New member....but not new to Elans!
Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2013 10:31 pm
Hello one and all!
After lurking on this site for a good while I've decided to surface!
Bought my first Elan, a sprint dhc reg SJE 420J, in the late 70's and since then I've owned an S4 fhc reg KEJ 48H which I bought from Simon Hadfield, the reasonably well known (in the UK anyway) historic racing driver, in the early 80's. This was quickly followed by another Sprint dhc, reg SWX 159L; this particular car was bought by Classic and Sportscar magazine after I restored it and was offered as a competition prize in 1982. The crazy thing was that a friend of mine won the car which he still has to this day! In the 1990's I restored an S3 coupe reg RWB 650E but from then until this year I was without an Elan until , in a moment of insanity, I bought (unseen) an S3SE dhc resto project from Dave Hughes - "bigvalvehead"- on this forum!
So, I'm at present spending ????s sourcing missing/unuseable parts from everywhere and am amazed at the cost of some of the bits which were so cheap even 20 years ago; still in relation to the cost of some of the parts for my Porsche 356A I suupose it's bearable...just!
In addition to the car history, I started the N. Staffs/S. Cheshire regional meets of the Lotus Drivers Club, this must have been around 1981 but I don't think that the area is still going...shame. Suffice to say, I've got to meet and know a lot of Lotus friends and contacts over the years, which has been really useful in trying to pice my Elan jigsaw together, glad to know that most of them are still alive!
Although my post is obviously UK centric I enjoy reading some of the articles from Stateside and it's interesting to see a UK/US forum that seems to work so well, hopefully I can contribute my 2 pence worth (about 3 cents!) when the occasion demands!
Anyway, that's the intro...........now who's got a weber metal airbox backplate for sale for ?20??.....ha, ha.
Cheers
Ross
After lurking on this site for a good while I've decided to surface!
Bought my first Elan, a sprint dhc reg SJE 420J, in the late 70's and since then I've owned an S4 fhc reg KEJ 48H which I bought from Simon Hadfield, the reasonably well known (in the UK anyway) historic racing driver, in the early 80's. This was quickly followed by another Sprint dhc, reg SWX 159L; this particular car was bought by Classic and Sportscar magazine after I restored it and was offered as a competition prize in 1982. The crazy thing was that a friend of mine won the car which he still has to this day! In the 1990's I restored an S3 coupe reg RWB 650E but from then until this year I was without an Elan until , in a moment of insanity, I bought (unseen) an S3SE dhc resto project from Dave Hughes - "bigvalvehead"- on this forum!
So, I'm at present spending ????s sourcing missing/unuseable parts from everywhere and am amazed at the cost of some of the bits which were so cheap even 20 years ago; still in relation to the cost of some of the parts for my Porsche 356A I suupose it's bearable...just!
In addition to the car history, I started the N. Staffs/S. Cheshire regional meets of the Lotus Drivers Club, this must have been around 1981 but I don't think that the area is still going...shame. Suffice to say, I've got to meet and know a lot of Lotus friends and contacts over the years, which has been really useful in trying to pice my Elan jigsaw together, glad to know that most of them are still alive!
Although my post is obviously UK centric I enjoy reading some of the articles from Stateside and it's interesting to see a UK/US forum that seems to work so well, hopefully I can contribute my 2 pence worth (about 3 cents!) when the occasion demands!
Anyway, that's the intro...........now who's got a weber metal airbox backplate for sale for ?20??.....ha, ha.
Cheers
Ross