And so it begins.............

[bluesbrother30]

Thanks Adam, yes I think the matt black will hide it better. One of the corners of the body has been ground off, about the size of a dime. Looks like a clearance modification........I will trial fit the plenum tonite (honey do's this afternoon) along with the heater box and see if I can determine what was making contact. Geezzzz, there sure is a bunch of stuff to be tucked under the dash. Just don't remember that much coming out!! Quick question, can someone give me a short "install in this order" bit of advice? Wiper assembly, plenum, heater box...............and???

Mike

[bluesbrother30]

Scratch that last question.......................opened my late Birthday present...........Brian Buckland's book!!!!!! What a nice wife!!!!

m

[cal44]

I'm a sucker for white Loti..................more pictures..............please.

[65ginetta]

The body looks really super, I know how you must feel when you see it painted for the first time after all those hours of sanding and scraping and all the different shades and contours of the raw shell. Our cars are around the same date of manufacture, mine is 36/5598
My heater plenum was painted matt grey on the outside and raw glass in the inside and it looked like it had never been removed. I'm not using it on my car (air con) and have glassed the body aperture closed but I think it would look better with a coat of matt black inside the plenum if your still using the intake grill.
Once again, car and color look great, looking forward to seeing the progress as it helps to keep me motivated.
Cheers,
65 Ginetta

[bluesbrother30]

So, after a weekend of honey-do's, I headed out to the garage to make some progress. First was to finish off the motor after switching to the lip seal crank. I sourced a oil pan from another motor that I had under the bench and had a local shop make a slight modification to the oil pick up tube to better fit the baffles in the pan. Also started with a new set of ARP rod bolts. Easier now than later. I was just about to set the pan in place, I use Permatex Ultimate Gray sealer, when I noticed that square cork gasket for the rear main seal cover did not fit well. By that I mean the slot that the cork gasket fits in was nearly a 1/8 inch to wide.............hummmm???? Don't remember that from any of the TC's that I have had apart. A quick phone call to Dave Bean's confirmed my suspicions, yes they made two different rear main seal covers. The later one, which I had installed, uses a wider rubber gasket as opposed to the early cover which uses the traditional cork. So, lesson number one be careful when picking stuff out of the parts bins in the attic...........it was a simple fix but one that I had no knowledge of. Oh, and before we go much further, I want to let you all know that I AM A PARTS CHANGER, AT BEST. Not a mechanic. So those out there with lots of enthusiasm and little mechanical ability, like me, can still get your dream car put together....just might take a bit longer and not be afraid to ask a lot of questions. Back out to the garage to mate up the motor and trans.

ms

[bluesbrother30]

Just a quick update, the last couple of weeks have been a minefield of "honey-do's". Finally got out into the garage today with my friend Keith who came up from the east bay to give me a hands on lesson on how to adjust the bump steer. Interested and took the better part of the day.......well there were several distractions and a long lunch at Subway.

I had a goal of lowering the body onto the chassis this weekend but noticed that a couple of the mounting bobbins look a "bit strange". Looks like they may be loose of cocked at a angle. Will check tomorrow am and see if I need to do a bit of repair before mating up the body/chassis.

Last week I pulled out the mini alternator package purchased from Bean. There was another "not so easy bolt on" that took some time. Of course none of the pulley line up out of the box. I am using a Bean aluminum crank pulley and had to make a 1/4 inch spacer to move it out on the crankshaft. Then the supplied spacer for the adjustment arm had to go as well. Overall had to make up 3 spacers of different lengths to get the belt into alignment. No biggie but something that takes a bit of time and machining.

Also found out that my neighbor has a side business of custom auto upholstery...........he dropped over and took some measurement for the headliner.

Oh, and FYI, my car is 36-5706 Pre Air Flow

[bluesbrother30]

A nice quiet day here at home so trying to line up some parts and advice.

1) I am preparing to install the cylinder head. The crankcase breather tube that runs between the block and head behind the fuel pump. Aluminum or rubber? I have a new rubber piece but also looked at the machined pieces sold by The Elan Factory in Australia. I know that the rubber piece can be replaced, with some effort, if it goes bad. The aluminum piece the head must be removed. Comments please.

2) I looked in the archives section and really did not find a answer.........are there patterns available for the interior fiberboards and carpet?

I am sure there will be more, but all for now.

Mike

[StressCraxx]

A nice quiet day here at home so trying to line up some parts and advice.
1) I am preparing to install the cylinder head. The crankcase breather tube that runs between the block and head behind the fuel pump. Aluminum or rubber? I have a new rubber piece but also looked at the machined pieces sold by The Elan Factory in Australia. I know that the rubber piece can be replaced, with some effort, if it goes bad. The aluminum piece the head must be removed. Comments please.

2) I looked in the archives section and really did not find a answer.........are there patterns available for the interior fiberboards and carpet?

I am sure there will be more, but all for now.

Mike

1. Rubber, for the reason you state. Run a bead of the permatex "Right Stuff" around it before installing. It seals well and moves with thermal expansion/contraction.

Regards,
Dan

[mbell]

2) I looked in the archives section and really did not find a answer.........are there patterns available for the interior fiberboards and carpet?

I've seen reference in a thread to some 3D drawings for the carpets being on the wiki but as the wiki is under construction I haven't been able to find them.

Anyone have a copy they can upload?

(I need to decide if I buy or make my carpets for my +2, getting carpet sets in US looks expensive!)

[bluesbrother30]

Is there a known source for S3 Tail light bezels?

m

[bluesbrother30]

About 10 inches below my stamped chassis number 36-5706, I have found the stamped numbers "2921". Would this be the part number for the frame itself?

Mike

[gjz30075]

Mike, I, too, have the same thing, although the earlier cars might be different. I queried Tim Wilkes (Sprint registrar) about this and his reply is this (start at the bottom with my question). .


Hi Greg


Thanks for your interesting message. Elans stopped having chassis numbers way before the Sprint came along so I do not feel that is the answer to your conundrum!


I looked at examples I have of factory works sheets to see if there may be a clue there, but none had a number that would correspond closely to the one on your car. I then realised that the number was very close to the last S4 unit number before the 'new' unit number system came in in January 1970, 9832. Given that we know a good number of earlier Federal Sprints were in fact converted S4s, I therefore suspect that 9665 refers to a late S4 unit number. So how come it's on your car?


Well the first thought would be that at some stage your car had a replacement chassis and that it came from a donor car or from a store held by the Lotus importer. However, I think that an unlikely explanation, so my next thought is that your car was made up at the factory in January 1972 from parts that were available, which included the 'old' numbered chassis 9665 that had never been used in production. From the information I have there is no data recorded against 9665 (it is in a batch of 45 such unit numbers of the same time), so this may be a feasible explanation, as the majority of Federal Sprints appear to have come off the Hethal production line in quarter four of 1971, including those that were converted S4s.


I hope this goes some way to attempting to explain the number on your chassis. The truth is that we shall probably never know for sure what happened. One project I have for the future is to interview remaining ex-Lotus factory workers to try to find answers to this and other conundrums we have been presented with by Lotus!


Best wishes

Tim



On 25 May 2011 00:51, Greg Zelazek <[email protected]> wrote:



Hi Tim,

I noticed that my car, 0243K, Federal dhc '72 Sprint, also has a chassis number stamped on the horizontal flange by the sway bar mount. My chassis number is 9665. Is this a bit of info that can be added to the Sprint registry?


I wonder if other Federal or five digit vin'ed cars also have this chassis number? What do you think?



Thanks,

Greg Zelazek

[bluesbrother30]

Success!! My first part bolted to the car. OK, stop laughing this took almost a week to accomplish. Why you ask? Cause I am a bit neurotic that's why. So, I go to bolt in the wiper motor and wiper boxes to my body so I can then install the plenum and heater motor and hoses.......so just a quick cleaning, the unit has been in a crate for the last two years. Hmmm?? Why is this thing so sticky?? I open up the motor unit and the wiper boxes and find that the original grease is now a solid with little or no lubricating value...............the grease was so hard that I had to unscrew the bundy pipes (spacers) between the wheel boxes. You could not pull the wire out of the tubes. Now disassemble the entire unit, clean out the tubes, clean up the wire............oh wait, these wheel boxes look kinda nasty so lets try and find a couple on E Bay......can you see where this is going? One is coming from only a few states away. That takes several days. So, ten days later I am installing a refreshed motor unit and wiper boxes.......no problem, at this rate the car will be finished for my grand kids to drive.

[jimj]

I`m so pleased that you haven`t been busy with "honey-do`s" but you may be interested to know that this, and other US expressions, are a complete mystery to the British. Even more so, I imagine, to Europeans reading the forum in a second language.
Ee up lad, tha dunt mek sense to a Yorkshire lad.
Jim

[billwill]

I suspect it is short for "Honey, do this & honey do that" i.e doing whatever SWIMBO wants him to do.
Such as redecorate the dining room or build a new house or whatever.