Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Hello. I have an issue with my lightpods.

They used to work fine before.

Yesterday we were going up in the mountain when the rain poured on us and fog also. I lift the lights up but my friend missed the movement and wanted to see them in action. So i put them down and up again... they never lift the second time.

I checked the T and hosing quickly but i did not see anythin disconected.

Any clue or advice to track down the origin of the breakdown?

Thanks

It was annoying without lights..

Cedric
Are they fail safe or non fail safe? I.e when the car is left are they up or down?
Terry

They are in their normsl down position

Cedric, then it's either a vacuum leak or the vacuum pods aren't working.
There are joins to the switch on the dash, the t piece, onto to inlet manifold via a non return valve and onto the pod itself. Has the tick over got more irratic? Can you hear any hissing?
Terry

Think Terry has summed it up nicely, there can't be many places for such a catastrophic loss of vacuum to occur. Sounds like they were working one second and not the next. Something must have come adrift or a vacuum pipe has split - if it was a gradual leak from say a connector the pods would be trying to pop up and failing but it sounds like they don't move at all.

Joints to the switch on the dash... might be it.
I don t hear no hissing sound with the noise of the TTR fast road exhaust but the button is sliding differently when actuated

How do i pull that button appart? Any pics?

Cedric
If you need your lights I would pull of the pipes at the back of the switch and join them together with one of the short sections of rubber pipe. See it that works, and at least you have them in the up position!

Terry
Ps looks nice scenery where you are, at least your windscreen wipers haven't stopped working

Cedric, to locate my problem I did just that. I pulled the 2 pipes off the switch and joined them. The pods stayed up so I knew the switch was the problem. Details here; lotus-chassis-f36/vacuum-pods-t34444.html
Jim

Cedric
I have just had a thought , If it works - fine , but do not have them unconnected in the car as that would be bad!
Just reconnect switch to lower.

Terry

I once had a problem whereby the pipe that comes from the inlet manifold was pushed into the "T" piece too far, thus blanking off the connection to the front chassis member/vacuum tank. This meant that there was no storage reservoir for the vacuum. They went up once (a little slower than normal) but would not raise a second time without taking many minutes with the engine running. It took a little working out what was wrong because from first appearances everything looked fine - pipes connected & tight joints. Once I had the connection put right, they worked perfectly as per normal.

I might not be what is your problem but it was what was wrong with mine!

Good luck with sorting it.

A

'72 Sprint should have "fail-safe" headlamps i.e. they are sprung into the up position. There should be only one vacuum pod unit. If there is a leak, the lights should be up.

My '72 Sprint had had a front end rebuild at some point and had two vac-pod units, is this the case with yours?

I put the vac units in a bin and fitted modern electric actuators.

"going up in the mountain " could be a clue,were you at large throttle opening...then you didn't have a high vaccuum....I don't know how much ( or little ) vaccuum is stored in the crossmember but surely enough for two operations...

John

[quote="elansprint71"]'72 Sprint should have "fail-safe" headlamps i.e. they are sprung into the up position.
I have a 1972 Elan Sprint fhc and it has 2 vacuum pods non fail safe. Original setup never been changed. I understand fail safe 1 vacuum pod was for lhd on Elan sprints
Alan