Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Now i have decided to change to a fully adjustable rear spring arangement i have the following questions: do I go for 12 inch or 14 inch length springs?
secondly I would be interested to know of some coilover kit suppliers in the USA apart from the obvious lotus suppliers.
thirdly is it difficult to put spring compressors on a 2 1/4 ID spring??? in order to fit these?
cheers
Robin

Robin with adjustable spring seats you can usually wind the seat down so you remove all the tension on the spring & slip it off by hand no compressors needed
Ian

I used 14" x 120 pound springs and, as Ian says, if you get the spring mounting as low as possible the springs can be installed and removed without a spring compressor.

The threaded collars and springs are pretty generic and widely available. It's the spring tops which are not - Spyder have nice machined alloy ones but will not sell them to your separately unless at an insanely inflated price.

I settled on TTR tops - I don't especially like them as they look somewaht insubstantial however the price was right and I guess is they are okay for racing they must be man enough for road use.

Jono

Hi guys,
I used the st'd lotus spring tops and machined them to dia to suit the new (TTR) springs + about 10mm I then used some steel tube, dia' of which was a snug fit over the springs & cut off two 10mm pc,s and mig welded these to the said spring tops, glued some rubber sheet inside these where the springs sat. Bang on and very little cost..

The only downside is using your st'd parts to do this. Will you ever go back though? Would a new owner want to undo this V good 'update'..? I think not, and one can always buy a pair of st'd tops easy enough.

Good luck with it. What ever way you go will be fine I'm sure..

Alex B....

thanks for the replies which are very helpfull. I specially like the idea not having to use a spring compressor any more. It was always an unknown factor if you were able to put the nut on top of the shock rod or not!!! A job that could take 5 seconds to complete or an hour!!!
So far I have managed to get all the parts through ebay at little expensense so that is a good start.
cheers
Robin