Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

I've just realised that the tool kit of my S2 is short of the wheel brace and jack ratchet handle. Does anybody have any photos of the wheel brace or knows whom the manufacturer was? I think the jack was a Ford item? I know the jacks on the later cars came in a bag, but how about the early cars?

Looks like I'll be scouring eBay...unless somebody out there has spares?

Thanks,

Louis

The ratchet handle is a rather crappy piece of engineering, I recall. After a fair amount of use the ratchet slips to the extent that it becomes unusable.

The jack itself seems to last OK. It is a fairly normal scissor jack. The load bearing piece at the top is a small saddle with a hole in the centre; I think that is because the official front lift point is the nut at the bottom of the front upright.


A bit like this one.
http://ziyuetools.com/products/Jack/Pro ... rvlet2.jpg

The top is a bit more like this one:
http://scissorjack.org/finding-the-righ ... ssor-jack/

but the Lotus jack does not have a long handle like in that picture, instead the end of the shaft is squared and the ratchet handle fits on it at right-angles to the shaft.


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Apart from the type of winding handle, this one on eBay is very close to the appearance of the Lotus one.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/CAR-SCISSOR-JACK- ... 2a0f80d582

and this type of handle is more reliable than the original lotus ratchet, as can be seen by the fact that it is the most common form of scissor-jack winder nowadays and the ratchet type are nowhere to be seen

Most Lotus owner probably threw the handle away in disgust after having to flag down a passing car to get assistance to change a wheel.

Hi Bill,

Thanks for that very informative reply! My S2 had one owner from new till 2010, attached is a photo of the jack and handle that came with the car. From what you've said I guess the ratchet must have failed and been replaced fairly early on.

Thanks,

Louis

Pictures from the Elan parts list and the Plus Two parts list.

Louis
You have the correct jack for the S1 through to the S4...only late S4 and Sprint had the scissor jacks. I believe that for the S1 through to early S3 Coupe (up to end 65 ..ish) they were painted red, and thereafter, grey.

They are based on (but different to) the Mk 1 Cortina jack, but that had a few variants...here's a Lotus Cortina jack for sale...the same as a Mk 1 estate car!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Ford-Cortina-MK1- ... 2a0f806584

The ratchet handle looks the same as mine, and I'm sure that would have been common to all Mk 1 Cortinas...and probably Anglias as well.

Here's the jack and ratchet handle from my S3.

Mark

Dear Brian and Mark,

Thanks for your posts. I don't think I'll be bidding on the Cortina jack, I can see that going for a lot of money and it would be a shame to deprive a Cortina owner of something they really want, when all I need is the ratchet.

Any idea what the wheel brace looked like?

Thanks again,

Louis

Hmmm, I wonder if I got it wrong above, relying on my memory instead of rooting around in my garage to find the original jack & 'busted' ratchet handle.

I could have mis-remembered because I know I have a couple of the symmetrical scissor jacks, bot it's possible that my original was one of the asymmetric one described above by Mark.

Don't take what I said above as gospel until I've had a moment free to hunt through the stuff in odd corners of my garage.

I've just been down to my garage, but of course I cannot easily get to everywhere in there because my Elan is in there out of action.

No luck I'm afraid.

I found TWO symmetrical and TWO unsymmetrical scissor jacks, but none of the four are my original Lotus one as none has a square-ended shaft. Nor did I find my ratchet handle; though I definitely know I used to have one of those so it should be in the garage somewhere as I am unlikely to have thrown it away.


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I did find a white type 746 classic phone though, which I had forgotten I owned, I can clean it up and sell on eBay.

Dear Bill,

Well thanks for looking and I'm glad you found the phone

I have some good news too, I found the wheel brace wedged under the spare wheel.

Thanks again,

Louis

Ah, so..

Is it exactly like Mark's picture above, i.e an unsymmetrical one?

Hi Bill,

My jack is the red one shown in an earlier post. Sadly I don't have the ratchet handle, just the modified bar shown in the picture, but thanks to Mark at least I now know what it looks like.

I've attached a picture of some of the tools in the tool kit, any idea what the tool on the left is?

Cheerio,

Louis

Mazzini wrote:I've attached a picture of some of the tools in the tool kit, any idea what the tool on the left is?

Some cars had a filler/drain plug on the engine/gearbox/diff that required that type of wrench with a square drive to remove the plug. I recognize it but cannot remember which cars it was for....BTW is was not Lotus.

An excellent elan jack can be had from another Brit car... the Triumph 2500TC,
have used one for 26 years... it is a great jack, and fits neatly in the floor
of the boot, or is that the trunk...which ever side of the pond you are on.
Col

Thanks Brian and Col - much appreciated.

I'm reasonably sure that this topic has been done to death before; try looking in the archives, I know that the search facility is not the best but I'd bet everything you have asked is in there somewhere.