36/8075 FHC being ressurected

[mini64]

Just wanted to let you guys know last week my wife and I drove to north San Diego, from Bryan Texas, to pick up our new project. 3100 miles round trip with some site-seeing. The story is back in 1974 a friends kid, driving it home, accelerated hard from a stop over some RxR tracks and broke the ears on the diff (cracked open the bolt surrounds on the ears), and the car has sat ever since. Its all there as far as I can tell except the metal trim around the windshield, but with 36 years of weather damage. Supposedly rats or jack-rabbits ate away at the nice radiator opening hole in the front underneath. And I nearly found out the hard way what a black widow looks like! I?ll keep you guys updated on the restoration, and will of course have a thousand questions.

For now is there a wiring diagram available on the web somewhere? The ones in the two books I ordered are on their 8.5x11 pages and nearly unreadable. Also, is there a diagram on what the dash switches/lights/knobs do? My lettering is pretty much gone. Of course I?ll learn all this as I restore but right now on-lookers keep asking me what this and that does and I have no idea.

Yes, you guys have been helping me with twin cam questions for years, but that, I?ll admit now, was for our 7 racer.

[John Larkin]

Dear Andrew,

If you send me a private mail with your email address I'll send you a CAD file of a wiring diagram for an S4 Elan (non Federal).

John Larkin.

[Frank Howard]

Andrew,

Congratulations on your new purchase and thanks for posting the picture.

There are several drive axle conversions available. All but one of them bolt to the 3-eared output shafts coming out of the differential. There is one however that eliminates the 3-eared part completely as it includes new and stronger differential output shafts that are without the 3-eared feature. Performing this particular conversion is more difficult than the others as it requires that the original output shafts be removed from the differential and discarded but in light of the fact that yours are toast, they will have to be discarded anyway. Someone on this list knows which conversion kit I am talking about so I hope they will speak up and let us both know as eventually, I plan on purchasing this conversion kit as well.

[Ross Robbins]

Congratulations on your acquisition Andrew! The vendor who has the complete axle kit is RD Enterprises www.rdent.com and the description is as follows:
Elan CV Rear Axle Conversion Kits
Each kit includes two uprated differential output shafts with bearings, axle shafts with Lobro CV joints and adapter for outboard (hub) shaft. Installation is not difficult and can be accomplished by the Elan owner/mechanic. Enjoy the increased reliability of cv axles - no more rotoflex couplings to fail! If you're serious about eliminating the rotoflex couplings (donuts) this is the only way to go! Much better than u-joint conversions! Elan CV Rear Axle Conversion Kit is fully assembled and ready to fit. One kit required per car. CV Rear Axle Kits are also available for Elan Plus 2.
Ref. 26RD0034 Elan CV Kit - $1420.00
Ref. 50RD0034 Elan Plus 2 CV Kit - $1490.00

IF you have any questions Ray is very willing to help with solutions. Good Luck and I hope you're on the road soon.

[reynard]

Andrew,

If I can help out a fellow Texan, let me know. I do have a spare Diff housing in good shape with a bit of damage to the area that holds the axle retaining clips in place. If it can be of use to you just let me know and you can have it for the shipping cost.

Andy
Fort Worth, Texas

[mini64]

Thanks Andy. Yes, it is the differential housing that is broken. Guess I didnt make myself clear in the original post. So I may take you up on that offer...

[Elan45]

Mini,

I have photos just like yours except the year was 1978 and 36-5526 came home to Ohio from Little Rock Arkansas. We had to fit the trip into a weekend since I was about 6 months on the job and had no vacation time yet.

I'm going to suggest you obtain the actual factory shop manual as the best reference to rebuilding the car. Second book I'd get is a factory parts book which has many exploded views of things and sort-of shows how they go together.

When you get the manual, look also at the S2 wiring schematic, which is much easier to read and pretty much covers all the same functions as the more complicated and difficult to read S4 schematic. Of course, the door window wiring is not on the S2 diagram, but just about everything else is there. I've also found in working on both the early FHC and my S3-SS that the wire color codes from the S2 diagram are more often matched to the car than the S4 one. And the Super Safety is sort of a S3-S4 combine, a S3 w/ dual brakes and S4 rocker switches.

And my help may be closer than you think since we wintered over in the hill country near LLano last winter.

A good welder can probably put the diff housing back together for you. This was not an uncommon failure back then and many cars did many miles on welded diff housings. You might want to fit the Sprint brace to the diff when it goes back together.

Roger in Ohio

[msd1107]

Following the suggestions of others, I took my wiring diagram down to Kinko's and reproduced it onto something like 18X24 paper. Got several copies.

I then created a spreadsheet that had source/destination pairs for everything in the diagram so I would not have to chase thin lines around the page again.

http://bit.ly/berJ4H has the spreadsheet plus other interesting pieces of info.

David
1968 36/7988

[billwill]

I merely drew coloured felt tip pens along the lines.