What is your dream modified Elan ?

[Elanintheforest]

The car is used mainly to commute in and out of Gloucester, a 10 mile trip with a few of those being stop start in the city...which could explain things! The guys who fixed it reckoned that 50% of cars they get in for a new clutch that have this dual mass flywheel also have to have a new flywheel....that's progress! The concentric slave also seems to be a retrograde step, for the consumer at least. They last 5 or 6 years and the gearbox has to be removed to replace them. Again, any clutch work always has a new slave cylinder popped in, but the additional ?150 or so makes it all add up.

Makes the normal flywheel setup look very sensible!

Whilst I was picking up the car a 4 month old Skoda came in with a horrible cluking noise....dual mass flywheel had just parted company....and that's a VW part!!

Mark

[garyeanderson]

Not true! The BDA was a direct development of the Lotus twincam, and both engines were designed by the same guys. They refined this into the BDG and then on to the BDR and BDT in the 1980s. The last one was fitted into the RS200 which in race trim developed over 450bhp, and in road-slow mode, 300bhp.

A great selection of engines, all derived from the Lotus Twincam concept! And of course, winding the clock right back to 1966, they developed the FVA which was also based on the Ford bottom end and which went on, in concept at least, to become the DFV, one of the most successful F1 engines ever built.

All (except the DFV!) will go into an Elan continuing and even enhancing the exotic nature of the car, providing a period enhancement with direct lineage to the twincam whilst retaining the Cosworth and racing pedigree of the Lotus marque.

Lots of options!
Mark

Hi Mark

I didn't realize that Mike Hall was an ex Lotus Employee.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22mike+ ... 0&aql=&oq=

[Elanintheforest]

No, I didn't know that either. But I guess as both both Cos and Worth were, and Mike Costin had a lot to do with bringing the old twincam into production in his role of technical director of Lotus, they brought their chums into Cosworth as it built up.

Cosworth existed and was run in parallel for several years whilst both Cos and Worth were employed by Lotus!

Mark

[garyeanderson]

There is a brief resume of Mike Hall in "Cosworth the Search for Power" on page 92 and 93. No mention of Lotus. I believe that the BD is mostly Mike Hall's engine. I am sure that the others Mike Costin, Ben Rood, (Keith may have been a bit busy at that time) at Cosworth were consulted with but Mike is given the credit for the design. I just glanced at the book this morning, I haven't read it in 8 years so my memory may have holes by now. Please take a look.

Gary

[Elanintheforest]

Ah, sorry Gary, I was taking your previous post literally.

The BD engines certainly had nothing to do with Lotus. In fact they were probably the final nail in the coffin for the relationship between Lotus and Ford! But I can't think of a more direct descendant of the twincam than the BD engines, with the connections being Cosworth (and, OK, its employees!) and of course the design concept.....new head on a Kent short motor.

The lack of reliability of the twincam engine in rallies and marathons had, it seems, really peed off Ford. This went right back to 1965 but, of course, they had no other options at the time. Ford being Ford, it took a long time to come up with an answer, and then it was via a small engine design company, but they had already proven their worth with the FVA and DFV engines (both funded by Ford, but conceptually designed / initiated by Lotus).

I can't see the 907 engine having any relationship to the twincam, other than it was a Lotus product. I can see the Zetec as a distant relative though!

Mark

[garyeanderson]

Hi Mark

Your post was vague and had many holes.

"Not true! The BDA was a direct development of the Lotus twincam, and both engines were designed by the same guys."

It needed clarification, the last time things got clarified we didn't acknowledge each other for months. Words are misunderstood when put in print. It happens a lot. I was sarcastic with my reply and I am sorry.

Gary

[Spyder fan]

As we are already way off topic (not that I mind in the slightest) I thought I would post this up to get us somewhere back on track although it's not Elan related.

I saw this in todays Metro (Free London daily newspaper), it's not a dream Elan but is obviously someones dream car, I really like it and it seems that it will probably sell for well over ?40k. This is the sort of thing I was expecting people to talk about here, after all it's supposed to be a dream car and dreams can be silly as well as impractical or just downright odd, make your own minds up. Mark will probably know this car or know of it with his long association with the Jaguar marque.



Regards

[Elanintheforest]

That's the flattering angle....but from the back it looks like a squashed Moggie Traveller!

William Lyons used to judge how effective the designs of his cars were with the light line...looking down the side of the car and seeing how the light and shadows flow along the car. That works for his pre-war Coupes, the XKs, Mk 1 and 2, the E type, and even the Mk 10. Now cast your eye along this thing, and behold the beauty in the flowing lines and oh God...it's got a garden shed attached to it! The Isetta bubble car indicators do set it off though.

The saving grace is the wood content, which would catch pretty quickly should a gallon of petrol be inadvertently spilled on the car and lit.

Mark

[garyeanderson]

After seeing the elanbulance (SP) on the internet 10 or so years ago I thought about doing a pickup version like the Ranchero and El Camino. The bed would have been pretty narrow so I thought about the plus 2 chassis and that would mean quartering an elan body and stretching it to fit. Talk about hokey wolf. Luckily it involved real work that would go nowhere and add no value to the near zero value of the doner that I had then. I wouldn't call it a dream but more of musings about silly shit for a lack of any thing constructive to do when I used to babysit computers on the weekends. Talk about Maytag man, except I had the T3 line which was more or less all mine on Sundays so I had some band width to play with. To bad there wasn't much good stuff available at the time.

Gary

[Elanintheforest]

Wouldn't be much of a bed on an Elan, Gary! The Elite wouldn't do much better....here's a stripped down Elite 'chassis'.....never before seen by mankind! Ready for it's tray to go on the back, or maybe even a Morris 1000 Traveller back end? Nice!

Mark