about the Amazon Adventure – Amazon Adventure. I haven’t worked out how do clever things like plant a map here so here’s a link to the rally organiser as he does have a clever map!!
The car is largely rebuilt – it got rather hammered! There was bodywork damage in the engine bay, off side wheel arch, a lot of under-floor and the rear turret area on the passenger’s side. Both Lotocones were broken as well as the diff mounts. Once I took the sump guard off it was not going back on again, it was so distorted by continuous bumping. I took it to the guy who made it 14 years ago and before pressing it back into shape, he said he liked to see it being used! The engine did very well but was a complete pig once it got home – all the valves needed reseating and now its even less happy when cold than it was before – and it was pretty bad then! On the way home the brake servo died and drank all the brake fluid so that was replaced along with both front vertical links. I also took the decision to convert to an alternator – shame!