Bodges you've found or done on Your Elan

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

By this I mean "Bodges" which means unorthodox repairs/alterations in order to achieve a fix & not really the result of poor work like bad paintwork.
There must be a host of them out their in our LotusElan.net World.
I'll add the ones I found when rebuilding my Elan when I've revived from this mornings posting marathon.

Have fun
Cheers
John

[garyeanderson]

Belongs in the Mods Section!

[terryp]

On my previous +2 the PO had fixed the washer bottle (non standard one!)on with mastic and a sanding block!
It had to be seen!

Terry

[petersracing]

When my dad bought his plus 2 it had a crunched front corner that was clearly caused by the rear brake failure they had fixed by folding over the bundy tubing to the rear callipers and hammering it flat. It had been running for some time on front brakes only. Even that was a miracle as the twin cam was broken and they had inserted a cross flow and the downdraft carb wouldn't let the bonnet shut. They had fixed that by filling off the top of the carb until the bonnet would shut. It was an almost hermetic seal against the sound deadening so it would have run pretty poorly indeed. The amazing thing was it was only 9 years old by this time.

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

When my dad bought his plus 2 it had a crunched front corner that was clearly caused by the rear brake failure they had fixed by folding over the bundy tubing to the rear callipers and hammering it flat. It had been running for some time on front brakes only. Even that was a miracle as the twin cam was broken and they had inserted a cross flow and the downdraft carb wouldn't let the bonnet shut. They had fixed that by filling off the top of the carb until the bonnet would shut. It was an almost hermetic seal against the sound deadening so it would have run pretty poorly indeed. The amazing thing was it was only 9 years old by this time.

Well that's going to take a bit of beating, you've set a benchmark there
John

[Roy Gillett]

A few years ago, I bought a spare engine from a highly reputable source very cheaply and on the condition that I was to rebuild it. As that is exactly what I wanted to do I jumped at the chance. The back story was that this engine had been acquired rebuilt by a client and had it fitted to his Elan by the guy who finally sold it to me. Six weeks later the Elan owner was back and asked that his original twincam was refitted to his car as the "newly rebuilt" engine sounded like a bag of nails. The guy who sold it to me tried it out, saw what the owner meant and duly replaced the original. For years the 'suspect ' engine sat in the corner of his workshop.

When I came to strip it down I was not surprized it sounded so rough. It was just a catalogue of bodges.

The pistons were not a set of 4 but two pairs, clearly different in crown design and 20-odd grammes different in weight, one pair to the other. The jackshaft (ford camshaft) had snapped in the middle bearing and the front bearing was shot. When I took the block in to be assessed for bore wear, our local respected expert said it was fine; +30thou with no step at the top of bore; recently rebored he thought. Problem was the pistons were clearly marked +20 (all of them) though the rings measured as +30's . Lots of other small details were bodges as well (timing chain had split link , tappet clearances al over the place etc) and the story is that this was rebuilt by a 'known name' 20 years ago. Its a good job it only did a few weeks' work before it was taken out of service and given up on by its previous owner. And very moral of the guy who sold it to me only on the understanding I completely rebuilt it.

Since my rebuild it has done 6000 miles and is as sweet as a nut. Lots of new parts though!

Roy

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

As mentioned in an earlier post, I found a spanner acting as a spacer between the original Lotus frame & a lower body fixing point.

Prior to that discovery I found that the radio antenna/aerial extension cable was connected via a household, in-wall aerial socket just lying in the car's boot.

When the body was off I started stripping the oily bits & suspension from the frame.
The frame looked good until a spanner slipped & went through the front upright.
Yes it was rusted through, but!
Someone had wrapped the uprights with aluminium cooking/baking foil & then given them a liberal coating of red-lead paint.
It's no wonder that the car appeared to be free of any kind of rust when I bought it.

Buyers beware, use a screwdriver, not just your eyes

Cheers
John

[pharriso]

Someone had wrapped the uprights with aluminium cooking/baking foil & then given them a liberal coating of red-lead paint.

That is simply incredible !

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

Someone had wrapped the uprights with aluminium cooking/baking foil & then given them a liberal coating of red-lead paint.

That is simply incredible !

Yes, quite shocking really!
I've also witnessed an MGB that was in a paint shop for a respray & the owner of the shop discovered that the sills had completely rusted away but someone had used chicken wire packed out with quite a few pounds of pebbles to give it some support so that the plastic filler used for the "fix" could be applied.

"Only in England"

John

[bcmc33]

By this I mean "Bodges" which means unorthodox repairs/alterations in order to achieve a fix & not really the result of poor work.

John,

I don't necessarily agree with your interpretation of the word 'bodge', but I guess my story proves your point.

My story:- After 3 years of ownership, I thought it best to refurb the bottom end before fitting a QED420 head I'd bought via eBay. I know it's been reported here before, but it fits this thread, so here's the picture with the story to follow:

When the blocked was stripped I found that one cylinder was lined - very bad practice, I thought, so took it to a machinist and instructed him to line all the cylinders. Within the hour I had a phone call to say that I'd better return to see what was found.
Now I've no idea who did this bodge, but it was well done as there was no detrimental performance evident when the engine was running. On a rolling road the engine had delivered 99bhp at the rear wheels.
The upside to this is that the guy who sold me the car (well known suspect), gave me a replacement block that when honed was a perfect fit for the 83.25 forged pistons I had already bought for the original block.

[mikealdren]

My +2S had some fibreglass repairs on the driver's door pillar, the repair simply glassed over the existing pillar, no attempt to take off the paint or repair the underlying damage.

Mike

[desprit dan]

Many years ago I had an Austin A60 pickup, rather annoyingly the oil light used to come on when going around corners enthusiastically; to remedy the situation I changed the amber lamp for a green one.....I prefer green.

About the same time I had to disuade the workshop manager from trying to repair a 711m block, that had cracked between the core plugs..... we had managed to build the whole engine up with out noticing the crack, (replacing the core plugs was one of the last tasks) I took the others off for spraying, and returned to find the engine on it's side, and he with a propane torch in one hand a a stick of solder in the other......

[ardee_selby]

Answers on a postcard please!....

[elansprint71]

[dougweall]

When I purchased my Elan a number of years ago now. It came with lots of bills for alsorts of parts.
Notably hundreds of pounds spent at QED for engine bits. I was told that the engine had been rebuilt although had not run due to the rest of the car being totally in bits.
Years later after putting it all together, trusting the engine to be ok, I set about trying to get it to run. Sort of, in a fashion it did.
Decided I needed to have an expert put it on a rolling road to tune said engine.
His opinion was that there is something not quite right in there, which confirmed my thought's.
Removed the cylinder head to have a look. Took the head to an engine builder the first thing he did was to shine a light down the inlet ports and look at the valve heads, number 3 inlet was being held open. So a strip down was in order. We found that the inlet valve stems above the collets had been ground away to try and give some clearance. The shims were the thinnest of thin. Valves, shims, tappet buckets, valve seats were all junk.
Next question was if the head was like that, what was the rest of the engine like.
Good grief, again told it had new piston rings fitted, but bores were standard. After 30 odd years but only reading 17000 miles in total, it had hardly been on the road for most of it's life ( I found out later after a lot of digging around ).
The pistons were standard, in bores nearly 25 thou oval. Total rebuild required.

Hey but the crank was in excellent condition

Moral of the story ( in my case ) was bills for parts count for sweet F A.

Doug.