Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

2cams70 wrote:It’s your choice but at this point I’d consider about whether you really need a long stroke 1700cc engine. The crossflow crank was not designed to work in a Lotus Twin cam. An engine with standard stroke will be smoother and more free revving

Hi,

I have the parts I mentioned from a previous, now cancelled, project so they are available and paid for!

I plan to take advice for a few trusted sources before committing to any plan, but every decision will depend to some extent on the condition of various parts on strip-down. I’m lucky in having two ex-Cosworth guys close by to bounce my ideas off.

Ian

Emma-Knight wrote:One original frame
You can locate the cut in the full view

That looks exactly the same as mine!

Ian

As I did not read all the conversation - @ grey “gelcoat“ - the grey colour is first basecoat„ second is pink, then the final paint for original factory set up.
Sorry if otherwise already mentioned
Anna

Not much time today, but I did manage to achieve the small goal I’d set for myself; remove the vacuum headlight actuators. No surprise they are rotted through. There isn’t even a sign of a diaphragm in either one!. Two more items to add to the ‘Parts Needed’ list.


Every nut and bolt on this car is rusted, some to the point of normal sockets and spanner being of no use. This was the case with these fasteners. One of them just pulled right through the fiberglass in the wheel arch, the others were so rusted I decided to leave them for another day when access may be better or I have suitable destructive power tools available.


There is also a small retaining clip attached to front of the wheel arch, I’m not sure exactly what it’s for, but this photo should act as a reminder to refit them.

Ian

Possibly the clips to anchor the chrome strip fitted above the front bumper? I can't match the location from your photo, too small an area.
Roger

The hole just below the clip is where the vacuum actuator mounts to the front of the wheel arch.

Ian

I think looking closer at the little clip it seems to be about the right size for the vacuum tube just before it goes to the actuator. But . . . there is one on both sides and the vacuum tube only runs forward on one side.

More thought required.

However, they are stored away in a small ziplock bag waiting for replacing.

Ian

I actually think It’s the clip the spring connects to the switch block that triggers headlight relay from memory.
Cheers Vaughan

Slow progress this week as I'm being Nurse to my wife 24/7 as she just had knee replacement surgery. I think we all know that's a tough surgery, but Hoag Hospital have been fantastic! She's so much better than expected, less pain etc.

I was able to take the heater box apart and it all appears to be in restorable condition. There is one corner where the rust has just eaten the sheet metal away, fortunately it's flat and I think I'll be able to graft a piece in there.


Almost the entire box has some corrosion but I think I can make it look good again. Note to self: Get that blast cabinet finished!!





I also managed to attack one area of the body that I knew had 'issues'; the LH rear corner of the trunk/boot opening. I could see it had been badly patched and for a large area the patch wasn't even attached to the body. I started scraping and chiseling away the paint and was quickly in to bondo, up to .1" thick in some places. Feeling inside I could tell things were not great in there either.


Apologies for being upside down. However I upload it, it still ends up like this!!
What started out as a suspect area, quickly got worse . . .




And I'm not sure I've found the full extent of the nastiness yet! I think I'm going to change from chisel to my 2" grinding disc and go right back to fiberglass so I can see the whole picture. Clearly the 'rope' is missing on the inside corner and will need to be reconstructed and glassed in, after making some other repairs I'll probably reinforce the entire trunk/boot opening, probably some woven roving nd glass over, it's very fragile it seems.

I'm not sure how to go about the corner repair yet, we'll see what a bit more exposure shows, but making a splash-mold of the local corner is not out of the question. Then I could just re-laminate from the inside with reasonable body shape preserved. I'm feeling that a free-form patch just may not be good enough. And I know there are at least two or three areas on the car that are probably at least as bad!!

Oh well! it's all progress . .

Ian

I’ve taken some time away from this restoration to help nurse my wife through knee replacement surgery, which she is now doing really well with now. Then I got laid-off from work, along with 700 team mates, and this caused a bit of a disturbance in the force! It looks like I’ll have something sorted soon so its time to get my head back in to Elan mode!

I was scraping the paint from the engine bay side of the firewall around where the body number is molded in. I was scraping very carefully so I didn’t damage the number and found the surface to be quite soft, like the paint hadn’t cured of something. In a minute or two a piece of red Dymo tape with the numbers in popped off the bulkhead! This revealed the pristine body number molded in the grey gel coat. Amazing that piece of tape had survived all these years!



Obviously I’ll be protecting these numbers carefully during the restoration. Now I know how the numbers are created when the body is molded! Always interesting to lean new details of the processes used to build these cars.

I’m finding lots of surface cracking over almost the entire body! If I grind out every single one I’d be left with almost no original body surface left! So what is the repair method in a case like this? Grind out and repair the more major ones, certainly, then I’m probably going to put a ply of Carbon Fiber Veil over the whole body. Will that be sufficient to contain the minor cracks?

More coming soon.

Ian

Ian, Years ago, my S3 had an accident that broke the right rear quarter panel and the boot lid. The boot lid had a giant spiderweb across the entire surface. I sanded it down smooth and laid over a single layer of glass (veil) tissue mat with polyester resin. Smoothed and blended it. The cracks have not come back in almost 25 years.

That’s good to hear! Obviously I’ll repair any cracking that is through the entire laminate but I had a feeling that a complete ply of glass or carbon would do the job. I will look at using a very light woven fabric rather than a non-woven (veil) as it will have actual structural integrity and some of the lightest fabrics are just a few thou thick. I also plan to use epoxy resin as I believe the adhesion will be better, but mostly because I’m more familiar with it that polyester. It would be followed by an epoxy primer.

It’s a journey!

Ian

Ian,
Best to final finish with "Veil/Tissue" as Miles Wilkins.
Alan

Ian
I used vail on my elan approx 12years ago. No cracks yet. It worked for me.

James

I have just had a fiberrglass expert re tissue an S4 Elan. 4 oz tissue, done in small sections. Left for a day and then another coat of resin.