From: smitha@mail.CandW.lc Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 20:21:09 -0500 Subject: Joy riders crash-test 90Warmest greetings from St. Lucia. This morning I parked in an empty lot near my lab, and went to work. At lunch time, anticipating a relaxing hour on my verandah on the beach, I returned to the lot to find my vehicle 50 yards away, on the other side of the lot, with its nose smashed into the galvanised-iron sheeting fence around someone's yard. The vehicle was still locked, the ground was flat, it was in 2nd gear, and the battery was so dead that it probably won't be revived. I have had problems with the ignition switch for the past 2 weeks and have been expecting a replacement contact unit from the UK any day. So the first thought was that the defective contacts had activated the starter, which had driven the car through the brush to crash into the wall. So, rip out the dash and steering column covers, extract the ignition contact unit (and if you have ever tried to remove both of the screws that hold it in, while the ignition/steering lock unit is in situ, you know what a pain it is). Then prise open the contact unit and find ..... ants! Hundreds of the buggers, live, squashed or electrocuted, all had contributed to weeks of problems, culminating in a hot-wired joy-ride into an unresisting wall. After evicting the Hymenopteran joy-riders, and replacing the battery, everything worked, much to my surprise. I had expected a melt-down of the starter and other wiring.
When I had the 90 custom-made last year, one of the many options was an under-body screen to prevent small animals from climbing into a warm engine bay at night and then getting the cuisinart treatment from the fan in the morning. They didn't tell me that 2mm long ants could totally disable one of Solihull's finest! One last thing, with reference to today's postings of crumple zones, I only had to wipe some rust dust off my front bars; the iron fence is remodelled with a fold >. That makes 3 times that the bar has saved the front end - contact with loose cows and horses (a problem here and the reason I had the unit fitted) and now this.
Allan Smith, St. Lucia