Early Tales of Woe - So What's Your Story?

[AlfaLofa]

Referring back to my first post these photos show:

a) what hitting a 6ft chain-link fence can do to an Elan
and
b) what happens when a brake pad retaining pin falls out of a rear caliper

The encounter with the fence necessitated a new front quarter and not really much else - which was remarkable considering the damage I did to my employer's perimeter fence.

Back in 1973 I was unable to get a replacement S1 body section and had to make do with an S4 front quarter.

Photo 2 shows the problems this caused - i.e. the flaring of the wing was different as was the height of the undertray.
I ended up shaping both front wings so that they matched the S4 profile.

Photo 3 shows that I was also sold a federal front bumper as a replacement - although this didn't matter because it was destroyed when the brakes failed a few months later

My non-original bonnet can also be seen in photo 3 - the bulge ensuring that the windscreen smashed when the bonnet went vertical in Cornwall.

And I did like those furry mirrors - gold coloured to match the paintwork.

Even the purchase of the (spare) Stromberg bonnet was a tale of woe - but not for me.

I must have responded to an advert in a local paper - the advertiser being Victor Raysbrook Motors in Watford High Street - just next to the underground station.

A friend came with me to VRM - he would hold the bonnet on the journey home in the Elan.

When the pair of us arrived, a very smartly dressed man (I think he even had a cravat) was using an air hose to "sweep" the workshop floor (which was otherwise immaculate).

On seeing a pair of scruffs in his workshop he hung the air hose on a wall hook (without turning it off).

Unfortunately the air blasting through the hose immediately lifted the hose off the hook. The nozzle flapped around in mid-air before landing in a bucket of discarded engine oil - there is no need to describe what happened next.

The 4th (very poor) picture shows the damage to the body following the loss of the pad retaining pin. What was left of the body is suspended by rope from the garage rafters.

Again I had to make do with S4 body sections.

The 5th picture (again poor) shows the new chassis being rebuilt (painted in black and as delivered by the London Sports Car Centre).

Finally a picture of the car in 2010 - about 10 years after its restoration - including new S1 body sections!

Hi Meg - interesting that you also lost a rear brake clip, pin and pad. I thought it was just me!

[Quart Meg Miles]

Steve,
Yes, I was intrigued to hear of your missing pin clip too. I've got my own theories and might start a thread about "The Little people"!

What a history you've had with that car, I can't believe you've stuck with it even though the rewards are so great.

[reb53]

Forgive me if you've read this before...

I've found that Lotus cock-ups/problems tend to come in groups.
It's as though they all hang around until there're enough for a family get together then arrive en masse.

Several years ago, in my corporate days, I drove to "the city", about 4 hours away, to attend a meeting.
Leaving to come home it was raining and the motorway was really busy.
Managed to stall in the bumper to bumper traffic. Quickly reached for the key but it wouldn't move. Stuck in the "run" position.
Wouldn't turn to"start", or "off".
Leapt out, jammed my foot behind the front wheel, ( no hand-brake and on an incline), and used the solenoid to restart.
Jump back in quick before rolling into car behind.
We're away!
Until having to stop for gas and can't turn engine off.
Easy, deliberately stall it.
Use solenoid trick to restart, but won't "..click, click"..flat battery.
Small, country type garage so lady owner happy to give me a push as husband briefly away.
Push across the forecourt pretty quick as there're two of us. Leap in and foot on the clutch.
Straight to the floor, no clutch.
Push it out of the way and in desperation decide to check the clutch master in case it's empty and a top-up may make it sort of work.
Take off the long modified throttle return spring that runs above the airbox, then the box, lid off cylinder and check out. Looks fine and as husband has now returned run car over pit and check nothing obviously awry underneath.
All looks normal so decide to get a push from husband and wife and carry on without clutch.
Plenty of speed across the forecourt this time as I crunch it into gear, and we're off again.
And I mean off, forgotten to put the throttle return spring on hadn't I.....
So we're heading for the main road at full noise unable to depress the clutch or switch off.
Frantic braking on the wet road resulted in the fronts locking whilst the rears kept driving. As we sledged towards the road my eyes were getting pretty big as I tried to figure out how I was going to merge sideways. Fortunately even more frantic braking brought the whole plot to an end.
Got home clutch-less, key-less, and battery-less. Amazing how well you can plan your driving if you know you can't stop.
My business suit was never the same !

Ralph.

[dpchamp87]

So in 1979 I bought Elan no 3; a white '69 S4 SE DHC.

At the time of purchase a rear wheel bearing was moaning and groaning and not having a hub puller I set off to pick up the Club Lotus rental puller. On the way back on the M4 I was doing around 75 when there was a very strange noise from the front suspension and the steering went all funny. I pulled off the motorway to find I had about 20 degrees of negative camber on one front wheel because the turret was about to depart company from the rest of the chassis. Unknown to me someone had done a terrible (but very cleverly hidden) patch up job on the front turret with filler. Drove home very slowly.

Next day jumped into the +2 to go to work and the bugger would not start. After trying a few things I decided to take the S4 as I only had to go 4 miles to the station. Drove slowly to the station and parked the car in the station car park.

Came home that evening to find an empty space where I had parked the S4; someone had stolen it!

The insurance man was very generous as the car had a pile of receipts going back to new and apart from the chassis rust it was a nice car. So all in all the story ends well and I avoided a chassis change.

You could not make this stuff up...

David

[Quart Meg Miles]

I'd only had my S2 a few months, bought from the reputable Len Street in London, when I noticed severe wear on the inside of a front wheel and found my rusted front turret. Of course, Len Street denied they'd ever seen one like it (Sept 1969) but agreed to pay ?100 of the ~?145 cost. This was a few years before St Wilkins served his apprenticeship there. While it was being repaired a fellow lodger often lent me his Escort 1300 to continue my courtship so on the Elan's return I offered him a drive in it.

Neither of us knew the road, some rural lane near Teddington (if that's not an oxymoron), but we passed through a Z-bend over a bridge before I handed it over for him to drive back. It was already dark and he approached this Z-bend far faster than I dared.

"Wow," I thought, "He can drive!" Not so, he hadn't remembered the bend and we scrubbed sideways into the Armco barrier at 30 or 40 mph. I thought I'd broken my hip, being on the crash side, but it eased out while the Elan's front wheel was all over the place and the suspension and brand-new chassis were bent.

I got Kingisher Motors at Hampton Court to collect and repair it but they sent it away to a place which had never repaired a glassfibre body before, let alone an Elan, so stress marks soon worked through along the left side (and are still there). Brian, who paid for the repair, repainted and gave me his prize model Elan but I didn't let him drive the car again. That (third) chassis lasted until 1990 before being replaced by St W.

I'd instructed Kingfisher to overhaul the rear brakes, for which they charged, but a few months later the brakes were pulling to one side. In fact, only one front caliper was working properly so I stripped all the pistons out and found the rear ones were rusty but Kingfisher just shrugged and I didn't have the guts to pursue it. Some likely lad was making solid rear pistons from stainless steel and they've been on the car ever since.

[Quart Meg Miles]

Plus Two time (the Lotus Elan with 14 more design errors, to paraphrase the Lotus 40) on the last evening of a mountain walking holiday in Snowdonia and I was driving along the narrow Tarmac road which weaved around rocky bluffs and had perilous edges on the way to our farmhouse accomodation when I slipped off the road edge avoiding sheep. But the car only dropped a few inches so it climbed out again when I wrenched the wheel over but the steering was wrecked. I weaved the last 50 yards to the farm and in the morning found that the brand new chassis was twisted where the front wheel had forced back the top wishbone (control arms). The rim of the wheel was crushed so it must have impacted a rock directly.

We were returning to Sussex, over 200 miles, and the young farmer used his tractor and a rope to pull the wishbone forwards again, then I retracked the steering and we completed the journey at a moderate speed. Fifth gear didn't engage easily which I found was due to a broken engine mounting.

My first, and only, insurance claim before engaging St Wilkins again, shortly after which, scenting regular business after three chassis swaps, he moved shop and is now just a couple of miles away. But galvanised chassis last for ever. The cynical assessor asked me the value of the car and I claimed ?3,000 so he grunted and suggested ?2,700 but met the claim in full. A few years later it fetched ?3,400.

[r.agnew]

This is non ? Lotus I know but shows the exuberance, stupidity & ignorance of youth. My friend had a Fiat 124, I had a Mini Cooper S (the real one- if only I?d kept it), and as I had a garage and my father?s tools, I was chief mechanic by default. At this juncture (39 years later) I can?t remember what I was attempting to fix on the Fiat, but I was lying under the jacked up car, no axle stands of course, and was spannering something high up on the bellhousing. I was possibly about to change the clutch or I might have been adjusting it, if it was hydraulic, I just don?t remember exactly. What I do remember is that space was very tight between the bellhousing and the bulkhead. Of course Muggins didn?t bother disconnecting the battery beforehand, and believe it or not, a gold signet ring I had only been given as a present a short time before got caught between the live feed to the starter motor/solenoid and the bulkhead or the engine, I don?t know which. All I do know is that the ring heated up like a blowtorch instantly frying/gluing itself to my finger as I frantically wriggled my hand trying to unjam it. When I got free and pulled the ring off, half the skin on my upper finger came with it!! Believe it or not, I still wear that ring today. My finger healed, but there are still two burrs on opposite sides of the ring where the electrical contact melted it slightly! It all taught me that you tend to forget what you read, but you never forget what you do, especially if it?s stupid!

[peterako]

Ouch!

[rmd24]

Youth,stupidity and enthusiasm.
In 1968 I was building a Mallock U2 clubmans car. I decided that I would fabricate ( that word is a bit presumptious) a battery retaining strap from a length of steel tape, the kind that used to secure tea chests. To do this I had to drill a couple of holes in the tape so I grasped the tape in my left hand and applied the drill. You can guess what happened next. The drill jammed in the tape which immediately wrapped itself around the drill bit and ripped itself from my grasp. For several minutes I was afraid to look at my hand, I was convinced that my left forefinger was no longer attached. Fortunately A&E was only a couple of minutes away and my injury was not as bad as I feared. I still bear the scar!

[RotoFlexible]

In 1967, my father and I picked up our used S2 from the seller in Buffalo NY and headed home, about 400 miles away. At the first fill-up, we noticed gas pouring out from under the boot and running across the concrete. The seller had neglected to tell us that a right rear shunt (which he also failed to mention) had damaged the fuel filler neck connection to the tank, and the brazed repair was ineffective.

About a week into our ownership of the car, the starter jammed. Not for the first time I suspect, and certainly not for the last. I received an early education in the art of Elan starter removal.

I had two failures at different autocross events in the late '60's/early 70's: a shredded Rotoflex (was able to limp home) and a rear wheel bearing failure (was able to limp back to school, the bearing spitting out a ball from time to time).

At about that time, I experienced my first brake failure due to a departed pin in a rear caliper. Fortunately I was in a driveway and there was no great drama. (I found the pad and was able to jury-rig a replacement pin from a bolt or something and continued on my journey to visit a friend who was working at a summer camp several hours away. The exhaust partially detached itself on the way. By the time I returned, the entire exhaust system from the downpipe back was in the passenger seat, I was temporarily deaf and had a big grin due to an interesting evening with a tipsy counselor at the camp.)

The second brake failure came a year or two later following some brake work: I left a rear brake line a little too far out and the rim of the wheel cut through it. Again, no drama. I plugged the cut line with a bolt and carried on.

In '73 or so, a raised manhole in a sewer project caught the front crossmember and totaled the frame. Lotus East in Millerton set it right, more or less, with a new frame.

Early '80's: I had fitted wider Cosmic wheels. On a highway off-ramp, I heard a noise from the rear; upon inspection, found that the braided stainless brake hose cladding had been nicked by the wheel. "It's only a flesh wound..." Some time later, a lady in a Buick pulled out in front of me and stopped. With nowhere to go, I slammed on the brakes - and that hose let go. That third (and, I fervently hope, final) brake failure resulted in a five-year lay-up and a new front clip.

At some point, after the car was back on the road, I was returning home from work with my wife on a very rainy highway. Water shorted out the electronic ignition. I pulled over, got out, and was about to investigate when a car went off the road into the woods a short distance behind us. The driver had been forced to brake by another driver easing over to give us plenty of room, and skidded. That could have ended very badly for us; as it was, no one was hurt but the other car was a mess. I still get the creeps when I think about that one.

Fast-forward to my recent (2008) mechanical overhaul, taking the car down to the bare chassis. I was re-installing the rear wishbones, with poly bushes. The inner ends were a very tight fit into the chassis brackets, so I enlisted my floor jack to supply some force. Well, the setup slipped and the vertical frame flange caught the tip of my thumb against the jack pad, nipping off about a quarter inch. It's the only lasting injury I (or anyone else) have sustained in 45 years of ownership, and a constant reminder to be careful.

In retrospect, most of these problems have been down to sloppy (or complete lack of) maintenance, poorly executed repairs, ignorance, or carelessness. I can't blame Lotus for them. Some of these incidents could have resulted in very serious injury, or worse, to myself or others. I consider myself very lucky to have gotten away with a slightly damaged digit.

[trw99]

I'm not sure 'enjoyed' is the correct term. Nonetheless I have enjoyed re-reading this thread and suspect others might too!

Tim

[snowyelan]

Nice thread resurrection.
Reminder to all. Using a breaker bar to gently turn an engine is ok. Forgetting to remove said bar and turning the ignition key is definitely not...

[billwill]

Repeat of an earlier post of mine back in 2010.

When I was young & innocent (around 35 years old) and I first took the cylinder head off my Elan there were none of these handy Internet forums around to get advice and I knew nuffink myself about the importance of getting the sprockets and camshafts in the right place on reassembly.

I put it back together and lo-and-behold the engine started first time, but there were an amazing number of bangs and crashes so I hastily stopped it again and took the head off again.

A valve had snapped, rattled around in the chamber, cutting deep notches in the head, the valve seats and the piston, until finally the broken valve stem, pierced the top of the piston. That's how I found it, sitting proudly out of the top of a piston, like a mushroom in a field.

That was a VERY expensive de-coke...

[2cams70]

By the time I returned, the entire exhaust system from the downpipe back was in the passenger seat, I was temporarily deaf and had a big grin due to an interesting evening with a tipsy counselor at the camp.)

Most of your post is pretty boring except for this bit. Appreciate if you could please elaborate further. In particular what were you receiving counselling about??

[ajwheels]

By the time I returned, the entire exhaust system from the downpipe back was in the passenger seat, I was temporarily deaf and had a big grin due to an interesting evening with a tipsy counselor at the camp.)

Most of your post is pretty boring except for this bit. Appreciate if you could please elaborate further. In particular what were you receiving counselling about??

Photos would help greatly here......