Fall Tour this past Weekend

["David Teitelbaum" <jtrealty@xxxx>]

I am not going to comment now on the Fall Tour which was GREAT. The
purpose of this post is to comment on the condition of several of the
cars. In most of the cases the problems were electrical and 1 was a
blown exhaust flange gasket. The electrical problems were:
Melt-down in the cooling fan circuit
Blower motor inoperative
Missing ground on left tail lights
Low battery causing hard start
On the cooling fan melt-down, this was a very new owner who wasn't
familiar with the car at all. He had a bypass wire which was not
installed right (only 1 fan ran) and then it fell out. After
reinstalling correctly (thanks to Bill R) the circuit breaker cycled
and a wire and connector had melted. Bill replaced the connecter and
jumpered the circuit breaker (the bypass had fuses).

We didn't troubleshoot the blower motor but the suspected cause is
either a bad circuit breaker, bad motor, or a loose/burnt wire. (We
heard the 3-speed and 4-speed relays click).

Jumped the dead "D" and it seemed OK

The tail lights will be fixed when the owner gets home.

The main purpose in explaining these things is to get people on the
list to go over their cars ESPECIALLY if you are going on a long
trip. It is too easy to ignore the fuse-relay area until you smell
something burning or something won't work. If your battery is over 5
years old get a new one. The fan fail bypass is only meant to be a
TEMPORORY repair. Either get a Fanzilla or upgrade the fan fail relay
but don't think the bypass is OK to leave in there. The exhaust leak
is just unforseeable, in fact it seems to be rare, but it can happen.
All in all the tour worked out great unless we hear that someone had
trouble on the way home. Again, to get the most pleasure out of the
Tour you HAVE to have a family band radio so you can chatter and
follow the along with the Tour. Bring an extra one for the ones that
forget and have extra batteries.
David Teitelbaum
vin 10757