Early Air boxes and backing plates - lots of Wide Photos

[Elan45]

Gary,

I do have a photo copy of an Elan S1 parts book. Is that early enough for you? I never use it, but I can dig it out later. I also have two sources for the 1-2-FHC book. One I've had since 1974, a copy and I have an original Blue loose leaf binder. I also have a Cortina book, which includes Lotus. Then I have an Escort book too, but that'll be the square corner box.

Roger

[1964 S1]

Hello Gary, my backing plate does not have the tube. I believe my front cover is like the top one in the photo, shorter tube, more crude shape but the deeper version. It's not on the car, I'll dig it out tomorrow and see. I assume they're original but.... the throttle cable bracket has two slotted holes instead of one. My backing plate is 5 and 1/16th inches wide on the outer edge in the middle. It's 15 and 3/4 inches long, outer edge to outer edge.
Eric

[nhhiker]

Gary

S3 36/7502 has the later air box S4 type, Or at least the backing plate is there. And the breather goes head to backing plate. I am looking for a cover for it.

Bill

[garyeanderson]

Hi Roger

Thanks for reading and letting me know of the early parts manual, some day I will get a copy. At the moment the 1966 online version is all I have as Bill has the S4 parts book for restoration of 36-7502 and its being put to good use.

Hi Eric

Always good to have second source of info, Thank you. I don't know what is original to each Elan I have as they have been mixed and matched over a long period of confusion (multiple restorations at the same time). 26/4020 is writen on the bobbin inside the box so I am pretty sure of that on the air box cover.

I went to have a look at 26/4045 yesterday and got a couple of photos.
The air box trunking looks to be from 26/4997, but I think the back plate is from 26/4045. Not sure about the air box cover yet, it's a pain to fit so I think it may be from a later Elan. I need to look at this some more...





Looks like some good info here on Smog changes
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?recor ... 8&page=107

1963 would have been all one spec, so about the first 400 S1's would have the the road draft tube. Later S1's may have had the later style "if" they were shipped out to the west coast dealer, I still need more info on this, either Dutchess Auto or West Coast delivered S1 Elan's, If anyone reading this, I would be interested in hearing more from you.

Thanks Again
Gary

more air box stuff

Well must be air box day, yesterday I got an email asking about them and today there it a topic on the forum. I asked some questions to my friend Lance and he sent me this phot of a Lotus Cortina air box cover that he had. It may be a reproduction, I don't remmber. I do know that the S2 air box did not fit the Cortina Estate when I put the Twin Cam engine and Ultra close gear box in after the blizzard of 78 drown the Elan. My solution was a BFH and I beat the strut tower bulge back into the wheel arch area until the air box fit. I had always wondered about it until Lance straightened me out on that matter.

[1964 S1]

My cover is similar to the top one pictured in your first picture on the previous page, short straight intake. Mine is lumpy and crude workmanship, fiber cloth texture, not smooth, no bobbin, just a glassed in small metal rectangle with the hole in it. It's "deep", three inches across the bottom, a little less along the top, maybe homebuilt?

[frearther]

Hi Adi

Thanks for the info, I am not sure when it changed but Road draft tubes probably ended in 1965. So does anyone else have a S2 built in late 65 they can check to see if it had the road draft tube and elbow gromet or the air box breather into the cylinder head?

Gary

26/4934 was built in 1965 and left the U.K. on August 27 of that year. I believe the air box is original, since I'm the second owner. I have the breather tube from cyl. head to airbox, so the change was evidently made after that.

[garyeanderson]

My friend Bill has been working on 36/7502 for nearly 2 years since he picked up the project. He just sent these photos of the airbox off the SS and its the later box so I thought that this would be a good place to update the photos. This will leave the Stromberg air box and I will add them later just to keep it all in one place. The backing plate came with the Elan but there was no airbox cover and this he picked up from Ray at R.D. Enterprises. It needed a bit of grinding to fit properly and I had to go through some photos to get something to help figure things out. I found a pretty good picture that Ross Robbins sent to me of 36/7480 so we had documentation. It was nice to have all of the engine bay photos in one place to do a quick scan of them to find a useful one.
so here are Bill's photos.

1 Airbox on the car


2 airbox trimed to fit the backing plate.


3 Backing plate


4 Airbox and backing plate together

[rodlittle]

Id be very interested to see an early backplate and cover too, I dont have either of them at the moment
Rod S1 3067

[garyeanderson]

Id be very interested to see an early backplate and cover too, I dont have either of them at the moment
Rod S1 3067

Hi Rod

The first page of this post has a comparison between two air boxes. one is from 26/4020 and the other is a later Elan box from 45/7334. There are two backing plates shown on the first page.

In this photo

the backing plate from 26/4020 is shown on the bottom and there is no breather inlet nipple from the cylinder head.


In the next photo the airbox cover from 26/4020 is shown on the top


There are more pictures on the precious page. As far as I know there were only 2 backing plates used on the S1 and S2 and both are shown, the Fiberglass air box covers are also shown along with the Lotus Cortina on this page. I think that this pretty well covers ALL of the Weber equiped Elans up till and through to the S3 Elans. If anyone has others please post a photo, I know Erics (1964 S1) S1 (unit number 3463) is pretty original, maybe he can get a photo of his sometime and post it.

Gary

[summerinmaine]

Here's the air box that came with my car:

I assume it's original, as it looks like what I recall of the air box on the car I recently sold (26/5007).

[rodlittle]

Thanks, all I need to do now is buy or make one
cheers
rod

[Gordon Sauer]

Chiming in late but here's 45/6576, little before yours Gary--1967 S3 bought Feb 1968 by serviceman in England and brought over--LHD; and while I'd rather the airbox be on the car, it does show the arrangement on the piping. I bought it in 1972. Gordon Sauer

[ecamiel]

All Elan air boxes don't provide enough trumpet clearance for #4 cylinder air flow. Tingle used to provide deeper ones. I don't know who does now.

Eric
64 S1

[summerinmaine]

All Elan air boxes don't provide enough trumpet clearance for #4 cylinder air flow. Tingle used to provide deeper ones. I don't know who does now.

Eric
64 S1

What do you suppose the consequences would be? Lean running? That should be resolved in tuning, particularly if you use a Colortune, right?

Perhaps a slight loss of power from #4, which is not getting its full charge on every cycle?

[frearther]

I wonder if part of the cylinder #4 problem might lie in the fact that it's also closest to the gunk that's returned from the crankcase. I've recently plugged the return at the airbox end, so that the gunk can vent to a bottle.