New owner of 1969 SE

[Spunagain]

Hi there
Popping in to say ‘Hello’ as a serial Lotus owner and new owner of a ‘Barnfind Elan’!
The Elan is my 3rd Lotus having owned an Elise for 14 years and an Evora for 5 and loved them both. The Elan has been an itch I have had for many years and finally the planets aligned, and one came along which suited me and I had some money in the bank.

I am an electrical engineer by training but have fallen into project management as a job, and am itching to get my fingers dirty again. Historically (about 25 years ago) my wife and I rebuilt a barn find reliant Scimitar SE5A which served us for 5 years and 40k miles before I (my wife) realised I had too many cars! Also my wife ran (and serviced herself) a rubber bumper Midget for 26 years which she sold over a decade ago because children, so older cars are in the blood. I have also owned a couple of TVRs, a 1987 S1 in the 90s and a 1993 Chimaera in the 90s and now, which I actually bought twice and will now have to go to provide garage room for the Elan. I am running a thread on Pistonheads readers cars on it [/url]https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=47&t=1817554&i=0[/url]

The Elan is in a sorry state having been off the road since 1985. It’s a 1969 S4 SE currently in a couple of shades of red and I am still thinking about colours for the repaint. My wife and eldest Daughter are pushing for yellow over silver bumpers.

So, what are my plans for the car? Well, that’s a little bit complicated! Once it is collected from storage I will be getting a Lotus specialist do help with the mechanics and a fibreglass friendly body-shop to help with the body work which is in a pretty poor state. I will deal with the interior, and Electrics and the modification. The engine is out of the car in lots of very small pieces and the I have yet to go through the boxes in detail to see how much is missing but that is not a major worry.

I am afraid that I have been interested in the idea of electric cars since the mid 2000s when I saw on-line the work done by AC Propulsion – the company Tesla took on to develop their drive train. In fact I was saving to buy one of their drive trains to build my own car when Tesla took over and took them off the market. I also applied to be an early adopter for the Mini E (which also used an ACP drive train) but I don’t think I was doing enough mileage at the time so was turned down. I would have loved a Roadster but the cost was too high and second hand they are still very expensive with less than 100 on UK roads today. So I plan to fit an electric drive train – there I said it!
My plans are very similar to what LotusElon has done to his Elan, with a few differences. My plan is to map the motor to behave a lot like the Twink and keep the gearbox and clutch so I can drive it much like a normal petrol version. I will not be cutting any of the body or chassis so that car can be reverted to petrol at any point and I will keep the Twink in storage.

I am sure I will have lots of questions and hope to meet some of you sometime soon!

[LotusElon]

Welcome - Great ICE history - and now welcome to the EV age, its the future (resistance is futile - its Ohms law )

[gherlt]

Hi there
My plans are very similar to what LotusElon has done to his Elan, with a few differences. My plan is to map the motor to behave a lot like the Twink and keep the gearbox and clutch so I can drive it much like a normal petrol version. I will not be cutting any of the body or chassis so that car can be reverted to petrol at any point and I will keep the Twink in storage.

The Elon has original gearbox and clutch, I think I remember that all mods were reversible, so I do not think Mark did cut anything away ....

[The Veg]

Welcome!