billwill wrote:Since you can put in a longer hose, you could swap positions of the temperature sensor and the water valve. The latter can, just, screw in when it is in the forward hole.
Dunno why Lotus put it in the difficult rear hole anyway!
The hose is cut to length and the rear hole is where its going. Not a big deal to drill out a rivet and disassemble the heater valve and install it and reassemble in place. I don't have one yet so I need to make a list of stuff needed to keep this project going. I'll be running out of things to do sometime and will have to break down and spend some money.
Today was Donut day, I needed to get the front of the Elan up in the air a bit to fit the started, I had a Super starter from the other green S2 and it gave me some problems so I just got another and put it on the shelf, The solenoid was intermittent so I am using an external one and have added a jump on the internal solenoid. I don't know if will have any issues or not but it was on the shelf and I feel better about it than any of the 20 or so Lucas units that have over run my house over the years.
Once the starter was in place I turned my attention to getting the rear suspension compressed. I had a little bit of everything to get the weight needed to do that. 220 lbs of lead, 34 gallons of cider, a couple of flywheels, a 100 lbs of zink bars, 80 or so lbs of cast iron sash weights, probable 6 or 7 hundred pounds to get the rear control arms parallel to the floor in total.
Took me a while to remember the sequence of the install, some assembly and disassembly involved with this as it has been a few years since I last did a set, the joy that I remember is still there and I hope it will be the last set I do. About ten minutes to five I walked in to look at the clock and wash my hands.No record times were set today but they are in and pretty tight, I will go back and check them all tomorrow and tighten the other loose bolts that have been waiting since back in May when I dragged the chassis out of the house.
Thursday September 27th 02:00pm
Tuesday came around all too soon and I was still hurting from "the day of the donuts" so I did as little as possible. I think I tightened 12 of the rear suspension bolts and found some needed parts that would be needed soon. Yesterday was not a lot better but I did get the rear hub bolts torqued up, not sure what the reading was but close to my limit. I also spent some money to get some ball ended Allen wrenches so that I could install the top bolt on the starter. The design of the starter offers no direct access so a button head cap screw with and 7/32 Allen recess is what I had used before. Anyway it went in and I called it a successful day. I am thinking I need to make a punch list to order some stuff but I keep finding things to do so that will wait.
When I blacked out the body shell I meant to do the inside of the doors but the 18 hour day put that project on hold until this morning. After tightening much of the front suspensions bolts (except the fulcrum pin nuts and the 1/2 inch bolt for the control arms to shocks), I taped off the doors and then gave them a coat of plastic and mixed up some flat black and acetone and spayed them out in the drive. I don't plan on much for an interior for this S2 at the present as I just want to heat and eat this winter and if things improve I'll see about it maybe in the spring.
October 2nd 02:50am
Not a lot done over the weekend, mostly rain and just wasn't up for working in the garage with out being able to move around with all the cars inside. The sun came out yesterday so I figured to get on with something. I guess I have looked at the windscreen frame for most of the summer and did nothing and yesterday was the day. We had talked about the screen frames in the past, the discussion revolved around whether they were black gel coat or gloss black paint or satin black and I think that they may have been a bit of both. I started sanding the screen frame and this one clearly had paint on it, it also had a dark gel coat under that. I suspect that in a perfect world that every S1 or S2 would have come with the windscreen frame straight out of the mold with black gel coat in perfect condition and ready to mount on the body. My guess is that it didn't work out that way and most (if not all as the realities of producing this bit of complex molding) were painted black.
The above photo shows one of my repaired areas across the top of the screen frame, there is black gel coat on either side of the repair along with gray prime and black paint. Clearly this could have been repainted and I don't know when it was applied but looking at other areas that had filler under the prime my guess it was at lotus to fix defects that needed correcting before it passed the world famous Lotus QC inspectors. I'll have to sand another screen frame sometime and see what I find to make a more definite statement.
I guess it was about 2 pm when I was satisfied with the look of the screen frame so I gave it a coat of black, It didn't turn out all that well as it had a lot of angles to shoot from and I sagged the paint across the top of the frame trying to get it all covered. I guess its another "do-over" , shit happens and so things go! Maybe it will sand out