1969 Series 4 restoration project - urgent advice needed

[elansprint71]

Might be worth checking if any/all cars are registered with the DVLA and have been declared SORN. From what I have read recently some of the rules have changed and there appear to be hefty penalties involved (probably aimed at the unlicensed/uninsured chav-racers). If it/they are non-SORN I'm not sure just how easy it is to retain your Reg number and put things right.

Best advice I've read above is to get someone who knows what they are looking at to give you a hand. I'm sure that someone on this list not too far from Somerset would be willing to help. Good luck.

[paddy]

Might be worth checking if any/all cars are registered with the DVLA and have been declared SORN. From what I have read recently some of the rules have changed and there appear to be hefty penalties involved (probably aimed at the unlicensed/uninsured chav-racers). If it/they are non-SORN I'm not sure just how easy it is to retain your Reg number and put things right.

Yes, definitely check the current status. If the car has been off the road since before January 1998 (which sounds likely) then you don't need to do anything until the time that you want to put it back on the road. See here:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/Ow ... /DG_069727

Of course, if in doubt, ask.

Paddy

[davecymru]

Many, many thanks to one and all for your timely replies. It's all been really useful and I've been taken aback by your friendliness and helpfulness over the past few days.

Yesterday afternoon one of the owners friends, a Lotus expert (I've forgotten his name, my apologies) and myself spent a good few hours trying to identify exactly what is what.

From what we could see, the Series 2 that the Lotus Expert wants for racing has just about all of the parts (somewhere or other) in fairly good order.

The Series 4 on the other hand is a bit of a sorry tale.
The Spyder chassis, suspension and brakes are all together, but that is where the good news ends.
The twin cam, big valve engine is completely in pieces and while we could find most of them, from looking at the head it seems as though this has blown up at some point in the past and some quite expensive work may be needed on the head before i could even start putting it back together. This must be why the 1650cc Ford engine was bought to replace it?

The seats are just rusty metal skeletons (as a result of the fire i believe), there is no dash and we could only find four of the instruments and no sign of any switches.
There is glass, but no frames. And the body turns out that it is a convertible which was converted from a hard top in the early 70's and there is no sign of the roof frame

So all in all, from what we found and from what has been said on here and from looking around the web in general i think that this poor Elan may just be too far gone for me to consider doing as it would be far far too much work and far too expensive to do. I think the engine rebuild alone would wipe out my yearly "messing about with cars" budget!

Although there may be a happy ending to this as I believe that there may be another friend of the owner with another Series 4 who may have the remaining parts from her and who may have the time, resources and money to rebuild it!

So thanks once again to you all, and this whole episode has certainly opened my eyes up to a mark of car i had hitherto known nothing about and i would now certainly consider in the future if the situation arises. But for now, back to the Countach!

Kindest Regards

Dave

[andyelan]

Hi Dave

Personally I think from the way you describe this car you're right to walk away. I would say however that if you really fancy an elan you should keep on looking as with the right car you really won't be disappointed.

My advice would be keep looking, view lots of cars but don't let you heart rule your head

Regards
Andy

[Bob]

Dave,
Enquire how much the S2 is going for, thats a worth while project and worth more than the S4.
Bob