Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

If your alternator & battery are up to it...

https://www.seanhylandmotorsport.com/bl ... t-for-you/

Jeremy

I have seen those Hyland compressors before. The price is a little eyewatering! Nearly 10 times the price of a conventional unit. There are also 12V motorised normal compressors available - though still ~$600 and pull something like 50A.

Here are some pictures of the instruction booklet with the diagram and then some pictures of the parts and how it worked on my car with the Sanden. And any auto AC place has the adapter bracket that I used that lets you put a Sanden in place of the older piston compressors. I did replace the Bean cartridge water pump on my engine also at this time and now I've got about five years and 2000 miles on everything and no problems and comfortable. Gordon Sauer

As on car and pic of how York unit was mounted. Gordon Sauer

I understNd you have a cartridge pump on yours, but would I be correct in saying a Lotus water pump wouldn't last long like that? They are notorious for wearing out if the alternator belt is too tight.

What I'm saying is one would need to budget for a water pump upgrade as well when trying to retro fit A/C to the Plus 2.

Pretty much everybody I have heard mention of having this on their car (three)took it off and just got rid of it. But I also know that a cartridge water pump was not part of the original installation plan so I suppose they thought it would be OK. The original owner of my car had taken it off as well and it was quite a bit later when he put the cartridge unit on but I don't know if that was because of some period of use of the AC. Gordon Sauer

I helped install an A/C unit on a +2 many years ago. The owner was an engineering student like me. He knew from experience the water pump bearing was unable to take much tension. He added a additional pulley to the crankshaft pulley from a wrecked Ford Pinto, along with modifying the Pinto compressor bracket to clear the frame. It worked really well, once he increased the size of the radiator and added an electric fan to the radiator. He could commute from Riverside, CA to Cal Poly Pomona in comfort in 100F (39C) heat.

The installation in the photos does not have enough belt "wrap" around the compressor pulley to keep the belt from slipping without over tension to the belt and water pump.

I was concerned about a slipping belt but again believing the system designers had considered most things, and these are also the same people that made the add-on system for the Europa, I figured the belt was critical and did spend some time looking for exactly the right belt with quite a bit of width and in fact the belt in the picture is not the one I ended up using because as you'll see it rides too far down even on the alternator, so given the wrap that's available on the compressor it was critical to have a belt that would just bear on its V and not slip and that's how it is worked. Gordon Sauer

Thanks for the pictures Gordon, very interesting. The belt wrap on the compressor does look a little light on...

Might be an option to install a small alternator on the other side of the engine and use an idler to get some more belt wrap.