Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Do any of these belong to members here?

The white Plus2 with the bonnet up is mine...

John.P.Clegg

P.S. have just found out how to resize so some of mine will be posted shortly

The blue +2 OPW 110F is a spyder conversion i had a good chat with the owner lives in Tunbridge wells car was built by Spyder (Ouch) but the full leather interior inc. door panels & centre console was superb & good value i thought at ?1200. John good to meet you yesterday & the Megasquirt installation is very interesting you have me fired up now
Ian

elansprint wrote:The blue +2 OPW 110F is a spyder conversion i had a good chat with the owner lives in Tunbridge wells car was built by Spyder
Ian

Oh dear, I've read comments about the Spyder Zetec ride height but that picture really brings it home.
Looks like it was built for "off road use"
IMHO horrible.

Brilliant pictures by the way. Thanks

Cheers
John

Looks like your English summers day was as warm as our Canadian summers day at Ancaster --the Morris dancers just stayed drunk and hid in the huts --[global warming indeed ]---ed

D.J.Pelly wrote:Oh dear, I've read comments about the Spyder Zetec ride height but that picture really brings it home.
Looks like it was built for "off road use"
IMHO horrible.

The low profile tyres do not help...

Matthew

"John good to meet you yesterday & the Megasquirt installation is very interesting you have me fired up now
Ian"

Ian
First decent run since starting the tuning....always got 27mpg out of it no matter wether I thrashed it or was cruising,on Saturday it returned 36mpg and after using the Saturday run to re-tune Sunday gave 38mpg....with no decrease in performance...I must have been blowing fuel out of my exhaust...Am I being optimistic looking for 45mpg??

John

D.J.Pelly wrote:Oh dear, I've read comments about the Spyder Zetec ride height but that picture really brings it home.
Looks like it was built for "off road use"
IMHO horrible.

Doesn't have to ride that high

IMHO Beautiful
I was at Donny on Sunday for a short while.

Niall

John,

I have gotten 45+ US MPG in my Stromberg Elan, so your hopes for 45 IMP MPG are certainly feasible.

The possible fuel economy of the +2 suffers from its weight dis-advantage compared to the Elan.

It will take awhile programming the FI with a wide band a/f meter striving for the highest a/f ratio and appropriate ignition maps to get the best fuel economy. But you should be able to get there. The Twink has driveability issues with very lean mixtures, which may be only partially alleviated with programmitic enrichment on throttle opening. There are also other possible approaches, but they require much custom programming of the software and is probably not feasible outside of a dedicated development facility.

Incidentally, a 45 MPG figure is roughly equivalent to 20% thermal efficiency on an Elan, a little greater if achieved on a +2.

Good luck.

David
1968 36/7988

The immaculate silver car is from Dumfries in Scotland and is owned by Bill Tweedie.

My Twink +2 gives 38 - 45+ mpg with regular driving and the odd moment of madness I reasonably regularly take it on 200+ km drives at motorway speeds (120 km/h approx 75mph)

Worse consumption of course if I loose control of my right foot

Having said the above the HIGHEST fuel consumption I have is when the car is parked in the drive.....fuel evaporation...

Peter

niallf wrote:

D.J.Pelly wrote:Oh dear, I've read comments about the Spyder Zetec ride height but that picture really brings it home.
Looks like it was built for "off road use"
IMHO horrible.

Doesn't have to ride that high

IMHO Beautiful
I was at Donny on Sunday for a short while.

Niall

Yup, now that's more (I) like it
John

John i think you could well get there i agree the zetec +2 is way too high but spyder insist this is the correct height when i queried this on the demo car but this is not the case when copared to a std car & Matt you are correct about low profile tyres but they are on a 14 inch wheel & Niall seems to have his spot on
Ian

When I queried Andy about the height of mine, he said this was the correct ride height for a Zetec Elan, which are all a bit higher than the standard Elan...however, I am now intrigued how the green one seems to be low as per the standard ones. I would like mine to be lower like the originals.

Richard

Yes, Niall has got it right. Andy (Spyder) says that many of teh low +2s are too low because their suspension has sagged and they are riding on the bump stops. He lets the Zetecs ride high so they have the full range of suspensio travel. He may have a point but I don't like the look.

Certainly the new cars didn't ride so high (see contemporary press and publicity articles) so There should be a good compromise.

Tyres shouldn't be an issue, the low profile 14 tyres are almost identical in RR to the original 165*13s.

Bodies fitted to the Spyder chassis seem to ride high because the front valance mounting (in front of the rack) raises the body on the chassis and Spyder pack the other mounts and raise the body but this isn't enough to account for the off road look, see Gerry's post for further discussions.

Are the Spyder spring rates another factor?

Mike