Barry,
Your adventure brought back a similar adventure I had in a TR-3, on the way
home from the used car dealership. I should have been suspicious when they
had to use a battery charger to get it started, but I hit the road anyway. I
left the Bay area (California) about an hour before sundown, headed north
towards Ukiah (about a 2-1/2 hour drive). I had to stop for gas about 30
minutes out, and found the battery was too low to start it. The hand crank
still worked, so I kept going, following my wife in our "normal" car.
By this time the sun had gone down, and I had to use my headlights, even
though they were pretty dim. When I was about five miles from home, the car
started missing, so I had to turn off thi lights to keep it running. Like
you were saying, the freeway is lighted anyway. Everything was fine until I
got to the river. That night was cold, so the fog was thick around the
Russian river for the last few miles.
I was following my wifes tail-lights in the fog, with my lights off.
Finally, I had to start shifting down, because the engine would start
missing at lower rpm's. The engine finally died, and I coasted into my Mom's
driveway after driving 120 miles on a dead battery!
The next day I figured out that the problem was just a broken wire from the
generator, and a bad battery. After I fixed the wire it ran fine, I just
used the hand crank to start it until I could afford a new battery. A few
other problems surfaced before I sold the car, but it was a daily driver for
a few years while I went to Berkeley.
When you drive a british car, life is an adventure!
Jim Harroun
'62 TR-3B
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