Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

I recently acquired a part restored Elan +2S 130/5 and have begun completing the restoration (a lot to do!)

Car has been running OK generally but for some reason, it "eats" coils! I'm aware must'nt leave ignition on but coil still gets exceptionally hot.
Started to explore reasons and now encountered a further complication - lost the indicators, several guages (incl fuel) and all dash illumination. Checked fuses - they appear to be OK. Considering maybe a faulty voltage stabilizer? If so, where do you get a replacement?

Any help/suggestions would be gratefully received.
Regards, Lewis

Hi Lewis

Regarding the coil, are you using the ballast set up? and if so have you got the Ignition on wire (think its white) and the Cold start Hot wire from the start solenoid the correct way round (think thats yellow), i'm sure i don't have to tell you but if it's a Ballast system with a 6v coil and you run 12v through it all the time is will fail very quickly.

Check the Stabiliser to see if you have 10v going to the clocks and if not a good alternative is one of these https://www.spiyda.com/magento/index.ph ... r-kit.html

One thing you will find with Lotus's is if you have an Electrical fault your first stop should be the Negative Ground, 70% of the time it will be bad.

Gizzly make the points but also check that if you don't have a ballast sytem that you are not fitting ballast model coils

Hi I had a problem with the fuel gauge and the indicators , turned out to be a bad Earth on the petrol tank.

It's worth checking all the earths as the electrical system simply finds another route to earth through instruments etc. If the intended earth is bad.

Steve

Instruments and earths...I'll second that!

My former Esprit's fuel and temperature gauges would do this very slow oscillation in which they'd both creep up together, too slowly to notice if staring t them, then slowly creep down, then up again, etc...not the only Esprit to do this, I'm told. One day I was underneath during an oil-change and in the process of wiping up all the oil that had run down the side of the engine from the filter, I found that one of the three bolts connecting the mount to the engine on that side was loose and it was the one with the earth-strap fastened under it. Give it some tightening, no second thought about it...but then I noticed over the next few drives that the gauges no longer oscillated! I checked that by frequently from then on and never had any more oscillations.