Courtesy Light Switch and Door

[William2]

I have just fitted a pair of new courtesy light switches to the inner door bodywork on my S4 Elan. When the doors are fully shut the inner door grp does not appear to be pushing the switch in at all. As far as I can tell the door skin is at least 1/4" away from the head of the switch button. I am sure the switches are correct and the doors are all fully aligned with the bodywork. I have measured the length of the switch sprung loaded tube when fully extended and it is about 1". I could put a very thick spacer between the switch flange and the body but I am surprised this is necessary.Has anyone else had a similar problem?

[peterexpart]

I have just fitted a pair of new courtesy light switches to the inner door bodywork on my S4 Elan. When the doors are fully shut the inner door grp does not appear to be pushing the switch in at all. As far as I can tell the door skin is at least 1/4" away from the head of the switch button. I am sure the switches are correct and the doors are all fully aligned with the bodywork. I have measured the length of the switch sprung loaded tube when fully extended and it is about 1". I could put a very thick spacer between the switch flange and the body but I am surprised this is necessary.Has anyone else had a similar problem?

William
When originally fitted by Lotus they had Packing Washers fitted between the Flange of the Switch and the Body on mine there were 10 one side and 8 the other, when I put my new Switches in I extended the Plunger with a Plastic Sleeve instead of using the Washers, it was a much neater solution

[normand]

Same here.huge number of packing wasers fitted.looking to replace switches with more modern and hopefully more reliable ones.

[elanner]

Yup, several packing washers on mine too.

I assumed that the fibre washers are rather rare (although I never checked with one of the suppliers) and didn't want to use all my small stock of them. So on the wider side I made a mount out of some thick plastic that I happened to have. As with peterexpart's modification, the single piece mount also proved to be neater, and the switch doesn't look as though it's about to topple over.

There are different depths of these switches. I purchased some from Sue Miller a while ago that were shallower (hmm, I forget, perhaps it was deeper) than the originals. Anyway, this made life difficult when I was refurbing the headlamp microswitch wiring, so I cleaned up and reused the originals.

Nick