Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

I acquired RNG 379F about four years ago in need of complete restoration. In my ignorance all was going well until I tried to order some new rear discs and realised that my car's rear brakes are far from standard - they turned out to be Rover 2000 rear discs and calipers - but with the discs mounted outside the non standard rear uprights???
All the work looks really good - much too good to be the work of an amateur. The car was off the road for more than thirty years before I acquired it, so the work must have been done many years ago. Can anyone tell me anything about the car? I will post some photos shortly.

Chris,

I do not think anyone is going to be much help until you post up some photos....it does sound very interesting though!

Jon

Chris Sanders wrote: Rover 2000 rear discs and calipers - but with the discs mounted outside the non standard rear uprights???

Think youself lucky that there aren't in the Rover position. A real pain to maintain

An unusual front suspension too, I recall.....

Salut Chris

Never seen anything like that before !

The A-frame looks different, too - or it might be the angle. So more pics would be interesting.

@+

Vernon

You are correct - the 'A' frames are different too.

I wasn't aware that the front suspension was also unusual - has the car been discussed on the forum before?

Chris Sanders wrote:I wasn't aware that the front suspension was also unusual - has the car been discussed on the forum before?

I think Roy meant that the Rover's front suspension was unusual. We had one, decades ago, and my father had many problems with the rear brakes, but I don't recall any details of the front suspension.

I see !

Chris,
The alloy rear bearing housing looks different as it has some lugs for the disc shield to bolt to and I assume the rear caliper.
Is that a new chassis? If you have an F reg four speed body you will need to remove the five speed mounting nuts from the chassis. The body will not sit down fully otherwise.
The project looks to be coming on well though.
Cheers
John

It's the original chassis, although I had it repaired and galvanised by Spyder.
The rear hubs appear quite different from standard, what puzzles me is that otherwise the car seems fairly standard - why would anyone go to so much trouble to modify the rear brakes? Were the standard ones so bad?

Before the internet it was often difficult to find original parts. The rear brakes being Lotus specific were more likely changed because the originals were hard to get or costly. Discs on the rear wasn't common so Rover brakes would be an good option if you were clever enough to make them work.

That's a possibility I suppose, but the car has been off the road for at least 32 years, so this work was done before 1983 when the car was not that old and Lotus would probably have still been able to supply parts.
To change the uprights, 'A' frames, discs and callipers for this reason seems unlikely to me.