Re: North Wales Regional Ride: Clwyds - Over the Top 01/03/1
Firstly thanks to everyone for hanging around for me...
A few words from me about Saturdays events,
It's Saturday the 15th and with a pre loaded car the night before and all the bits I was taking for people safely secured in the boot of the Lupo what could go wrong.
I left the house with plenty of time and off down the M6 to Ruthin which is 70 odd miles from Preston. I was probably about 5 miles away from my destination on the last hills before the road drops down into Ruthin, when my car decided to only run on 3 cylinders. Due to the fact that when this last happened a coil pack burned right through and wrecked part of the loom I pulled over straight away.
I popped the bonnet and using my bike tool allen key removed the engine cover to take a look at the coil packs, everything looked in place and nothing was alarmingly hot. I started the car and it was still on 3 cylinders so I went straight to my phone to make contact with the other riders attending the ride, before getting in touch with the RAC. This was the point at which I realised I had no reception of any kind on my phone.
I knew that I was close to Ruthin based on my travel time so I set off with 3 cylinders and began the drop into Ruthin to find the riders, or a phone signal. After not finding a phone signal or the riders, I found a lane to dump my car whilst I took my Marin out for a spin to find signal or a phone box.
After doing a full tour of Ruthin town centre, in the rain on my Pine Mountain, I had no luck with signal and soon realised how hard it is to find a phone box in 2014, after riding around some more and asking a bike shop owner and two random people I found the only phone in town. I called EasyRider and left a voice mail explaining my situation, then returned to my car to take note of the roads where I was parked for the RAC, I returned to the phone box and tried EasyRider again with success, they had all waited for me when I didn't show up and were only a short walk away from where I was parked
We moved my car which decided to run on 4 cylinders after an hour or so cooling, and went on a mission to find a shop selling a spark plug socket to have a look at the state of the less that 12 months old plugs, after the purchase of a cheap socket set from a local iron mongers (which was useless) and some deliberation we gave up on the car and the ride due to rain and remaining daylight hours.......
........We favored the social going to the cafe option for a chin wag option
My car started and ran on four cylinders when we were ready to leave and I made it to the M6 with an emergency convoy supplied by Pete and Gav. This was to be short lived, as once I was alone and on the M6 just before junct 21A the car went again, I called the RAC and an hour later I was back on the road with a new coilpack on cylinder one plug at the cost of 38 quid.
It wasn't over quite yet, as a few miles from home I was back on 3 cylinders again, I carried on home nursing the car over the last few miles, I removed all the plug leads one by one and it appeared that removing cylinder 2 lead made no difference to the engines running highlighting that another coil pack had gone :cry:
I have now replaced all of these and changed the plugs to be on the safe side, so it looks like I'll be able to make the ride ride on the 1st.
