New member!!!!

[SWLC]

Hello,

Just wanted to say hello and introduce myself. My name is James and my girlfriend's name is Ellie. We have just brought our first Lotus which is a 1991 Lotus Elan SE Turbo in calypso red. I have been brought up with Lotus cars all my life and work on them now. I feel really happy and proud to own my first one! Looking forward to events and meeting up with people and if I can help out in any way with advice all you have to do is ask!

Can't wait to get my new car all done as it needs a bit of work!! I am going to get a C service done and MOT, reconilise the leather, it needs a stereo and I get some new tyres for it! Happy days!! Just cant wait to get her out on the open road as there are some cracking roads around Devon and Cornwall!

Well just wanted to say hi!

James and Ellie

[MPx]

Hi James - glad you made it on here - welcome! Is the green/yellow wheels one yours or have you found another? Will you be at Malvern on Saturday?

Regards
Mike

[SWLC]

Hi Mike,

no the green one is now sold but just waiting to be collected I brought a red SE turbo one today but it needs a bit of work so I am going to start cleaning it all up at the weekend and have told the old man he has to give me a hand too heheheh!

It has loads of goodies on it but In want to get the seats done first, they have started to sag and the leather need repainting! so thats the first job for the weekend!

I was going to be going to the show but it was all a bit last minute and I just couldnt get everything together for a stand in time so we are going to leave it for this year.

regards James

[Nige]

James and Ellie, welcome to LEC and Elan ownership. You will have a good knowledge of the cars but there is a depth of knowledge through experience here that is almost boundless. Please add what you can to that as it will be most welcome but also freely take what this group can offer.

[Marcus_uk]

Hi Mike,
It has loads of goodies on it but In want to get the seats done first, they have started to sag and the leather need repainting! so thats the first job for the weekend!

Hi,

Ive been looking into refurbishing my seats and there are lots of horror stories on this forum with people telling you not to re-paint/redye them because they are a water based leather (not entirly sure what that means) and the dye ends up rubbing off on your clothes! However I got some dye from liquid leather (i think it was called scuffmaster) as it is a waterbased dye, ive only tried on a small test section but it seems fine so you may want to give them a try (dont blame me if it ends up like the other stories on here). They will probably have your seat colors already on their database so you dont even need to get them to color match it.

Good luck with all the work!

[GeoffSmith]

Welcome James and Ellie. It's the S2 seats which are water based so your SE should not be a problem. Let us know how it goes with the water based dye Marcus.

[SWLC]

Hi

Thanks for all the advice I have done one or two leather seats before and touch wood so far never had any one rub off. I always use a very fine sand paper like 1500 to rub over the seats as this softens the leather up and helps the paint soak in. First step is to take the seats out and repair the bottems were they are sagging and the I can also clean all the carpets properly. i just dont like masking them up as it can be a bit fiddley with the grey and the red strips. Should be fun fun fun!!!!!!!

I flushed all the cooling system out today which went well and put in new anti freeze and just made sure that everything works fine and gets to the right temprature. Just another little job done! Just cant wait to get it back on the road and enjoying it!!!

Thanks for making us both so welcome.

James and Ellie