The Saga of 26/4623

[benymazz]

I said in the previous post nothing "major" has gone wrong. Things, inevitably, have gone wrong though. A week after getting it back on the road I drove to go see Roger, who winters about 30 minutes away from where I go to college. Shortly after leaving his house I stopped to get gas and when I turned the key when I got back in, it wouldn't start. Dead battery. Odd, especially considering it started fine literally 7 or 8 minutes before. But now it just didn't have enough "oomph" to crank it over. Fortunately Roger was kind enough to come give me a jump start and I drove back to my cousin's house. The alternator/fan belt had slacked itself off so the alternator wasn't working, and although I knew the alternator wasn't working at the time, I didn't know that was the reason. I assumed the alternator had gone bad internally because it was being driven just enough to make the light on the dash go out but not enough to charge the battery, especially under the worst circumstances (a cold, rainy night). By the time I got back to my cousin's house, the car was running fine but the headlights and dash lights were very dim, my solid-state relay for my LED turn signals was malfunctioning, and the wipers would barely move. The next day I came back and figured out what was wrong and retensioned the belt. No problems in that department since.

Of course, there have been some other things. A headlight pivot bolt backed itself out causing my right hand headlight to not go up and scuff up the paint on the edges of it quite nicely. My radiator is leaking to the tune of about 0.75gal every 1,000 miles, so that's on the list of things to get repaired very soon. Perhaps most disheartening of all was that a repair I did on a major crack in the drivers side sill (at the bottom seam where the floor tray meets the sill) decided to fail at the beginning of March. I have since discovered that was because I did the first part of the repair with epoxy and tried to bond polyester resin on top of the epoxy, which doesn't work. Lesson learned. I fixed it last week the right way and now it's back the way it should be. Photo below is of the carnage the day that it broke.

-Ben

[benymazz]

On March 7 I flew home to New York from Daytona Beach for spring break (doing it backwards, I know). This was about when all hell was starting to break loose with coronavirus. While I was home my college announced they were extending my spring break by 2 days and moving to online classes until at least April 7. Now, I live in the dorms at college so I was planning on moving my stuff back to NY for the summer when the semester ended. I gambled that they would eventually move classes online for the rest of the semester and I wouldn't need to go back for in person instruction and and made the executive decision to bring my stuff back to NY then and there. So I drove my truck down from NY - straight shot an 18 hour drive with the girlfriend as copilot and codriver - on 3/19, packed up my dorm and tools at my cousin's house on 3/20, and put the Lotus on the trailer at 7AM on 3/20 and headed for Maryland. My stamina is good but not good enough to straight shot an 18 hour drive towing a loaded trailer. So I did 13 hours on 3/20, stopping to stay with family overnight, and the last 6 hours on 3/21. When you combine that with a trip I made to Long Island to help my girlfriend pack up her dorm on 3/17, I added up my miles and found that I drove 3,200 miles in 6 days.

Leaving Florida

Maryland

And I swear you cannot make this up. I had to leave her parked outside for one night while I freed up space in the garage, and of course it snowed. In the middle of March. It snowed about another 5 inches after I took this picture but fortunately it was in the garage by that time.

Snowtus...

-Ben

[benymazz]

The quarantine life continues. Did the post break-in oil change last weekend. Now it has 20W-50 synthetic and a fresh filter. FWIW, it took 4 US quarts on the nose (3.76L)... I'm guessing some got stuck in the back of the pan since the car was jacked up at the front when I did the change (yes it was hot when I drained it).

I also finally got around to finishing the interior. I had been avoiding doing this for much longer than I should but I was getting incredibly frustrated. When my dad got this car back on the road in 2006 most of the vinyl mats were badly worn out so he replaced a lot of the vinyl with leftover carpet from when our house was being built. It sounds worse than it looked. Now I'm an originalist, unless it looks better, goes faster, or drives safer, and the carpets did none of these. Also, the mice had gotten to the carpet. So I got a new mat kit.

And then proceeded to go through 3 different adhesives, including the one recommended by the mat supplier, before I found one that worked. They all had the same problem: it would start out fine, the mats stuck great, but after a week or so the adhesive lost its bond and started to turn into a runny sort of goo - which is a mess to clean up. The first time it happened I was annoyed, the second time there was some swearing, and the third time there was a lot of swearing. In the end (last weekend) I ended up using Loctite PL construction adhesive (the stuff that comes in a caulk tube) which - so far - appears to be working.

I didn't do a perfect job trimming the mats - but this isn't a show car. It's a fair-weather daily. Yes, it bothers me a little bit, but I have to keep reminding myself that a lot of little things like this, nobody ever notices except the person who put it together. Of course I'll try to make it as good as possible - but someone doing a job they've never done before can only be so good.

I still have to take out the big mat that goes across the back of the cockpit and clean off the old adhesive and put new on. I'll probably get around to that later this week, and then I'll actually be done with the interior.

135,324mi on the odometer now.
-Ben

[benymazz]

Changed the oil in the diff yesterday. Like most jobs on this car, it started off simple and got stupid fast. One of my exhaust mount bolts broke while I was taking it off - it had bent last year when I bottomed out slightly on a speed bump and yesterday I guess it decided to die. At least it wasn't while I was going down the road.

I made a temporary repair using some spare hardware I had in the bolt bucket. When I change the chassis in a month or so it's getting a whole new exhaust anyways so a mild bodge is acceptable to me for now. It's nothing that can't be reversed in 3 minutes at a later date.

The diff likes having the correct weight gear oil in it now - the slight whine it had before is now hardly noticeable. Here's to hoping I can get another 50k out of it before rebuild.

BTW, what service intervals do people use for diff oil changes nowadays? I am using Redline 75W90.

-Ben

[richardcox_lotus]

Keep the updates coming Ben, always like to see how people are getting on....

Regards
Richard

[LabroDF]

Hi Ben, owner of 26/4629 here. Our cars were most likely neighbors on the assembly line in 65. Enjoying the posts.

[benymazz]

Keep the updates coming Ben, always like to see how people are getting on....

Regards
Richard

Thanks Richard!

Hi Ben, owner of 26/4629 here. Our cars were most likely neighbors on the assembly line in 65. Enjoying the posts.

Thank you! That's interesting - your forum signature says your S2 is a '66 which would be odd as my S2 was picked up in June of '65. Assuming of course that the car in your signature is 26/4629.

-Ben

[LabroDF]

Titled/Registered in the states in '66 but considered a 1965 Elan S2 per the records. It was sold to Dutchess Auto Co. in July 1965 which was the East coast distributor based in Millerton, NY.