History
2016 This was purchased from Geoff Kelly in Hallam North as a restoration project in 2012. A complete bare metal rebuild is underway and it is close to being finished. The car was imported from the US over twenty years ago and no work had been done on it prior to Geoff getting it. Now it has been converted to right hand drive, all body panels restored and now resprayed in a dark blue. A complete engine rebuild has been done. It has a fibreglass body and mag wheels as the Mark 2 rims weren't matching anyway. Looking forward to driving it in the new year.
Memories
Interstate Escape
I'm not sure whether it is the Vic number plates or the songs about South Australian football supporters that I have written, but it seems that it isn't my car but the state that is causing the issues with “the beast”. Yes, I had decided to give my Sprite a long road trip and Adelaide on the map didn’t look too far. When I say map, I mean atlas.
The only problem I had in Victoria was just before Horsham when the beast was hot under the collar. Caught at a dead stop at a traffic light roadworks for over ten minutes ten km from Horsham in 33 degrees with no breeze. Temperature gauge kept climbing to almost boiling. I crossed the border and was lulled into a false sense of security.
All did not bode well however as I got close to Adelaide. Just when I thought I had made it, the beast spat the dummy. My fuel gauge has never worked properly. It is an inveterate liar. The only low fuel warning I get is when the electric fuel pump rises to a crescendo and the vacuum gauge goes troppo, indicating that in thirty seconds I would be out of fuel. Fifty kilometres from Adelaide it needed a drink on the side of the road. I knew its eccentricities and was prepared with a five-litre container of petrol which luckily had been filled recently.
I finally found the apartment complex where I was staying and went in and paid. Then when my back was turned the beast cracked the sulks. I went to put it into undercover parking and the motor wouldn't fire. Then the starter motor jammed. I rang the RAA and they came and looked at it. They gave the starter motor and whack and it unjammed. Then it just wouldn't fire. No spark from the coil to the distributor and thus the plugs. All I could see was a smirk on the front of the car. It had to be towed to a place that specialised in British cars to sort out the problem. The owner of the business said he would do it himself. His young workers he was sure wouldn't understand how it works. If they couldn’t plug it into a computer then it was beyond them. While it was being fixed I was left choosing what colour to make the for-sale sign. Another alternative was having the bloody thing euthanized.
I was hoping that my car was going to be fixed because I had promised it I would take it to the National Car Museum in Birdwood up in the Adelaide Hills. That was the reason I was over there. I wondered whether they would swap one of theirs for a slightly used and much abused little blue Sprite.
When I got the expletive deleted car back the next morning, all it had required was a new set of points in the distributor. Cheap points had caused the plastic to melt and shut down any spark. The owner hoped that all would be okay. Having said that, I found the throttle cable was sticking but it sounded great going down Wakefield St where the V8's would be roaring the weekend after next. Once again, I parked outside the apartment complex, some lovely words were spoken about its colour and cuteness. My epithets about said same car were not so kind, especially as it had begun to misfire on the way back.
The next day, still misfiring, it had one angry driver who was not going to suffer its insolence. I drove up the steep climb out of Adelaide. The temperature rose in both of us the higher we got. I was not going to let it get away with anything. I didn’t care even if it was only running on one and a half cylinder and we were doing 5kph and being overtaken by B double trucks, we were not bloody stopping. It made it to the top and then the engine stopped. By then we were going downhill, so I rode the clutch and looked for a good spot to stop with shade. It being 35 degrees in the shade.
Finally, I pulled over and rang the RAA (which now is on speed dial). I checked the radiator while I waited and it was fine. I tried the starter and swore. I checked the plugs and I swore. I checked the fuses and swore. In the end I just swore. An hour sitting and working on the car with the RAA and we found that the new points, which were marginally too big, were shorting out on the side of the distributor. The solution was a thin piece of cardboard and it worked like a charm. The beast hummed and purred and we finally got to the car museum at Birdwood. On the way back, my Sprite and I had fun ripping up the tarmac on the winding roads of the Adelaide Hills. I really unleashed the beast as if it was its last drive and it well could have been. It held the road like magic as it flew in and out of corners at a rate that would have radar gun wielding cops checking their readings.
Finally, it was time to leave Adelaide and the next morning the beast started perfectly and didn't need praise, but just a healthy amount of petrol. The skies were cloudy but there was no sign of rain. It was going to be Victor Harbour or Mt Gambier for the night. The gods would decide. Little did I know that as Adelaide being known as the City of Churches, God favours South Australians. A light mist was up in the hills as the Sprite roared up the hill unlike its spluttering attempt the day before. Just as we passed the spot where the RAA resuscitated the car with a piece of cardboard in the distributor the day before, the heavens opened up. A big black cloud left over from the cyclone in West Australia had snuck inland and was lying in wait for us. Down it came in bucket-loads. I hadn't put the side curtains up because they rattle too much and it hadn't looked like rain. Wind blew the rain in from one side and when it got bored it, blew it in from the other side. I would have become absolutely saturated if I had stopped to put the side curtains up as there was nowhere under cover to pull over. The cloud wasn't big but it did seem to track us. I thought I could cope with the gusts of water coming from either side and so this malevolent cloud had another idea. The windscreen wipers were struggling so I pulled over, but the cloud didn't move on and decided to wait for us.
I was getting wetter and I thought the car was going to cry like Henry of Thomas the Tank Engine fame. In fact, it looked like strange tears were forming on the edge of the windscreen, totally different to rain. And then I realised that the tears were on the inside of the car. You know what happens when canvas on a tent gets wet and something touches it. Well my hood was doing the same thing. Where it touched the windscreen and where it hit the hood bows, water was seeping through. It was okay as long as we remained on the smooth road. It would just make its way gently to the side and drip down. I hadn't planned on the roadworks. Every bump sent water splashing down. I was glad the side curtains weren't up as my biggest fear was death by drowning. My second biggest fear was the cardboard in the distributor that stopped the points from earthing, would become wet and disintegrate.
Luckily that didn't happen and we sped on all the way to Murray Bridge. As soon as we crossed the bridge that small black cloud headed south looking for another Victorian. On the other side I drove through a shaft of light that broke through the higher clouds. As I looked through the rear-view mirror at it, it resembled the extended middle finger of a hand. Victor Harbor was out of the question. Mt Gambier was much closer to the border. Two days there and we would make a run for it and take a leisurely slow trip once we crossed it. The Great Ocean Road and the safe haven of Victoria beckoned. However, there was to be one more sting in the tail. We made lots of unplanned stops on the way to the border. You see Mt Gambier has two types of food available. One is to die for. The other is to die from. So, this time there was no culpability on the beast’s part and it growled impatiently outside nearly every toilet block on the way, probably muttering that it was not its fault. However, in a frame of mind that probably involved contrition and begrudging sympathy, my Sprite and I were finally back on speaking terms and the words were almost kind. How long that would last would depend upon whether we ventured into South Australia again or whether the beast asserts its no doubt superiority over me again.
