Lotus Elan Central

REMOVED PART PICTURE due to advice from another club-member about the legality of displaying pictures owned by others. So, dually sorry to increase your toil, but to view the part picture please click on http://www.isuzuperformance.com/bills/
and search for "Isuzuperformance Racing Team Clutch Lever".

Firstly 'I' can't guarantee this will happen, but if we have enough people interested in them I'll take it upon myself to broach the subject to Bill. Yep, that Bill. This will let you install an uprated or even racing clutch and either completely eliminate or significantly mitigate the increase in clutch effort. This is a part he's developed since the closing of his Isuzu parts business. If you had any idea why he closed, read no further than this statement on the Impulse Wiki page, "As of 2010, the number of registered Impulses totaled only 2,300 making Impulses very rare. That's the extant total for EVERY year, 1981 through 1993! I remember reading that only around 800 of the 4XE1 Impusle RS turbos related to our car were ever made to begin with. Although I've seen lots of the Impulse XS's, I've only ever seen one RS turbo in the flesh. (ADDED 3/22: Only 600 of the RSs made it to the U.S., while just 200 made it to Canada.)

Here is what he says about the part:
Reduces the pedal 45 pound pedal effort of the Isuzuperformance Racing Team clutches back to a more managable 35 pounds, the same pedal effort of other manufacturer's racing clutches. Reduces driver strain and fatigue, reduces stress on the vehicle fire wall, allows for more precise clutch control and feathering for more consistent launches. Reinforced and heavy duty construction.
Not for sale to the public.

I'm interested and very happy to support this effort, assuming if and when its available it can be sent to England.

Gary1958 wrote:I'm interested and very happy to support this effort, assuming if and when its available it can be sent to England.

Of course. I'd handle it like I did the front-cat.conv. replacement group-buy, the thread of which I'm sure is still out there somewhere. That means I'd get one person in the UK to accept delivery and forward to the rest of the blokes.

This is a picture of an M100 box currently for sale by an unknown and probably unincarcerated man whose present greatest accomplishment is owning an Ebay account. However, we must thank him, for he shows rightly well the part in question in the lower center of his photo. Thank you, unknown tranny man.

This of course, is the "other" lever which your clutch-cable-foot-lever attaches to each time you shift a gear, or sit at a light spending your time ever so well. As you remember the "lever and fulcrum" physics lesson from your days as a well-dressed school-boy, whenever the length of a lever is increased it decreases your mechanical toil. Or put another way, "the lever, where size does matter."

Just a thought here, suppose we cut the stock lever and add a couple inches to it and reweld it.
It might save a good bit of money and leeve our old buddy out of this.

My car came with a stiff pressure plate, so very annoying! I replaced it with a stock PP and a
6 puck metal disc. You need to be careful pulling out from a stop, it's a it grabby. But the
light feel more then makes up for it!

Steve

racerstev wrote:Just a thought here, suppose we cut the stock lever and add a couple inches to it and reweld it.
It might save a good bit of money and leeve our old buddy out of this.

My car came with a stiff pressure plate, so very annoying! I replaced it with a stock PP and a
6 puck metal disc. You need to be careful pulling out from a stop, it's a it grabby. But the
light feel more then makes up for it!

Steve

Good point. Just cut it in half and add a section into the middle, eh? Notice how he boxed-in the open sides of the lever with metal? That adds a lot of strength & is a standard thing done to strengthen truck frames.

In line with Steve's idea of going it on our own to lengthen the lever, does anyone have experience with comparing two images in a photo and not estimating, but professionally computing the difference in their length? To help, the item in front will naturally appear larger. However, as a control, the "half-moon" shaped part on the right until the metal becomes closely pinched together is exactly the same length, even though their relative position to each other in the picture makes that seem untrue.

Can anyone help here?

If you're just after a longer lever, we can draw one up and have it CNC machined, which will be easier, cheaper, lighter, and better looking than going through that guy, or cutting and welding the original. There's no need to measure the picture, if you want to reduce the force by 25%, the lever needs to be 25% longer- which, incidentally, is exactly what RayD just measured (it's the overall length that matters- 417 versus 520). I'm happy to help with designing a new arm and getting quotes.

I'm sure you know this already, but don't forget a longer lever will decrease effort but increase travel.