Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Hi all,
Spent time yesterday looking over the elan and freed off brakes including handbrake so took it for a short run on som grass land we have, basically driving round in circles. Clutch a little iffy but got all gears. Put it away in the garage and it was like the breaks binding again. Had a look first thing this morning as I was booked in for an mot fail ( poor earth somewhere multiple lights coming on with indicators and one track rod end boot split) and one rotoflex is almost split. Decided to go down the route of cv joint conversion and will order from Sue Miller shortly.

Any hints/tips, do's or don't do's before I start the job. Are they a straight forward swop "bolt for bolt"

Any help appreciated.

John

1970 +2

I changed mine about six months ago - like you, I bought Sue Miller's product. It was a pretty major job but not a very difficult one, if that makes sense. Once you've got the rear end raised enough, it's not too hard to get the old shafts and Rotoflex couplings removed. After that, you'll need to undo the wishbone bolts to allow the wheel hub to move outwards; I'd recommend that you get new nuts for these and maybe new bolts as well (I just replaced the nuts).

I found that the only way to get the new shafts in was to release the wishbone, insert the driveshaft bolts a little way into the diff and hub holes, then get the wishbones re-attached. After this you need to jack the hub up as high as possible so the driveshaft is as close to straight as it can be - the instructions state very clearly that you shouldn't try to get the bolts fully home and tightened with the suspension on full droop. But you can't get the wishbone attached with the hub jacked up, as the spring forces the hub outwards, or at least it did when I tried it! Once the shafts were lined up and as straight as I could get them, I used a long socket bar as a drift and was able to tap the bolts through without much force.

This may not have been the right way to do it, but it worked for me. And the car drives very nicely indeed since its operation, too.

Dave

John
I fitted Sue Miller CV's to my Plus 2 recently. Three comments:
1. If you have failsafe pegs on the driveshafts, these need to be cut or ground off before you can fit the CV's. You can do it with the driveshafts on the car, but access is restricted - depends on what facilities you have for working under the car.

2. I found the studs on the CV's too tight a fit into the existing driveshafts. I could tap them thru enough to get the nuts on, but could not tighten them enough to pull the unthreaded part of the stud thru. I ended up taking them off and doing some gentle filing. If I was doing it again I'd probably remove the complete strut / hub carrier and ensure I had a good fit before doing it in-situ.

3. At the outer end, access to the nuts is restricted and you have to turn the hubs to a postion where you can get a spanner on - even then you can only get an open ended one on the nuts. I had to buy a better quality spanner to avoid rounding off the nuts as these need to be pretty tight.

Happy with them now though.
Good Luck
Steve

I think I must have been lucky , or maybe it's different for early +2 ?
I don't remember having to undo wishbone bolts !
A circular file was all that was needed just to take the edges off when lining the holes up for the bolts & then a sharp tap.
I was pretty amazed at how easy it was with chassis supported and wheels on full drop
RichC

Mine are Sue Miller also.

She did tell me that the holes would need to be filed out and they did. It was not a drama as I had the Dremmel out to cut off the fail safe pegs anyway. Not a bad job i did it in situ on my gravel drive.

The worse thing is the gaitors have now started to split so will need changing soon, I fitted them about 2 years ago and they have done zero miles. Modern rubber is rubbish.

Jason

I must have been really really lucky, mine went straight on , no filing and no wishbone bolts!

I must check the rubbers as its coming up to 2 years

Terry

Hi John,
Mine were Paul Matty driveshafts, & I don't know if they use Sue Miller ones or not. They went straight on without filing or undoing wishbones, & I think that once the car was up in the air & the old ones off ,it only took about 30 minutes per side to fit.
Regards
John

The early Sue Miller kits had bolts instead of studs which made fitting easier. I fitted a later kit and turned 8 thou off the unthreaded part of the studs; the original 3 eared spiders were not very accurately made which causes the problems. I used spring compressors to get the suspension inline easier.

My Mick Miller CV's went on pretty easliy too.

The only issues were:

1. Getting the old rotoflexes off (rusted bolts)
2. Had to grind the failsafe pins off the driveshafts

Studs fitted fine without any need for reboring holes etc.

Fitted the diff sides first.

Fitting was done with car jacked up and suspension hanging originally, then (as my unreliable memory tells me) I jacked up on the hub/shock to align and get the nuts on.

Side 1 took a while to get the hang of it. Side 2 was done in less than 30 minutes!

Cannot say enough good things about the CV conversion!!

I must have done well over 20k miles on them now without a single problem (with the CVs ).

Oh! KerryT... I think that the Paul Matty ones are supplied by Sue Miller, i.e. they are Mick Miller CV's

Peter

peterako wrote: I jacked up on the hub/shock to align and get the nuts on.
Peter

Thats what I did!
Peter your memory must be better than mine!

Terry

Thanks for the replies everyone,
Tremendous service from Sue Miller, the driveshafts arrived today so I fitted them earlier. As new rotoflexes had been fitted previously the bolts came out easily. New driveshafts had studs and against the advice I went with fitting the outboard shafts first due to having to connect the discs to them. Inboard was relatively easy to fit once I had got the bottom stud lined up. Unfortunately I can't do anymore with the elan yet as I need to complete the welding on my wife's MG TF to get it re-tested next week. I may have to do the clutch master cylinder as well as their was little pressure when I moved it out of the garage to get the TF in.

jmp wrote:Tremendous service from Sue Miller....

And I thought I was getting special treatment

The Miller CV's are really a great fit and forget change to the car.

Best of luck with the rest of the work.

I hope you get on the road soon...but 'She who must be Obeyed'...must be obeyed

T?g go bog ?,
Peter

Due to the high cost of buying ready made cv conversions. ?600 including a contribution of ?100 to the treasury,
I decided to build my own. These are 75% complete and are looking good., The adaptor plates are made and cv joints fitted. All that is required are the two splined shafts. I can produce them, but do not know the length etc. As my car is in daily summer use I must wait until it is laid up for winter when I can take measurements. Unless of course someone can provide the necessary info which would enable me to proceed. So if anyone can tell me the length of these shafts I would be grateful.
Chris Elan 130/5

Salut Chris

The info might be in the forum somewhere.

If you want to recover some of your time and effort investment you could always consider making a small series for interested forum members like me

@+

Vernon

Hi Chris

Try here

http://thelolaregistry.com/Projects/LOT ... ersion.htm

Regards
John