Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

I know this topic was discussed a few years back - but I can't see the answer to my problem. Any ideas please? This is an "early" UK S3 with a headlamp flasher which used to flash the lights when the pods were up and lights off. There is a cluster of 3 relays on the front left wheel arch - horn relay, dip relay and flasher unit. The flasher unit has 3 terminals but only two are occupied with blue/black and blue/yellow (dirty white?) wires. There are 3 wires to the dip relay. And an orphaned blue/black wire. And the flasher doesn't work; everything else does. The orphaned wire leaves the loom alongside an earth wire; it was once connected to something but in the mists of time the connector has fallen off. So where should the orphan connect to? I guess its either a bullet to earth or a spade to the flasher unit but my manual says the flasher only has two wires......

Thanks!

Early S3 will follow this Diagram
May help.

Here's a photo of the headlight relay on my early S3. There's a spring that connects to the rod, there's a hole in it, (towards the front), then to the clip on the spring for the pod, at the coil. There's 2 black wires going to the relay.
I'm trying to find the springs but having difficulty getting one over here in the US.

Hi please see photos of my early S3 with flashing lamps off function. The relays are Top Left Main Beam, Top right Flashing relay with Flasher unit attached to the wiring bundle and Bottom relay is the Dip beam relay. The flasher relay is activated by the small pull switch which has Black & Purple feed and Black to earth.

The main lights are activated by a small pull switch mounted on the Front right wheel arch fed by the Black & Red wire from the main Beam relay and to ground via the black wire.

The Horn relay is mounted on the front right wheel arch fed by Purple wires.

Hi all thanks for your comments and photos.
I guess the car must be a mix of the S2 and S3 styles! The layout is not as Trevor's because the light relay is on the interior bulkhead and the horn relay on the left hand arch along with the main beam relay and flasher. My light micro switch is as Skyarch's. But there's no flasher micro switch as the S2 wiring diagram shows. And all the wiring colours are different!

Has anyone recently checked the legal situation about flashing headlights?

I seem to recall that the Elan arrangement became illegal so many owners disconnected the automatic-flashing system and it may be illegal to fix it and use it.

Vegantune (Spalding) removed my automatic flasher when doing a major renovation in 1983.

Hi Allison,
It takes a bit of sorting out, the P.O. of my car had replaced the S3 wiring harness with an S2, don't know why, so there are some mis-matches as far as the colors go. It's a PITA to trace and takes some time.

billwill wrote:Has anyone recently checked the legal situation about flashing headlights?

I seem to recall that the Elan arrangement became illegal so many owners disconnected the automatic-flashing system and it may be illegal to fix it and use it.

Vegantune (Spalding) removed my automatic flasher when doing a major renovation in 1983.

As it’s the time of year. Bah humbug!