Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Hello all

Wanted to pick your brains on this one, hope you don't mind.
Last night in the very early hours of the morning, I was trying to put the
gearbox bellhousing back on my recently rebuit/overhauled gearbox.
By the way, it's a early S3 coupe, 4 speed. Anyway, when I went to fit the new thrust bearing onto the old carrier, I found that the bearing was much too large for the carrier. Now my qustion is - As I think I have the correct bearing (supplied by the excellent Susan Miller) do you think I have the wrong carrier?
Some other things you need to know, everything was in place when I got the car in bits, but when I sent the gearbox off for rebuild, my very experienced Lotus gearbox man said that it was in fact it was (I think) an Escort/Cortina 1300 gearbox. Apparently a common bodge years ago.
He re-used the case but changed the internals to the correct type & did a lovely job putting it all back together. He never saw the bits in the bellhousing as I sent it by courier as a bare casing, all nice & filthy.
The old bearing carrier fits perfectly on the output shaft as it should, it's just that the bearing seems too large for it.
Is it a case of Lotus using a larger, more havy duty carrier & bearing? and maybe I have the 1300 type? is that right?
If that is so, are they hard to get? anybody got one?

Please help,

Many thanks

Adam

how much is the new bearing out by...
There were reports of a set of bearings getting into the market place that was over size..
Tim

Hi Tim

It's a lot out, somewhere between 1/8" to 1/4". Sorry I did not measure it but it was just much too big to be an interference fit.
I guess that as it had the wrong gearbox the P.O. just used it as a complete unit & it must have still done the job ok, maybe not for the long term. That's all I know about it really, thanks for the reply.

Adam