Lotus West Tech Manual on-line ????

[holywood3645]

I have a copy of Lotus West Tech Manual that I would like to share with the group and place it on General Information in the main page. However, it has a 'Proprietary' note on the front page.
The Lotus West club is no longer exists but we may be old members even on this board.
What is the feeling of the board as to posting this information? Personally I would think any old Lotus West members would love to see it memoraiized.

James

[bilcoh]

Agreed. I'm not a Lotus West former member, but as a member of another regional club in the US, I can't imagine anyone not wanting the information shared. That's generally the initial intent when a group accumulates such information.

My 2 pence.

[S2Jay]

First, the Disclaimer: While I was a member of Lotus West for a time in the 80s, I have no specific knowledge of the internal operations or thoughts & plans of the officers.

[Following now, a few random thoughts.]

While it seems like an easy & obvious answer to publish the "Tech Manual", I would be interested in knowing why the Lotus West Club thought to make it ?Proprietary? in the first place. Possibly there was some obscure legal reason that may or may not still have significance [although as a layman, I can not begin to feature what it could have been]. Perhaps it was just some bit of paranoia involving potential liability from application of the info or tech tips presented, but in any case, the answer to the question of ?Why? may provide some insight into the wisdom of proceeding with the on-line publication. It is not likely that there would be any mechanical knowledge that is not already available on this forum & in other tomes such as the Buckland book [about which I continue to read, but to date no one has yet to offer to me, and Christmas is nearing, but I digress ].

It may also be that whatever copyright may have existed has long since run out of any ?statute of limitations? sort of restriction, or any such limitation may have died when that Club went out of operation. One certainty is that the norms and expectations of society have changed radically since then.

It would be interesting to know if there are any of the principals involved with the operation of the LW Club, or more specifically the creation of that Manual registered in this forum, or if anyone on here knows of any of those who were involved at that time. At the very least, I would like to see / read some reasonable level of analysis given to this project before proceeding. Or maybe it is just me who is paranoid and given to wild flights of mystery and imagination.



As a side note about how times have changed, Garrett [Turbochargers] considered the Compressor Maps to their Turbochargers highly proprietary, even as Industrial Secrets for the first 40 or so years of corporate existence. In recent years, Garrett itself and others print, publish, and make available on their own website a multitude of Compressor Maps for any and all to use, compare, ponder and generally to study at leisure & in detail to attempt to unlock whatever application info that they can.

Jay
________________________________________________________________________

[elanfan1]

I too cannot imagine why this could not be published however I believe the usual convention on copyright of books is the life of the author plus 75 years. I guess there is no 'individual' author so whether this applies or not I have no idea.

[lotusS2guy]

I was a founding member of Lotus West (member #2) as well as a past president. The club no longer exists, but the raison d'etre for the club is current -- share the knowledge. By all means, publish any documents that we generated.

Herb
26/4618

[holywood3645]

Herb, Great.... I have copys of each article on single sided 8x11 and the associated index pages.
Next thing I need to figure is how to get them on the site. Maybe some computer savvy types out there can help?. It would be good if the index of articles was hyperlinked to the specific article.
Any takers ???
James

[Esprit2]

(Snip)... While it seems like an easy & obvious answer to publish the "Tech Manual", I would be interested in knowing why the Lotus West Club thought to make it ?Proprietary? in the first place. Possibly there was some obscure legal reason that may or may not still have significance [although as a layman, I can not begin to feature what it could have been]. Perhaps it was just some bit of paranoia involving potential liability from application of the info or tech tips presented, but in any case, the answer to the question of ?Why? may provide some insight into the wisdom of proceeding with the on-line publication. (Snip)...

Jay,
The internet changed everything. Back in the day when clubs charged membership dues, they needed to offer something in exchange. The roster and connection with other owners was minimal and warranted something, but the more a club offered, the more it could justify charging for dues. And the more income it had, the more services it could offer.

In the darkness of the pre-internet days, when everything you wanted to know was NOT available at the nearest keyboard or smart phone, a comprehensive FAQ/ Parts Interchange/ Tech Manual was a valuable asset to the club and a competitive advantage. If you gave it away to all for free, why would anyone feel compelled to join... sort of like sexual favors Vs commitment.

As the internet matured and all that info became broadly available anyway, it made less and less sense to guard your club's tech database and more of a feather in the club's cap to be recognized as the largest provider of such info. Potential members can Google anything anyway, so why not have each search lead back to your club as an introduction.

James & Herb,
In a similar but different sharing vein...
Lotus West was more than just an "Elan" club, and the club's Tech Manual covered all models of the period. Would you consider also posting the files to:

Files section at lotus-cars on YahooGroups
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/lotus-cars/files/

And/or would you or the Lotus West legacy object to folk cross-posting it to other model-specific forums, YahooGroups/ Google mailing lists and club sites? ie, can it go "public domain"?

Thanks for making this available,
Tim Engel

[pharriso]

Herb, Great.... I have copys of each article on single sided 8x11 and the associated index pages.
Next thing I need to figure is how to get them on the site. Maybe some computer savvy types out there can help?. It would be good if the index of articles was hyperlinked to the specific article.
Any takers ???
James

James, maybe I can help? Do you have a scanner? If you don't I can scan each document & convert it to either text or a PDF document. Each article can be a seperate article & I can put an index together.

Regards
Phil H

[lotusS2guy]

As Jay correctly noted, the reason for keeping the information accumulated by Lotus West proprietary was to build the membership. The tech manual was actually a compilation of articles that members had written for "Stress Cracks" our club newsletter. I personally do not have the manual, but I probably have the copies of Stress Cracks from which the articles were copied. Unfortunately, most of the newsletters were published before desktop publishing made it easy, so I doubt that text files are available. If someone wishes to scan these articles, be they Elan, Europa, Seven or Esprit (Elises did not exist yet), I cannot fathom any of the old guard objecting. Much of the knowledge gained back then was unavailable, so there was much trial and error. Now, it is pretty much common knowledge. It might be interesting from an historic point of view to see what we old timers were thinking about back in the '70s.

Herb
26/4618

[pharriso]

If someone wishes to scan these articles, be they Elan, Europa, Seven or Esprit (Elises did not exist yet), I cannot fathom any of the old guard objecting.
Herb
26/4618

I have volunteered...

[holywood3645]

It's been a while since I posted on the Lotus West manual topic. With the help from a local guy and board subscriber (ianashdown, thanks Ian) the Lotus West manual is now digitized. Thank you to other for the offers, but Ian was just up the road.

I would like to post the manual here for us all to use. But how? Jeff has not responded to my e-mails

The file is pretty large, Is there another way to post?

James

[garyeanderson]

Make the pages 2meg or less and you can load 10 per reply. Add an index in the first post so people can upload what they are interested in. If that seems like too much work then I don't have an answer. If we had a moderator that could lock the post when it was done that would be great too but thats not on the table so when the discussion starts and of the .pdf's get buried 3 or 4 pages back there is not a lot that can be done.

Most of the time when I look to see "Who" is on line there can be up to 50 or so, 10 to 15 folks logged in and the rest guests. Those that are logged in are normally on the index page and not really doing anything, Maybe they are waiting for someone to post that bargain in the for sale section. Get involved and write something other than the generator/alternator debate, trunnions talk, or what ever bore me some more stuff that seems to be hot that day.

This forum is going to become a self serve repository of loosely tied together threads unless those that come along and start to offer there experiences with their Elan and Plus2.
When any of us say it's in the archives I don't see the issue. Why should folks all sound like broken records. If I want re-runs I'll go and get a tv.

Maybe its time to do an index of all of the topics in each section of the forum, Just a flat Word file of text with links that can be searched and has click-able links next to the topic with a one line summery.

Face it, Jeff has work to do and those that think he has the time at the moment to devote to the forum are likely to be disappointed. A year ago or so he offered to make some changes and everyone said "leave it, we like it just as it is" he added the mods section and the various geographic areas. This site is already "self" moderated and for the most part it works. I think that most of us can live with it the way it is.

This is probably not the answer you were looking for and some of it is off topic for sure. I don't have the answer, I just want to have fun and sometimes this site and the folks that populate it need more clues than just how to lube their trunnions

Did I miss anything?

Gary E. Anderson

[UAB807F]

Hi James,

I would have thought something like that should be on the main website, probably in the Library section with other reference material. To make something work on a forum thread it would need to be a "sticky" at the top of a section as Gary says and given the trouble other guys are having in contacting Jeff, that doesn't seem an option at the moment.

If you can host the files yourself, either on your own webspace or one of the file sharing sites, then posting a link will allow the current generation users to download them, but as Gary also says, it will disappear and get lost in the archives because if folks don't know it's there, they won't search for it.

If you've not read the latest posts on the "moderator" thread in Free Parking, a few guys are trying to contact Jeff on Facebook. It might be worthwhile watching that if you've had no luck in making contact.

Brian

[holywood3645]

Brian I had hoped someone that has posted to the 'Library' section could provide some directions. Ian and I have put a lot of time and effort to provide somthing that can be posted (most these notes were hand typed)
I have been looking to see if anyone has been sucessfull contacting Jeff for some time now. Im afraid I may be grasping at straws with the post.
There is a 'lotus Europa' site that I may able to post it on, so it may not be a lost effort.

Thanks for you input

James

[garyeanderson]

The Europa site would probably be a great place for it.

I think the only thing that has changed on http://www.lotuselan.net/ is the contact for Andy Graham and that took weeks, maybe longer to get that done. I sent Jeff some of the early Elan introduction articles from October 1962 for the library (Clark Lance scanned them and put them into pdf's). probably tried for a few weeks on different accounts, I am sure that he has them but they are not posted there yet. Like I said self serve and self moderated.

If you look at the only sticky, Jeff asked for help, my guess is he had no offers so I guess you get what you get.
If you want the job, maybe you will get a reply. I didn't want the job, I have enough folks here on the forum that hate my guts, I don't need too many more

Gary

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