Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

My s3 had a 3 spoke (4 holes per spoke) colin chapman wheel on it when it was bought new (by my dad). At some point in the 80s... and oversized valet used the steering wheel to lever himself out of the car and broke that wheel. My dad replaced it with a sprint (or possibly europa) wheel. 3 spoke (3 holes per spoke) with the oversized plastic boss and the entire hub is the "button". In the 90s a (hindsight is 20/20) shady restoration expert lost the broken steering wheel. I've wanted to have one ever since...

fast forward to now... and I am in the process or restoring the s3. I found some original steering wheels with cracked vinyl etc... all for a pretty penny (500$ and up and would still need restoration). Then I found this guy - Mark Davies

https://jacobengineering.co.uk/index.ph ... -wheels-2/

I received my steering wheel a few weeks ago. Its absolutely beautiful. Leather...not vinyl. So won't satisfy the absolute purist... but I prefer it (I could be wrong about this... but i THINK my original s3 wheel was vinyl covered...). Such a nice feel. This is the one now on my car - though I opted for a yellow/green horn button because... cough cough... I am not a purist. lol




Highly recommended....

Very nice. Looks to be well made. I have the slotted steering wheel that I believe was used on the S2 and some S3 SE cars before the "signed" wheels. Mine is leather, and looks mostly brown, but was probably originally black, with the age and wear having turned in brown. It had the black horn button, but I also changed it to the yellow/green button because I prefer the look of that one. I retained the black one in case I ever want to change back to original. My car is not SE but seems to have some of the SE bits added, like the steering wheel..

Mark at Jacob Engineering has oft been recommended on here and the work he and his wife undertake is first class.

I have explored the possibility of finding someone, somewhere who could recover the Sprint vinyl steering wheels to close to original spec. I have discussed this with Mark, too. It seems that, certainly in the 'developed' world, that the process originally used by Springall would likely now be difficult/impossible to replicate without offending some law or another, to do with the welding process and materials used. Furthermore, tooling up for relatively small production runs is unlikely to be economically feasible.

I attach an article on Elan steering wheels that I wrote a few years ago for Club Lotus News magazine.

Tim

Hi Tim,

Interesting article. Do you know if the S3 slot type (#3 in photo) is the same as the cortina version?

I have a wheel which looks very similar (although possibly a bit deeper?) which was billed as a cortina wheel and which I hope will fit.

Many thanks,

Will

Will, as I understand it the Cortina steering wheels were more deeply dished than the Elans.

Tim

I haven't measured it, but I think the Cortina boss is a different diameter to the Elan. The Cortina boss is mated to the Ford column, the Elan to a Triumph column.