Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Any updates with the Seven Senc?

Not really, Joe. Since the beautiful weather between Christmas and New Years it has been cold or wet when I've not been working. I've ordered some rear wheel bearings and oil seals for the rear axle (still the Standard 10 axle), as I have at least one seal leaking differential oil and think I was hearing some bearing noise that suggests the oil has washed its grease out. Hopefully that won't be too difficult a task - I do have the right hub puller.

How is yours?

Regarding the rear wheel bearings, I replaced the original "need to be greased" wheel bearings with sealed bearings and plugged the grease fitting holes. As someone suggested, I also installed new seals as add insurance against leaks. No leaks in 30 years!

Even with the right tool, removing the hubs proved to be a job. Though ultimately I was successful with a combination of heat, kroil, and the tool, I seem to have slightly ballooned the end of the halfshaft with the pressure and can't spin a nut back on it. Hoping my local machine shop can assist in recovering the thread at the tip, as I don't know that Seven/Standard 10 halfshafts are readily available.

My machine shop was able to fix the thread quickly, so got everything back together with new seals and new bearings. Thanks to Joe Aspen for reaching out with a lead on sealed bearings. I went ahead and used the new unsealed bearings I had on hand, but for any who are looking the sealed bearings are SKF RLS82RS1.

Nice.

A common upgrade is to get TR7 4 speed axles and have them shortened and resplined.

They are far stronger than the original TR10 axles.

-Kyle

Finally got around to getting some work done on my trailer, getting some e-track on the walls and various minor upgrades. Also took the opportunity to load up the Seven as I hadn't had it in it, yet, to determine the best way to load and tie it down. Backing in put the engine/bellhousing line just between the two trailer axles, so with tools in the nose I think this is likely to be well balanced - but always welcome critique and improvement suggestions.

Finally got tools and cars relocated in a new storage and "toy shop" space a friend and I have taken, so can get back to tuning and tweaking on the Seven (and back to valve and shim dx on the Elan) - but one step forward and another back...

Tok the Seven for a bit of a drive yesterday to reset my thoughts on how it is running, and though the engine is running pretty well I had a clutch slip when shifting to 4th at high revs from 3rd. Was able to replicate and identify the slip is only at higher revs, >4k or so. As it is a new (old stock) clutch disk and pressure plate, I'm thinking I either have some oil/grease contaminating it or that the release bearing is bad. You may recall that, upon getting it back on the road, I had some bearing noise upon full clutch depression that stopped after a hundred miles or so. As it was a NOS bearing, I had hopes that old, dried bearing grease had just needed to warm and soften, but I'm questioning that now. Either way, I suspect I'll need to oull the engine again to fully diagnose, though I may try to look around with a boroscope to see if anything obvious sticks out. I'd welcome any other thoughts.