Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

We'll not that it's Important but I discovered it Is Simpler to remove the engine and leave the tranny in the car .As I had the thing in and out 4 times this go around using the threaded rod trick I picked up from this group .many thanks ....Once when the clutch throw out bearing disassembled . Itself. 2when a nut fell in the starter hole and went to live behind the ring gear 3 when I saw the steel stiffener Sitting on the work bench after a late nighter and 4just for fun......
the project is moving slowly due to a line drive to the right knee ......who's on first ? The car should be running bySunday or Monday .No rush this time, the car will have its curse removed by a. Voodoo priest a Methodist preacher and a Navaho medicine man may be an exorcism too .....Ed

Ed,
Just removed engine with tranny in car, it worked fine, head off as easier to reach stuff and had to remove head anyway, another story of an engine "experts" work .
What is the threaded rod trick, for aligning the head on assembly, or something else?
Incidentally I have a prebent starter shaft from a previous issue should work fine until it turns , it was caused by the hole in the std metal plate between the eng/ trans being smaller than the starter causing the starter to misalign and jam into the ring gear, hard to notice when bolting in, saildrive reported this problem some time ago but after I had damaged a starter. I now have one of those geared ones that works fine and fits.
Jack

Buy some threaded rod the same thread as the bell housing , 3/8 Course I think, and cut it to 8 inches 6 pieces . Thread into the bell housing.......guide the motor onto the rod and put nuts on the thread and pull the engine into the housing as the bolts are too short to do this and this eliminates pushing and shoving the motor into placeI use two to locate the stiffener on the top bolts and one in each of the. Four other bolt holes use the bottom two nuts to pull up the. Motor to the bell housing ......when its all together replace the rod with the bolts .....magic ...not my idea but I read it here posted by an absolute genius .Ed

Fair idea that. Lots of merit.. But... For gods sake be very careful that the gearbox input shaft is properly aligned and inserted into the clutch plate and the crank spigot bearing.. It could be tempting to enter the lot and start swinging of those draw up nuts causing lots of damage along the way... Be very careful.. If everything is nicely centered up the engine should slide fairly easily into place on the bell housing.

Make sure you use a good clutchplate centering tool.. I use an old gearbox input shaft..


Have fun guys and enjoy your cars. I am! Great weather up here just now.

Al' ...