Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Congratulations on the new project car!

Happy to see it go to a great home.

It's a big project, early-ish S2s are precious and deserve to be resurrected.

Sounds like you're planning to go with KOs with steel wheels. Should you decide to go with the Panasports, you'll find a bit of background info here - https://www.gglotus.org/ggtech/elan-pan ... anwhls.htm

Cheers,
Kiyoshi

Hi,

I’ve not decided on one or the other. A set of steel wheels came up locally so I thought I’d pick them up to have both options.

I think the wheels alone set the appearance in very different ways, and for the cost of a second set of tires I have both options!

Just the first of many choices to be made, only this one I elected to not make a decision!

Ian
SoCal

I have a spare cam cover with no less than three similar vents added to it. I have removed them and will be welding up the holes.

Reasonable looking base for your total restoration, and well worth rescuing (well, other than the blood, sweat, tears and cash outlay, but that's standard practice).

Pabarlow wrote:I have a spare cam cover with no less than three similar vents added to it. I have removed them and will be welding up the holes.

Reasonable looking base for your total restoration, and well worth rescuing (well, other than the blood, sweat, tears and cash outlay, but that's standard practice).

Thank you!

I absolutely think it’s a great candidate for rescue. Blood, sweat and tears? That’s a given, but that’s almost the point!

Ian
SoCal

That will be the star of the show if you take it as is to a car meet.
Lovely project ahead of you.
It is possible to do most things yourself, or at least the preparatory work

661 wrote:That will be the star of the show if you take it as is to a car meet.
Lovely project ahead of you.
It is possible to do most things yourself, or at least the preparatory work

It’ll be fun to take the car ‘as-is’ to my local Cars and Coffee. I’m a little sad that most of the nuts and mouse crap will have blown out on it way to me, 400 miles on an open trailer, but I think they’ll get the idea.

I plan to do almost everything myself, but using available services such as dry ice blasting for the body, sand blasting for the chassis, welding if needed, all the specialized engine machining, I’ll build the engine but it’ll be fine tuned on a dyno by an ex-Cosworth guy, I’ll also be getting help from a friend who’s painted Pebble Beach cars in the past. There are other specialists I’ll need to use, but overall I’ll be doing all that I can.

The therapy is in the work!

Ian
SoCal

Hi Ian,
What a fantastic project.
Well done and keep posting
Alan

Certainly a good project in store, Ian, and it would be great to keep it standard, but your other post suggests you hope to tune it fairly heavily.

On the wheels, you can't easily swap from bolt-ons to knock-ons as the hubs are different and I believe that includes the stub axles. So you would need different uprights and probably calipers too as the pads may wear differently.

The red cam covers used to be for racing engines but I did notice the possible patch of standard blue which isn't a terribly dark shade.

Best of luck with it.

I found dry ice blasting may cause micro crackels in the gel coat surface.
I then tried soda blasting- which worked fine.

Anna, 66 S2

Quart Meg Miles wrote:Certainly a good project in store, Ian, and it would be great to keep it standard, but your other post suggests you hope to tune it fairly heavily.

On the wheels, you can't easily swap from bolt-ons to knock-ons as the hubs are different and I believe that includes the stub axles. So you would need different uprights and probably calipers too as the pads may wear differently.

The red cam covers used to be for racing engines but I did notice the possible patch of standard blue which isn't a terribly dark shade.

Best of luck with it.

Hi,

Yes I have the knock-off hubs too and the car will be built that way. The only question is steel knock-off’s or Panasport knock-off’s.

I think in the end if all the numbers match I will have to stay authentic. A few invisible bolt-on improvements perhaps.

There is some blue! I know someone who has had the original blue specially color matched. I’ll go with that I’m sure.

Ian

Emma-Knight wrote:I found dry ice blasting may cause micro crackels in the gel coat surface.
I then tried soda blasting- which worked fine.

Anna, 66 S2

Really? Dry Ice is supposed to be the gentle process.

Soda seems to be much more available. Maybe even DIY . . .

Thanks for the feedback,

Ian

Ian, if you need original steel K/O wheels, let me know. I may have a set or partial set that are usable.

I just bought a set from a San Diego Elan driver!

So now I’ll have choice between the standard steel KO wheels and these

That are part of my purchase.

Ian

I was pretty excited to see the Panasport wheels. It was the 1st time I'd seen a set in the anthracite color. The silver and gold are the most popular.

Cheers,
Kiyoshi

It is unusual, but I think I like it. It’s a classy look I think!

Ian