Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

2cams70 wrote:Found some interesting debate about Aluminum flywheels here too:

https://www.lotus7.club/forum/techtalk/ ... eel-x-flow

There is some very uninformed opinion in that debate!

I have a Fidanza alloy flywheel on my Elan and it works very well with the standard Elan clutch and 1720cc.

When I raced a 26R it had a lightened cast iron flywheel and I used to worry about it since I was using 8000rpm in every gear-the only thing that happened though was that the ring gear would get thrown off occasionally, which was very inconvenient!

I have never seen a documented case of a modern aluminum flywheel failing-has anyone?

I used an aluminum flywheel for decades on my street/slalom S2. It touched 7,000RPM several times in the heat of competition with no ill effects. It was built for me by Lee Mueller (Mother Mueller for those who remember), a fabricator/racing driver with international wins so he knew what worked. Interestingly it used a plasma deposition of some magic formula for the friction area so there was no additional weight from an insert. Total weight including the ring gear is 5.2 lbs and when I disassembled the engine several years ago, there did not appear to be any significant wear on this friction material. (I wanted to include a photo, but cannot figure out how to attach it.)