Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

My S3 currently has the metal bobbin that rides in the springy thing for the boot. My parts list shows what I
think is the plastic bobbin that is installed from S3 onward. I've seen other S3 cars with the metal bobbin
also, so clearly, somewhere in the S3 range the change over to the plastic bobbin was made.

Does anyone know when the changeover occurred?

Greg,

My 36/55** has the plastic bobbin. It is round and if I were back in my shop, I could make you a replacement on my lathe. This car is pretty much as it was in the late 60s w/ 28k miles when I became her custodian in 1978, as we have previously discussed.

RLS

My friends S3 is a very early DHC, & whilst not much of the front end is/was original, I believe most of the rear end hadn't been messed with too much, the car had spent many many years abandoned in storage before we restored it. It had/has the plastic bobbin. It had an earlier (?) style bracket for the spring which was completely different to that on my S4 & wasn't anywhere near as strong. We changed it for one the same as on my S4 as it had a tendency to flex. I notice on the two photo's above that the brackets look different as well.

Regards, Tim

Thanks guys. The top pic is my Sprint and the bottom pic, depicting an early stay, is a random internet
pic. Back to the plastic bobbin it is. Roger, thanks for the offer. You'll be in FL for a while so I'll get one
from one of the usual suspects.