Elan magazine article

[stuartgb100]

The March edition of "Classic Cars For Sale" carries a decent feature.

Regards,
Stuart.

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

Picked it up myself on the weekend.
Nothing new in there for us but good P.R. for our favourite car.
One thing they mentioned was the early change from 1500cc to 1600cc approx
There are several explanations for this.
They say in order to get the Elan into the then popular 1600 catagory for competition.
Others say that Lotus recalled all 1500's in order to retrieve the 1500 engines that were then eligible for competition in Lotus 23's.
That also sounds a bit improbable due to the cost of the exercise & the amount of modification necessary to transform a standard 1500 twin cam into a full race engine.
All a bit folk lore'y I think
Who does know what really happened back then
John
PS Any Forum members cars used for the photo shoot?

[trw99]

John

Only eleven 1498cc (1500) production engines were ever made, according to Miles Wilkins. 6 were fitted in 23s and 5 in Elans. These were apparently only intended for development work. Jim Clark had one of them.

It was Ford who felt that the 116E block could be stretched to 1600cc for a new racing programme for that sized engine. Chapman felt he might as well have a 1600cc engine for the Elan too. As soon as Ford produced the engine, the 23 became the 23B with the 1600 unit and the 5 Elan 1500s had the 1600 engine fitted.

Tim

[Frank Howard]

Road & Track columnist Peter Egan, who is restoring an Elan compared the weight, power, and fuel ecomomy of older vs. new cars in the April 2007 issue. He said:

"And any mention of weight should give credit to Lotus, which has stood by its featherweight principles. My 1964 Elan weighs 1500 lb. and puts out 105 bhp. The new, much better equipped Elise weighs only 2150 lb. and produces 190 bhp out of an engine that is just 0.2 liters larger and gets about 10 more mpg on the highway."

He also said:

"But weight is something you can feel in a car. It saps away fun the way a block of aluminum soaks up heat. You have to drive an early Lotus Elan to understand what I mean."

[GrUmPyBoDgEr]

Hi Tim,
Here is a part of your message:-

"It was Ford who felt that the 116E block could be stretched to 1600cc for a new racing programme for that sized engine. Chapman felt he might as well have a 1600cc engine for the Elan too. As soon as Ford produced the engine, the 23 became the 23B with the 1600 unit and the 5 Elan 1500s had the 1600 engine fitted".

The production Twin Cam engine was based on the Ford Cortina 116E pre cross flow engine that remained at 1500cc.
The Twin cam went out of production when Ford introduced the cross flow 1600cc engine.
The production Twin cam was 1558cc for all of it's series life, it's special piston & 83,5mm bore giving it it's increased capacity.

A lot of 23's were fitted with tuned versions of the Ford 116E push rod engines, the higher spec'd cars being fitted with Twin cams. The change from the designation 23 to 23B were, I thought, space frame changes?
What is your source, your information is interesting?

Cheers
John

[trw99]

John

Miles Wilkins in his Twin Cam book gives the information regarding 23s and 23Bs. I have to confess that this is not an area I know a great deal about, I just thought that the Wilkins info answered your query.

Tim

[types26/36]

Hi Tim,
The Twin cam went out of production when Ford introduced the cross flow 1600cc engine.John

Hi John,
Thats not quite true, the Xflow engines appeared in approx 1967 in the mk2 Cortina (although I have been told Xflow proto types were fitted in some late mk1 Cortina's)
The 681F block was both a 1500 and a 1600 and Lotus used it in the Elans (and Twin Cam Escorts) in 1558 form, this block was succeeded by the 691 Xflow block (mk1 Capri) which was a 1300 or 1600 and was in turn succeeded by the 711M and later the 831C Xflows.
Twin Cam blocks (1558) were still produced untill late into 1972 although by this time they had become the 701M block.