The drive to meet some fellow Lotus owners at a pub in north Hertfordshire was a gentle affair. It had been raining heavily and neither my travelling companion (following in his Type 23, S2, Elise) nor I wanted to end up in a ditch so we’d agreed to take it easy. The tunnel on the new Baldock bypass, however, was bone dry so after a short, 2nd / 3rd gear, sprint I looked in my mirror, expecting to see the cream and green Elise behind me. Except I couldn’t see anything thanks to what appeared to be smoke billowing from my engine bay. Thinking I was on fire, I killed the engine and coasted to the side of the, handily, empty dual carriageway. There was no hard shoulder so I took the Lotus off-road. Who says you need an X5? After realising it wasn’t smoke, but steam, I called my breakdown service (note, no names are being mentioned) and with some help from my friend we pushed my car behind an, even handier, crash barrier which was protecting a bridge.

To cut a long story short, I was waiting at the side of an un-lit, national speed limit, dual carriageway without a hard shoulder for four and a half hours before my breakdown service managed to get a flatbed out. I finally got home at around 1am exhausted and trying not to think about the upcoming repair bill. Fortunately that weekend some old friends were visiting so I had little time to make arrangements for the car to be fixed or worry about the invoice further. Despite my best efforts, I am told that I spent much of Friday and Saturday evenings proclaiming that I didn’t “want to talk about the car”, only to then begin rambling about my woes.

The breakdown service mentioned above redeemed themselves slightly the following Monday by arranging another flatbed to cart me and the car round to Essex and Sinclaire of London, renowned Lotus specialist. Initial diagnosis suggested the dreaded head-gasket failure, something no Lotus owner wants to hear.

I left the car with Sinclaire and went on holiday for two weeks.

To draw one positive from the experience, my breakdown did occur shortly before the car was due a service. For the price of parts alone the cambelt was changed and a few other small bits of work were taken care of, while the engine was in bits.

At this juncture, I should point out that this is the first problem I’ve had with the car. It’s just a shame that it was such a major one. However, for all its criticisms, it does prove that the little K-Series engine, even when it does suffer the infamous ‘HGF’, is easy to fix and provided it is done well, needn’t be terminal.

After picking the car up from Sinclaire, I thought that I should have the tracking and wheel geometry checked, the car having been winched on and off flatbeds several times recently. For this, I decided to visit another well regarded specialist, Horizon Motorsport near Dudley. For the princely sum of £88 plus VAT they gave the car a thorough going over and a new geometry set up. I felt this represented fantastic value for money as they spent almost two hours working on the car, with a short road test before and after adjustment.

As a result of Horizon’s work, the steering feels even more positive than before the Elise’s various jaunts on the back of trucks, no longer snatching the steering wheel on every little rut in the road. I haven’t had chance to give it a thorough test down a well known A/B road route yet, as the weather has been fairly awful since I collected the car.

On the subject of the handling, unfortunately the head gasket expired the day before I was due to take the car on the airfield day I mentioned in my last journal entry. Kindly, a friend let me share the driving in his car. As he’d recently sold his Ferrari 360, we used his other car, a Citroen C2! So I still haven’t been able to really push the handling of the Elise, although the C2 was great fun.

I hope, in my next entry, I’m struggling for content again given this month’s excesses. But who said sports car ownership was a cheap hobby?