Lotus Elan Central

Hi Everyone,
With much head scratching soul searching I have taken on the virtual impossible task of finishing Jamie's Elan SE and I will be trying to maintain his meticulous attention to detail. I feel a heavy weight of responsibility to finish the car in a manner Jamie would approve of. I will post pictures and details of progress much as Jamie did. I have a feeling this is going to be a roller coaster ride even though Jamie really has done ALL the really hard work there is still a lot of work to do!! This car needs to be out there for all to see to fully understand the tireless effort, dedication and ultimately the skill which Jamie lavished on the car. Here we go!!!!

FABULOUS Keep us all posted.

regards

John

Good on yer, Mike. I wish you a straightforward job and hope I can see the finished product at a LEC meet sometime somewhere.
John

I thought it might be a good idea to give you all some information about JUFs history and my connection to the car. (By the way “JUFs” is the name I have always called this Elan because of its Reg Number.)
JUFs was originally supplied by Bell Colvill and had a couple of owners in the south of England early in its life before moving north.
I bought J610JUF in approx. May 1999 from a gentleman in Darlington. This was my second M100 Elan as I had sold my first M100 to buy a house. However when that house move fell through at the 11th hour I looked for another potential show car only to find immediately JUFs only 25 miles away from my home. JUFs had previously won a Club Lotus concours event 2 years in a row in Colin’s ownership so with little delay I bought the car to use to travel to car shows and enter into concours.
In the weeks leading up to the same event the car had won the previous 2 years consecutively I did much cleaning and polishing of parts to improve on the previous year’s condition and assure myself of winning my first event. Having only owned the car for approx. 6 weeks I travelled to the all weekend event however I could not stop in the same hotel as the event because it was already fully booked. So I attended the event on the Saturday and eyed up the competition for the following days concours. I was very pleased and thought I had an extremely good chance of winning. My aspirations were crushed at approx. 6.30 on the Saturday evening. The weather closed in as my then girlfriend (now my wife) set off for our B&B for the night. While travelling the 8 miles to the B&B a “white van man” driving on the wrong side of the road cutting across a corner on a country lane clipped the front O/S corner of JUFs and in the process of trying to avoid a collision he left 16ft of skid marks travelling up hill in the rain!!! I fortunately was nursing JUFs to the B&B and in doing so I was travelling at a very low speed and braked to a stop quickly and waited for the inevitable collision. My Concours dream ended rather abruptly there and then. However the damage proved to be quite superficial. After much arguing with my insurance company I set about ensuring JUFs was at a local repair shop where I took an active role in its repair to the point that when I had finished 2 days of shimming up all the new panels on the front of JUFs I looked at the photos of JUFs before the accident and found that I had achieved better panel gaps than the factory!!!
I thought great! let’s get JUFs to the same concours event next June and complete the journey without incident this time. In the intervening time an eventful trip to Brands Hatch for a “single seater experience day” and regular trips to the Lake District brought us lots of pleasure. Also around that time my partner’s house was up for sale and we had decided to pool our funds and buy a house together when her house eventually sold. I had anticipated this would take a while as the house had been up for sale for 3years at that point. Unfortunately my partner’s house sold before the June I had planned to take JUFs back to the concours event it had previously won and so JUFs had to be sold to help fund our new house.
A few years later while browsing the internet I spotted a black Elan that looked unmistakably like JUFs on a salvage auction website, a quick telephone call confirmed it was JUFs. I hatched a plan to buy JUFs back and finally get to that concours event. By chance I bumped into the chap I sold the car to, found out what had happened and then ended up buying the original OZ alloys complete with MXX2 tyres off him he also gave me JUFs service history back in preparation for me buying JUFs back.
Yet again my plans were thwarted, as it turned out the information that JUFs was an ex concours winner had been mentioned through a friend of a friend to a local repairer who outbid me. I gave the new owner of JUFs the service history and thought that’s the end of that.
I kept hearing about JUFs repair through the grape vine and it sounded like a real botch job!! Then I got a call from a friend saying here is the telephone number of the guy who owns JUFs he wants to sell, has put it on EBay and wants to know if you are interested. I called the chap and agreed a rough price dependant on me inspecting JUFs that weekend coming up. When I called on the Saturday he informed me he had swapped it for a Vauxhall Corsa and that JUFs was off to its new home in Inverness. So I bought a Medina Green S2 and moved on only to find Jamie’s thread on this forum. Imagine how pleased I was when I saw Jamie’s work and spoke with him to find that his plan was to repair JUFs to concours standard and to show the car as I had planned only in even better condition. The rest is all documented on Jamie’s locked thread. WHAT A THREAD!!!
I have included here some photos of JUFs the night I bought her with the concours trophies on the wind shield. Then some photos of JUFs in my ownership after accident while trying to get to the concours event then after repair with S2 alloys fitted to preserve the original wheels and tyres and then the latest photos of JUFs as it is now.
Cheers Mike
I just need to work out how to add photos???

JUFS at purchase 1999

JUFs after repair

Jufs after accident

JUFs Now

Jufs Now July 2015

OK In between finishing the refit of my Esprit Turbo engine I have started working on JUFs.

I spent a few hours yesterday stripping the drivers side door and headlamp pods down ready for painting. Jamie had already stripped the passenger side door down so that was a bonus. All the panels are now at a HTG body shop luckily only 50 yards away from where JUFs is being stored. This enabled me to show Micky in the flesh Jamie's superb paint work on the rear of JUFs.

What is great tho is Micky (painter/owner of HTG) likes a challenge and takes great pride in his work hence he is being entrusted with JUFs panels I have used HTG after seeing some of his work on other show cars. Although not cheap the results speak for themselves. I will post pictures up shortly. Upon stripping the head lamp pods I am now looking for more parts. Can anyone help with the following parts:-

Head lamp mounting brackets
Radiator duct plastic under tray
Under bonnet labels (Used would be OK s I can get them copied)
Good condition front wheel arch liners

Cheers Mike

Just caught up with the history Mike and pleased that you are following it through with the same attention to detail - I'm sure Jamie would approve.

Mike Y wrote:Can anyone help with the following parts:-

Head lamp mounting brackets I have a couple of boxes of hardware in the loft that Spud gave me - I'll have a look
Radiator duct plastic under tray
Under bonnet labels (Used would be OK s I can get them copied) Get in touch with Pinky
Good condition front wheel arch liners

Mike Y wrote:Under bonnet labels (Used would be OK s I can get them copied)

Mike,

Having seen the ridiculous prices that Lotus want for the underbonet stickers, I made my own.

It took a while to exactly replicate the OE ones, but I believe that I now have them as close to original as possible (well, I can't tell the difference). The hardest bit was the exact typeface used for the VIN plates....... but I cracked it. (Luckilly I worked on the Stolen Vehicle Squad back in the '90s, and dug out an old publication which gives all fonts for all makes in the 'How to spot a forgery' section..... the hardest part was actually finding the correct fonts to put on the computer - it was done on an old machine back in the day, and actually uses a mixture of 3 fonts.)

This is a .pdf of my finished set, which you can compare to the ones you need - if they're going to be good enough for you, then feel free to use them, adapt them or whatever you wish - they print out at the correct size on A4.

I can let you have each of the stickers as seperate .jpg files if you want/need to adapt them.

Be aware that the 'e' plate compliance stickers vary between certain cars, so it may not be as per JUFs (but i have it as a Word document if you need to change it).

For the VIN plates, I'd prefer NOT to divulge the fonts required (for obvious reasons, which don't include any desire to make myself a fortune!!!), but if you want to avoid paying Lotus prices for a vinyl sticker, I'll hapily create the document for them as a .pdf for you if you provide the VIN number you require (and let me know if your axle weights are any different - also if you have (or want) a paint / Trim code on it - some have them, some don't.

For actually creating them, the choices are to either go to a comercial printer with the .pdf, or do them yourself.

Having tried various methods (and types of material) I have found that some cheaper vinyls don't work well - they tend to peel up after a while. The one I now use is this one. They print on a standard inkjet printer (I've got a Cannon Pixma which works well with it).

To preserve the quality (and keep it weatherproof) I have used various 'attempts' to laminate it with clear vinyl & fixative spray, but get the longest-lasting results with 3M clear 'stoneguard' vinyl.

If left untreated, it is still semi-permanent (not much UV gets through the bonet ), but will have a life expectancy of 2 years, not the 10+ that you should get.

TBH, they look best without any coating and as I have kept the proofs, I can print them up whenever I feel I need a new set.

I'm fairly certain that given the artwork, a commercial supplier could make them up in a 'permanent' format, but (a) I like playing, & (b) I'm a cheapskate.

Has anyone taken a door mirror apart to paint it?
Any tips would be appreciated, the springs are so strong!!!!

Cheers Mike

Wow!!! That was quick a response thanks Dave & Geoff. I will have a look at the sticker situation tonight. I still have the original Vin & Engine Number Stickers from the time I repaired JUFs in 1999 If I can find a way of painting in the correct colour to get rid of the VOID water mark I could use them.

I have a more pressing problem with the door mirrors I need to get them stripped to get them to the painter.

Has anyone taken a door mirror apart to paint it?
Any tips would be appreciated, the springs are so strong!!!!

Cheers Mike

Yep - the springs are hellish strong - but there is a (fairly easy) way....

.... There are 2 choices really - you can remove the springs from either end.

If you have the glass and motor out, then you can remove the star washer clip things and just pull the spring off the peg (if you're at that stage and looking at it, you'll know what I mean). Replacement is the reverse, pulling the spring tension with a BIG set of pipe grips (but i didn't do it that way in the end, as i decided there was too much chance of it all going 'ping' and damaging the new paint.

Alternatively, (and the way i did it - twice actually, as i only found out the hard way that the 2 mirror shells are 'handed' when I'd refited them to the car the wrong way round).

I used a length of stainless lock wire (but any other strong wire will do - probably not copper as it will break, but something like galvanised garden wire should work - or a length of bike gear cable or similar) - slip it under the hooked end of the spring (from the end which joins the door frame!) and (holding the mirror body), pull with a pair of pliers to unhook the springs - it is quite a tension on it, but doable.

Be careful when releasing the tension, it goes quite a way into the mirror body and you don't want it taking bits of fingers with it.

To re-build it takes a bit of fishing - put a loop of wire through the hole, catch the spring and pull to realign it on the plastic bars - i found it easier to use a suitable piece of wood across the hole to lever the pliers on to get the tension.

If this all makes sense then it means that you have already got bits dismantled and can see what I mean!

Mike Y wrote:Wow!!! That was quick a response thanks Dave & Geoff. I will have a look at the sticker situation tonight. I still have the original Vin & Engine Number Stickers from the time I repaired JUFs in 1999 If I can find a way of painting in the correct colour to get rid of the VOID water mark I could use them.

I have a more pressing problem with the door mirrors I need to get them stripped to get them to the painter.

Has anyone taken a door mirror apart to paint it?
Any tips would be appreciated, the springs are so strong!!!!

Cheers Mike

I've just replied on the mirror stripping thread

I remembered having done this before, so just put "mirror" into the search box and came up with this:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=20145&p=292513&hilit=mirror#p292513

PS I've moved the posts from the "mirror stripping thread" as Dave called it to here.

I tried doing a search and came up with nothing????

OK will try and strip the mirrors.

Thanks Guys

GeoffSmith wrote:

Mike Y wrote:Can anyone help with the following parts:-

Head lamp mounting brackets I have a couple of boxes of hardware in the loft that Spud gave me - I'll have a look

Which bits Mike? Numbers 3 & 7? Which side or both?

Have you tried Phil - tell him I sent you and he'll double the price.

Found both sides of #7 but no #3 - I guess they went with the lights.