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Lite Breaks -StormyWeatherBy Jeffrey B. AronsonMarch has seen several nor’easters poundmuch of the East Coast. During one storm, Ihad to drive my Series II-A through blizzardconditions between central Massachusetts andinto Maine. Very few vehicles were on thesnow-covered roads; indeed, the state ofConnecticut had banned all tractor trailertrucks from its interstate highways for theduration of the storm. Without question, I wasthe only 36-year old vehicle on the highwayfor the entire duration of the trip.The last storm started as a 34-degreemonsoon one night while I stayed in a motelin Portland, ME. The next morning, I went tostart the car. It would crank but not catch;there was no sound of compression at all. Iquickly realized I would get drenched, but Itook cans of PB Blaster and WD-40 out of theparts box, stepped outside into the cold rain,opened the bonnet, and sprayed every plugwire, the distributor, ground wire, and coil. Iclosed the bonnet, returned inside the car,counted to 10, and tried again - still nothing.I left the ignition key “on.” I stepped outagain and this time, I removed the distributorcap, which appeared quite dry inside,removed the rotor, and with a screwdriver,checked to see if I had a spark at the points. Idid, so I put everything back together. Ichecked that every plug and coil wire wasplugged in tightly. I tried to start the car - onceagain no result.Perhaps I had a defective cap and rotor, soI found the old ones I always keep in the partsbox [if you replace parts before they wear outcompletely, they become great emergencyaids] and used them as replacements. I carefullychecked the firing order [1-3-4-2] and???tried starting the car once more - and onceagain, no luck.Now, very wet and cold due to the lowtemperatures and high winds, I went into themotel room to defrost my hands. If I had aspark at the low-tension points, perhaps theproblem was in the high-tension end of theignition. That’s what produces the high voltagespark used by the plugs. The only piece leftwas the coil, but this seemed puzzling. Coilsusually show problems through electrical misfiresor “breaking down” under load. Carswith bad coils will often start, but notaccelerate. My car had been running quitefine. Still, what if the coil had a leak that permittedmoisture to enter during the intensestorm.I called Rovers North and spoke withArthur Patsouris, who confirmed that the coilcould be the problem. He suggested I removeit from the car and set it atop the heater in themotel room. That would dry it out. Themoment he said to “remove the coil” Iremembered that in the last issue ofthe Rovers North News, Dave Sangerhausenwrote of helping a stranded Rover owner withadvice on selecting the right type of ballastedcoil when forced to purchase one at a generalparts shop. I dug out my latest issue of theRovers North News and thought of buying onewhen I remembered that I had a spare coil inmy parts box. I ran back outside into the miserablestorm and found the old coil. I pluggedin the ground wires to the correct terminalson the new/old coil, and pushed the coil wirefrom the distributor into the hole in the coil.I rested the unit on the valve cover andreached it to push the starter button. The carleapt to life.Coil failures are uncommon, and whenthey do foul, the symptoms are usually quitedifferent than what I experienced. Thisbecame a situation that when the likely solutionsfail, you must turn to the unlikely. Sincethe coil was the last piece left, it was worth thetry, but I have to admit, I would never haveturned to it first. My new coil is on the wayfrom Rovers North, so I should be fine for along time.2001 Club Events ScheduleJ u n e1 6 Series Only Ride, GAS o l a r o s( w w w. s o l a r o s . c o m )23 – 24 17th OVLR Birthday PartyOttawa, CN( w w w. o v l r. c o m )J u l y20 – 22 Land Rover EnthusiastBilling ShowBilling Aquadrome,Northhampton, UK( w w w. l a n d r o v e r e n t h u s i a s t . c o m )A u g u s t2 – 6 Solihull Society RallyNationals - Ouray, CO( w w w. s o l i h u l l s o c i e t y. o r g )9 – 11 Steens Mtn. Run - WAP a c i fic NW Coast Rover Club( w w w. p c r c . n e t )11 – 12 Roverfest 2001Killington, VTW C R C( w w w. l a n d r o v e r c l u b . c o m )17 – 20 4th Annual Unofficial Te l l i c oRally - Tellico, NC Solaros( w w w. s o l a r o s . c o m )S e p t e m b e r14 – 16 8th Annual AppalachianExpedition - Solaros( w w w. s o l a r o s . c o m )22 – 23 British InvasionStowe, VT*( w w w. b r i t i s h i n v a s i o n . c o m )* This years event has been moved todowntown Stowe and does NOT include atrails course. A full car show is still scheduled.Rovers North has decided NOT to participateat this year’s event due to the lackof a driving trials area.22 – 23 British InvasionStowe, VT*O c t o b e r5 – 6 Mid-Atlantic Rally - Vi r g i n i aR O AV ( w w w. r o a v. o r g )SecondAnnual Series1 Club MeetJune 22-24th, 2001Silver Lake, Ontario, CanadaThe Series One Club invites all Series OneLand Rover owners to our second gatheringin North America. This event will be in conjunctionwith the OVLR Birthday Party heldevery year in Silver Lake, Ontario. Thisthree day event consists of camping, offroaddriving, tailgate swap meet, and achance to socialize. The meet will be part ofthe OVLR event, and will have a Sundaybreakfast meeting to talk about futureevents, discuss problems unique to ourvehicles. Bring your Rover and have a goodtime. This may be a one time opportunity tosee so many Series Ones together in oneplace on this side of the Atlantic. The infoabout the event can be found at:www.ovlr.org/events.Accomodations can be found at theSilver Lake Motel and Provincial Park. TheSilver Lake Motel is located about a quartermile west of Silver Lake Provincial Park. Itis between the main Event site and theProvincial Park on the south side ofHighway 7. For reservations, telephone(613) 268-2511or visit http://www.ontarioparks.com/silvl.htmlFor more informationyou can call Tom Bache 1-610-268-8008 orEmail him at tbache9248@aol.com Toreceive a full information packet. We hopeto see you there!Rovers North thanks Land RoverClubs throughout North Americafor the hard work and consider -able time that go into makingoff-road events possible. W einvite you to send us notices ofyour club’s upcoming events to:rovers@together.net .© 2001 Rovers North Inc • 1319 VT Route 128, Westford, Vermont 05494-9601, USA • 802.879.0032 • e-mail rovers@together.net • www. r o v e r s n o r t h . c o m
Trek to The T rains[Mike Smith, Warren, ME, embodies LandRovers professionally and personally - profes -sionally as the head of East Coast Rover, andpersonally as the owner of a much-modified‘94 Defender 90 SW. He took the opportunityto enjoy his Defender in this expedition to thefar north of New England -ed.]If you live outside New England and you thinkof “winter,” you probably conjure up visions ofskiing, sleigh rides and similar picturesque set -tings. If you live in New England and you thinkof winters, you remember things like slush inyour boots, road salt eating your Rover and thenumber of times you’ve had to scrape the freezingrain off your windscreen in one day. Toomany Land Rover owners wait until winter haspassed by to go off road, but given New Englandweather, if you wait for summer to go off road -ing, you’ll waste more than half your life!Winter is a great time of year for four-wheeling.It means that you and your Rover have to bea little better prepared to handle the added complicationsthat Mother Nature can throw at you,but it really is a blast. Last February a group ofenthusiasts set out to find the abandoned trackageand a pair of antique steam locomotivesreputedly sitting in the woods of NorthernMaine.Only through hearsay and tall tales had wecome to know of these locomotives in the middleof the Maine woods. What could two vintagesteam locomotives be doing 100 miles from thenearest usable railroad tracks? The historybehind the railroad fascinated us. The areaaround Eagle Lake - indeed all of Northern NewEngland - has been extensively logged for 200years. Before trucks hauled the timber out, logdrives floated timber down the rivers to the millsof central Maine. The problem is that not all therivers flow south or east towards these establishedmills; about half flow north towardsCanada. Timber companies needed a practicalway to get the timber over the land to the correctwaterway and down to the mills. In the mid-19th century canals with lock systems weretried, but these proved slow and troublesome. Inthe early 1900’s a rail-based tramway was builtacross the 3000 foot stretch of land that dividedEagle Lake and Chamberlain Lake. The tramwayconsisted of train style axles attached to a cable,driven by steam engine and large sprockets.Logs rested on the axles, then dumped into thewater for the trip downstream. This worked wellfrom 1903-1909, until the timber harvest wascompleted.The use of steam engines and railway hadmade their mark. When the huge new mills ofMillinocket, Maine, needed timber for paperproduction, Edouard Lacroix, a Canadian indus -trialist, set about building a rail line exclusivelyfor timber. In 1926, his company began laying arailroad from Eagle Lake, near the old tramway,Steam powered“Lombard” log hauler .west across Allagash Stream, down the shores ofChamberlain Lake to the head waters ofUmbazooksus Lake. The 13-mile railroad createda swath through the forest. Once the lakeshad frozen over, steam-powered Lombard loghaulers carried all the materials, includingenough steel for a 1500 foot bridge across theAllagash, to complete the project. These massivesteam powered snowmobiles brought in all thematerials over the ice for the railroad, includingthe switching engines and two steam locomo -tives, weighing over 90 tons each. The two locomotives,steam engines purchased from theRutland [VT] Railroad and the New YorkCentral, were converted to run on oil.The new railroad, first named the U&EL(Umbazooksus and Eagle Lake Line)became better known as the Eagle Lakeand West Branch Railroad. The railroadoperated for over four seasonsuntil the supply of timber was onceagain exhausted from the area. In 1930the engines were backed into therepair shed that housed them and theirboilers were shut down for the lasttime. And yes, we wanted to find theseabandoned engines.For a winter expedition, we checkeditems like snow chains and installed acomputer based GPS system into myDefender. Luckily, my traveling companion,Geoff Cox, just happens to havea PhD in this field and fitted the D90with a state-of-theartsystem thatbasically put ouractual positionwithin a meter. We would bejoined by Jason Tyler in hismuch-modified Range RoverClassic, and Ian Cooke in hisSeries II-A 88” coil sprunghybrid.We left the coast of Maineearly in the morning to get agood deal driving completedduring the day so as to be ableto set up camp that evening inthe daylight. Our trip took usthrough the middle of Maine, onmostly back roads from coastalWarren to Greenville, on the southern shores ofMoosehead Lake, a famous summer sportingregion. Moosehead Lake is also home to the oldpassenger vessel “Katahdin”. In the summermonths the vessel operates passenger tours ofThoreau’s favorite lake, but at this time of theIt’s true - we do have Moose in Maine!year the ship sits solidly encased in ice. In thewinter, Greenville becomes a snowmobilers paradise,and our plans to take trucks north ofEagle Lake in February received more than fewdoubting laughs by the snowmobile riders wemet at the Greenville gas station.From there, we began a long trip on dirt andgravel roads used solely for logging operations.You never quite know the conditions of theseprivate roads and you won’t find gas stations orstores for hundreds of miles until you near theCanadian border. This meant extra fuel for theRovers had to be carried on board just to makeit in and out.We headed northeast out of town and out ofcivilization towards the settlement of Kokadjo,and then on to Eagle Lake. As the crow flies theGPS told us we only had about 70 miles to gountil we reached Eagle Lake, but even the bestoutfitted Rover can’t drive as the crow flies inNorthern Maine, so that meant we’d drain ourfull fuel tanks and our spare gas cans before wereturned to Greenville. For those of you whoknow the range of a Defender 90s that meansupwards of 300 miles before we’d see a townagain. After Kokadjo the roads become narrowerand narrower until you reach the “GoldenRoad.” The “Golden Road” is a year-round dirtroad that crosses the state of Maine from theeast to the town of Millinocket, a river townthat’s the home of two huge paper mills.Outside Kokadjo theviews became breathtaking. At a crest in theroad Big Spencer Mountain loomed in the distance.A few weeks before, we had completed ascouting trip to the logging roads aboveGreenville, Maine to recon our route. However,the eastern route around Moosehead Lake had© 2001 Rovers North Inc • 1319 VT Route 128, Westford, Vermont 05494-9601, USA • 802.879.0032 • e-mail rovers@together.net • www. r o v e r s n o r t h . c o m
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Camp Rover

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