Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Hello,

i am in the process of registering my car (in austria). Due to the fact that the original damper are no more available i installed spax adjustable dampers and on the rear also adjustable platforms.
For registering the car must be in original condition, if you use new parts/no original parts you need a confirmation that the part works on the car (saftey rules, aso..)
Spax did not have a confirmation for the dampers, the question is does anyone have a confirmation from an other supplier/manufacturer, if yes this would be a great help for me, the label of the damper could be easily changed to make it suitable for the bureaucrats
Same for the springs, supplier also doesn't mather because you can not confirm it (no label on the springs)

Thanks
Mario

I guess there are many levels of detail when talking about "suitability" of a current replacement for things like springs and shocks. and many levels of "is it equal to the original". Most manufacturers of replacement parts just work at the first level when supplying components. Some of the after market people like TTR may worry about the second with varying levels of outcome depending on their engineering capability. Virtually no one thinks about the third.

i.e.
1. Physical fit - do the critical dimensions line up with the original ? - easy to demonstrate for both springs and shocks
2. Dynamic performance - does the damping rate or spring rate match the cars original units ? - easy to demonstrate for springs a lot harder for shocks - I dont know of any reference shock dynanometer curves for the original Armstrong shocks, the current manufacturers can give you curves for theirs if you pester them long enough.
3. Durability in actual use - again hard to demonstrate unless you dig into the engineering details of materials and design but in general most modern shocks build and modern spring steel is far superior to what was used back in the 60's assuming you actually pay for that versus a cheap knock off.

How you convince a European bureaucrat of all of this I don't know and I am glad I live in a more enlightened country ( the land down under) that does not have these sort of regulations. No wonder some people want to vote to leave the EU

cheers
Rohan

rgh0 wrote:How you convince a European bureaucrat of all of this I don't know and I am glad I live in a more enlightened country ( the land down under) that does not have these sort of regulations. No wonder some people want to vote to leave the EU

cheers
Rohan

Maybe i can "update" an existing confirmation from another car and change it to an elan confirmation , realy don't know how i can solve this in a other way