Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

After getting the rechromed bumpers back from Romeros Custom Polishing in San Diego. The green machine is complete again. Romeros did a great job of polishing and rechroming both bumpers and removing a fair large ding from the rear bumper. They also polished the vents and rechromed a spare set of spinners that I have yet to fit.
Having rebuilt the servos and sorted the brakes while the bumpers were off getting beautified I’m looking forward to driving Kermit a bit more.

Beauty
Nice work!

Well done, the car looks great.

Make sure you drive it lots, on top of your own enjoyment other people will get pleasure in seeing it on the road.

I drove my +2 yesterday, as soon as I set off it started pelting with rain and then I got caught in a traffic queue for 20 minutes. It was still a pleasure to drive it and I’m looking forward to the longer drive to Castle Combe Club Lotus track day this weekend, it’s a 300 mile round trip which is a long drive in this little country.

Looks stunning, and a great climate in which to enjoy it.
Congratulations

Sabbot, your car looks great, get out & enjoy her!

Sabbot
Are the dual brake servos the original type reconditioned or an alternate approach? Would love to get details of the master/servo setup. It looks like an incredibly tidy installation.
N

Thanks to all for your compliments. I received a couple of questions via PM about the brake system rebuild so I figured I would just answer here.

I bought the car as rolling repainted shell with engine fitted but not running. The previous owner told me that before he took it off the road the brakes were pretty marginal but they were not servo assisted. I have run twin circuit non-servo systems on “baby” Elans successfully but I thought the extra weight of the +2 would likely benefit from servo assistance and I wanted to keep the twin circuit configuration.

One Girling Mk2b servo came with the car but it needed rebuilding and there was also a larger new Lockheed servo. It would have been a lot less expensive to buy another Lockheed servo but a) there isn’t a lot of space to fit two of these and b) I worried that the brakes would be over-assisted. So I acquired another Girling 2b for rebuild and purchased the following parts:

“Full” Girling 2b Servo rebuild kits from Paul Matty (UK)
Inlet air filters and air valve kits from Harmon Classic Brakes (USA)
Girling Powerstop stickers from Sue Miller (UK) - I know they are frivolous but they came in the same parcel as the carpets and CV driveshaft conversion.
An extra aluminium plug for the hydraulic circuit endstop from Ebay (I had to drill one out to remove it and destroyed it in the process)

I was lucky that the bores of my servos were in good shape and I could do the refurbishment myself otherwise I would have had to get they professionally machined and sleeved.

I also rebuilt the dual master cylinder using rebuild kit parts from R&D enterprises (USA) and JAE Lotus (USA)
I contemplated using a Caterham twin master but the Caterham unit is too long and would have required a slight modification to the bulkhead and pipe runs.

The PDWA is original and I haven’t touched it.

The rotors / discs were in good shape but I replaced the front pads with EBC greenstuff pads and replaced all of the rubber flexi-hoses with aeroquip hoses that I happened to have lying around in the garage,

Then I bled the brakes, then I bled the brakes again and on the third attempt managed to get the air out in both front and rear circuits.

Hope this helps.

thank you very much, most helpful.
N

Sabbot
you don't happen to have the dimensions or drawings or photos of the mounts for the Girling Servos do you?
I can take a guess from the Parts Manual, they don't look to complicated to fab up, but some dimensions might make it a little less trial and error. Two mounts, two sets of base plates and a bunch of nuts and bolts.

Neil,
I think I kept the CAD (cardboard aided design) templates for the two mounts I made. I’ll hunt for them over the weekend and copy them if I can find them. I think they are pretty close to the original but as I didn’t have an original to compare to all I can say is that they seem to work without the servos fouling the hood’ although they only miss by about 1/4 inch.

Great, the bonnet fouling was my concern, thank you for searching, if not successful I will revert to trial and error with the cardboard templates.
N

I've pictures of the cardboard templates that I made to mount the servos. Even if they don't print to an exact size the ruler can be used to scale the images. The inside of the wheel arch had 2 plates, each with 4 captive nuts that these were mounted to. I use 0.092" thick plate to make the mounts and each had a reinforcing triangular gusset welded in (see photos). Hope this helps.

Fantastic, thank you so much.
Nick