What did you do to your Lotus today...

[TBG]

"All these shafts being based on VW CV joints"

Not so - mine are Sierra 4x4.

[Hawksfield]

Hi
Same for mine

[mbell]

Lowered it of my lift for first time in three months and did a few miles of testing around the neighborhood. Few noises but found the issues and fixed them.

In the last 3 months I've been replacing the rear shocks and addressing historical doughnut failure damage which has involved quite a lot of work and parts to complete. This has included:
- New shocks
- New wheel carier
- new adjustable height shock tubes, new springs and lotocones
- new wheel bearings
- new pinion seal on diff, new mounts, clean/paint
- new rear arms
- two chassis repairs and chassis cleaning/painting
- New rear brake discs
- new custom adjustable hand brake rods
- under side body repairs

Mostly done as hour here and there in the night after kids in bed.

Tonight I am enjoying a few well earned beers.

[Quart Meg Miles]

Great result, Mark, now you can have some fun driving it. I miss driving mine but its reliability at the time was wrecking me and it had to go. I hope your kids still fit in the back!

[mbell]

Great result, Mark, now you can have some fun driving it.

Thanks, it been nice just to drive it around locally a few miles to start testing it. I've some more jobs to do on it thou, like fit the matching front suspension, fluid changes, etc etc. Those should be much shorter and less stressful jobs thou. So will be test driving it between them.

Planning a 2,500 mile road trip in it later in the year, so need to get it in order.

I hope your kids still fit in the back!

They do fit but not with the car seats they still require. There also the lack of rear seat belts. I have mixed feeling about sorting that and taking them out it it as they get bigger. It would be fun it use it as family but there is so little crash protection when up with the massive pickup trucks and SUV here I am very hesitant to do it. Especially given the terrible driving standards here and generally the larger the vehicle the worse the driver...

[661]

Adjustable A frames with polybushes, Col's amazing CV's

and lots of string

[mbell]

Today I fitted a 123 dizzy and programmed it with the escort twincam advance curve listed here. Will experiment more but need to re setup the carbs first.

Yesterday I rebuilt the clutch slave cylinder as it's been weeping a little. Unsurprisingly I don't think I've got it fully bleed or adjusted quite right. Will probably go wedge the peddle down and hope it fixes it self!

[TBG]

Went to the rolling road and sorted a few problems. Does anyone have a ratio of power at the wheels versus power at the engine? I expect Rohan does! D

[trw99]

Incorrect country sticker there, David.

We now have to replace GB with UK.

I like being Great!

Tim

[TBG]

Tim, I am great not united..........................D

[mwhitaker]

This is a delayed response to Steve Lyles and others-My CV joints are about 10 years old with 2500 miles on them-placed prior to my ownership from RD enterprises. I tore one of the boots last year while raising the back end for brake work even though I did it slowly and not too high. The boot rubber separated from the metal flange and didn't tear centrally-the others were fine. So now I am extra careful with raising the back end-thought that with these CV axles the drop wasn't supposed to be too much but once again my ignorance has struck!

Cheers, Mark Whitaker
69 Elan S4DHC
45/8396

[TBG]

Does anyone have a ratio of power at the wheels versus power at the engine? I expect Rohan does! D

[webbslinger]

I haven't seen a ratio, but the difference on my car was about 19 hp.

[Andy8421]

I had understood that chassis dynos did a 'coast down test' to estimate tyre / roller and transmission losses. These are then added back to the HP numbers at the wheel to get an estimate of HP at the flywheel.

I think the fancier shops are able to estimate the losses at different roller speeds so are able to add a 'loss curve' into the HP curve to give a curve corrected for different losses at different engine RPM.

This doesn't capture losses which are power dependent - perhaps the gears have more friction when loaded, or the tyres more hysteresis losses when hot, but I guess it is better than nothing.

Andy.

[mark030358]

A day at OultonPark …