Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

going for a rip

Restored to some extent a front grille: the before photo shows it quite sad, the mesh only attached to the sides

but since it had an original rectangular mesh pattern I thought it was worth the effort. These tend to be neglected it seems, and the repros I've seen are thicker wire, looking like pigeon mesh to me. I have one on my street S4 which lacked a grille when I got it, but I'm still working on the white S4 restoration so I figured now was a good time to make an effort and try to sort that properly. So I reattached the wires one by one, then two light coats of gloss black:


I had gathered other grilles along the way (the top one looking more legit than the small squares), the one just repainted at the bottom for comparison

I'm planning to use one on the S4se, and the other on the next project (S2 GTS), when I've figured out which would best fit which car... like always on the forum, grille mesh originality is a topic that has been discussed before
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=18265&start=
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=19500&start=

Marvellous Christian. Thanks for posting.

Indeed, thanks for posting.

Thanks for posting this Christian.
We met at the Montlhery event which is a beautiful banked circuit. It was a great day of high speed track time, very high temperatures and socialising. I recommend any European based Elan owners to come and join in, I have been at very one of the 4 meetings and they have all been great events

Martin

I found the source of my non-moving Elan.
Crumbs! I shall post a picture of my home made sliding hammer later. I used an old intermediate drive shaft.

Celebrated, because:
a) My home made 4mm re-useable nitrile cam cover gasket is completely oil tight and I shall never need to buy another cork gasket again, and
b) Solved my hot starting difficulty by fitting a different coil.

Very happy!

A week or so ago, I restarted the engine on my S3 Coupe, which I hadn't yet used this year and had possible left it standing in my garage a slightly unacceptable length of time. At first it showed no oil pressure which worried me a lot but a blip up to higher revs freed it up to normal pressure. I then topped up the oil & put coolant back from the overflow bottle back into the system. Yeah, I KNOW I should have done that first...

That oil gauge behavior was still a bit worrying so last weekend I took the cam cover off and then each cam cap in turn to check for oil. I put in a squirt of extra oil on each before putting each cap back on. Taking the top off ruined the cork gasket and I had no spare so I have used a layer of blue Hylomar on naked alloy. It doesn't leak, but I expect it will be a problem getting it unstuck next time.

On Friday, I took her out for a spin/test-drive and when I'd done about 8 miles while waiting at traffic lights in Potter's Bar the Idle Speed dropped down & she stalled. It was difficult to get the engine going again (why do stupid people behind you blow their hooters when it is clear that you are doing all you can to get going again). I eventually managed to get around the corner to a quiet spot and had to crank up the idle speed to about 1600 RPM to stop her stalling. So I went home like that having to use lots of low gears and clutch because 1600 RPM drive speed was too fast for the traffic jams.

Anyway Thursday was a busy day cleaning all the Dellorto jets and passageways and I found on taking the tops off that there was no fuel in the rear carburettor's bowl, so it seems that the float valve must have stuck shut causing my problem. A quick jiggle and a squirt of carb cleaner seems to have fixed that. On the idle-jets and Idle Bypass screws I counted the turns down until it stopped and wrote them down so after cleaning & blowing through, I screwed each right down then back up by its noted number of turns. This process seems to have set the mixtures etc back as they were last year though I might dig out my see-through spark-plug and balancing meter sometime soon to double check that.

Anyway, I'm now glad to report that all seems OK and she idles well at 800-900 RPM and I did a quick visit to Ye Olde Lotus Factory in Cheshunt as a test run on Friday.

Absolutely nothing over the weekend due to commitments I didn't even know I had...

It does exactly what it says on the tin!

Made myself a diff mount strengthening bar!

Did you take any pictures Malcolm of your home made gasket just before ploping the cam cover down? Would like to see how you tackled the corners.

Julian, Make me one up please, thats got to be worth at least a fiver I can collect on my way to Ely. This afternoon

Leslie

Hi Leslie, you haven't popped in lately.. Body is painted, building up the chassis/running gear..Took me over 2 hours to make that brace so ?5 won't cut it thanks!

Body is painted Julian, I gotta see that! Be in touch soon.

Best,

Leslie