Jeemy's Elan Rebuild

[Jeemy]

The first instruction is to remove the nut holding the track rod end to the steering arm. Slightly disingenuous as to me it seemed to attach the track rod end to the hub carrier, but I maybe have my nomenclature wrong. I cross-referenced cliff's thread here and was fairly sure I had the right part.

First before things got wobbly, I pulled the brake disc off - a 4mm allen bolt to remove the securing nut and then a BBH to knock it off the ingrained rust:

The nut itself was 19mm and although it just spun and you are meant to use a ball joint removal tool, I found tapping the balljoint up with a hammer, jamming a flathead screwdriver under the nut, then prising up to allow one of those cheapy bike repair spanners under the nut, gave enough upwards pressure to separate it.

Then I just tapped the thread out with a little hammer:

Next is to unpeen the hub nut. A thankfully easy term to search on; or so I thought. I eventually found peen, worked out what it meant, and it was confirmed here by RayD.

So I just tapped in progressively larger flathead screwdrivers alternating tapping straight in, and then tapping the bent sections outwards, until it looked good.

For the second time my Christmas present to myself of a Draper 3/4" socket set proved invaluable - both for the strength of the item and the 32mm socket required.

Unfortunately what the manual doesn't tell you is that the hub spins freely (natch) so if you do this once you've removed the wheel and brake there is nothing to stop it.

Thankfully jamming the biggest screwdriver I had through one of the hub holes gave enough resistance, and the 3/4" ratchet tool has an extendable handle - the reason I was convinced on this tool - which is ample to give you enough leverage to break the hub nuts grip:

Thankfully I'd been clever enough to buy a 3/4" to 1/2" step-down adaptor, so I could just jam the 32mm socket onto a drill to remove the now freely spinning hub nut. I will need to order replacement hub nuts I believe:

Next is to release the end of the anti-roll bar from the ball joint. This time a 17mm socket, and learning from the first one once the nut was loos I prised it up to see if the thread span when I turned it - this one does not, but the ball joint does flex. A breaker bar was the only way to get enough access and leverage in the tight space, once broken it threaded off quite quickly, giving me a minor heart attack when the washer below popped up - I thought the ARB had collapsed in a fit of rust!

Next is to separate the strut yoke from the lower link. This is apparently best done while supporting the weight of the suspension. I ran the ramps up under it with some hockey pucks under, and went to work.

However this does have a spinning thread, this time I held it with mole grips braced against the hub carrier:

This worked great until the nut started to come off the thread - this happens to me quite often that it gets much tighter at the last few turns - so much so I was not able to get enough force onto it with the mole grips - I was already worrying about damaging the other side - so I squirted some penetrating fluid onto the nut and left it for a bit.

[Jeemy]

Eventually after a days GT85 penetration and still no movement, I made a thorough check for any rubber, applied a tiny amount of heat with a mini gas torch and the nut came off.

The next instruction is to remove the bolts holding the strut yoke on. These are 6mm allen bolts, with a 10mm nut to the other side. They aren't super tight but they are a pain to access, especially the upper, outer one.

I decided to loosen the suspension at the top to give me some movement (3 x 13mm nuts - I wish I had had a magnetic pickup tool to rescue them):

I wasn't convinced this helped and thought I'd messed up completely at one point but a load of prying with a big screwdriver to get things into position, hammering the 1/2" allen drive into the bolt after a good scraping out, and a combination of breaker bars and my 30cm 1/2" ratchet got them off eventually, just bracing in a little 10mm spanner at the other side to hold the nuts from spinning:

A little maneuvring and the shock was out!

19mm is the smallest my 3/4" set goes down to and I was very surprised when this giant extension actually gave me enough purchase to shift the top mounting plate that goes through the raft bush:

The 3 behind are the next thing to remove, they look terribly hard to access so thats a job for tomorrow once I've had a cleanup and grabbed a creeper and a hoover from my other workshop. I also need to continue to try and separate the brake pipe from the wishbone before the whole section comes out - now the shock is out, maybe I can do this via the plate mounts instead of the little wedging plate which is rusted solid.

[dapinky]

The 3 behind are the next thing to remove, they look terribly hard to access so thats a job for tomorrow once I've had a cleanup and grabbed a creeper and a hoover from my other workshop.

Jamie,

Having got this far, you've cracked the worst of it (hopefully).

As for the top shock mountings (which you've now done) - you'll now realise that you can get a finger up from where the shock goes to get the washers (and any loose nuts!) out of the way.....

....to replace them, a small magnetic stick is ideal (but no use if you're replacing the nuts/washers with stainless ones) - or just a wooden stick with a dab of grease on it....

...if you've got small enough fingers, it is possible to stick your finger down the centre hole and drop the nut onto that finger from the hole above each stud, then manaoevre them into place enough to get each nut started on the thread - then use a small (3/8 drive) ratchet socket on a 3" bar to do them up.

The 3 bolts you refer to for the top mounting plate aren't tight, but do take a bit of 'cracking off' as they are fitted with threadlocking compound. The drivers side has less access than the passenger side, and the way i did it was to use a spanner with a bit of a short throw, and plenty of patience (and swearing)....

...when I did Nicks car, they were quite free - but when I did mine, one of the bolts had seized in the aluminium raft and was a right bugger.

I snapped the head off the bolt (not quite intentionally), and took the plate out attached to the raft, then drilled it out on the workbench.

Otherwise, the 'easiest' way is to ground the captive nut off the plate (as you can get easy access), and then take all the bits out that way - you just need to use a new M8 nut instead of the captive one on the plate - no big deal really, and I still don't know why Lotus used captive nuts here - obviously, if you do end up mullering the captive nut, you will need to get new bolts for that particular place as you probably won't have enough thread to re-fit the old ones - just a standard (High tensile, 8.8 - or A4-80 if using stainless) M8 x 75 bolt - remember that if you go for stainless, you only need 18Nm of torque to do it up, not the 22-25 it states in the manual for normal steel!!!

Remember to use copper grease on the shank of all bolts, and refit the raft top plate with a dab of threadlock.


When you come to rebuild it all, the bottom shock absorber bolt (through the bottom of the yoke and the hub carrier) - the one with the built-in balljoint - has a different thread than the 'standard' M12 nylocks, so don't just grab a new nut and hope it works!

If your's is a bit past its best (or you manage to damage the balljoint) - don't panic when you see the price of a new replacement (£80+) - I have developed a replacement using a M12 x 160mm bolt, a standard M12 male rod-end balljoint, and 9 form A washers! - the bolt needs to be 10.9 grade, not 'normal' 8.8 grade and aren't easy to find in the right length, with the right amount of unthreaded shank - but I still have 8 left over from doing mine as I had to buy 10 to make it worthwhile.... The ball joints are about a fiver each, so the whole lot (both sides of the car) can be replaced for under £20.

[Jeemy]

Damn handy advice sir, thank you.

I lost one of the top suspension nuts; well two, but I found one. As for washers, I am just presuming they are stuck up there - I can get my fingers in OK.

Once I clean up and get some better lighting I am sure I will work it out.

I think I would definitely like a set of your replacement kits, I want to replace anything I can realistically do. I'll PM thee.

[WienLot]

Jeemy, you have a PM.

[Jeemy]

I've replied mate, just not heard back from you but I presume you are checking into it.

[cliff]

Jeemy, you have a pm.

Raft inner mounting plate bolts are a pain, lots of penetrating fluid and a ratchet ring spanner, 12 or 13mm, not sure off the top of my head. Don't get the Lotus logic, if you are going to use a captive bolt on the top one, why not on all of them?

It can't be possible to design some of this stuff sober, if the drugs that car and aircraft designers use were freely available, the world would be seriously screwed up place.

[lotusgirlmarie]

A crows foot socket is what I use. Soo much easier now. ICRC its a 17mm

[dapinky]

It's 13mm for the 3 smaller bolts.......

....but I used a 1/2" 'cos I have a shorter one of those!

[WienLot]

Jeemy, you have a PM.

[lotusgirlmarie]

Huh. I don't think I have those on mine. Maybe the Fed cars are different? I have 3 10mm and all the rest are 17mm. Lotus Strikes again!!!

[lottus77]

Hey jeemy. Where did you get your black/tinted rear light covers from?
Thx

[Jeemy]

Hi. Mine are 13mm. I tried for a bit with a ratchet spanner but I only have a little one and couldn't shift em so I ordered a long throw 13mm spanner. Will try again with that.

In the meantime I finished up setting up the stuff I'll need to blast, clean, recondition etc all these parts.

WRT to the light covers I've been asked this before, and my answer is the same - they are not tinted by me or deliberately.

I have one of them which is slightly broken, one NOS which is new (and from a brief look, also seemed dark) and one I will be re-using.

So I will have to get the NOS to match the re-used. What I'll do is use plastic headlight cleaner to get it as clean as possible, then use smoke light tinting spray to darken them to match, then use T-cut to polish the spray….dont ask why but it works...

[Jeemy]

Well the second half of that was unpleasant. The ARB balljoint snapped with a minimum of effort - looks like I found the cause of the juddering - the brake disc bolt needed drilled out, and while I was drilling stuff out I took out the bad headlamp bulb screws with no damage thankfully.

Blew a lightbulb as well, so with little vision I had to leave it there. So tomorrow its the strut yoke to lower link, the strut yoke top bolts, remove the shock, and remove the ARB itself for finishing off the car.

This should mean I've got everything that needs rebuilt/refinished for this stage of work, off the car; once the ARB is off I can look at insertion of the new charge cooler and hoses, I need to speak to Henk-Jan about the problems with these hoses before I go too far on that. Its progress at least.

[Jeemy]

While I wait for the 13mm long-reach spanner, I can't do much more on the suspension. Thats a 20-page thread in itself. I did, however following dave's washer alert, buy a £3 LED rolson magnetic pickup tool which swiftly dislocated and safely removed the washers. Invaluable:

To pass the time, I did a little bit of planning.

My big projects are in rough order:

Change Suspension & Brakes (ongoing)
Install all lights, square up bumpers & fit properly.
Install new intercooler, final pipes & finish engine detail.
All Service Items (can't do fuel filter until car is back down, can't change oil until brakes are back on, need to look into PAS)
Change Windscreen (can't do until car is back down)
Fit Roll Cage (can't do until fuel filter is changed, and until wheel colour is fixed which will be decided once brakes are in)
Install stereo (can't do until dash is out, but can do - and will need to do - some planning before dash comes out)
Change Dash (can't do until windscreen is done)
Install all other electrics & cosmetics (can plan but not complete until dash is out)

So the next thing to do on the car, while I refurbish all the brake & suspension parts at the new workshop, is to get the lights set up properly and start on the final engine detailing.

I've done the side indicators - but they click too fast and I don't want to push the lenses home until I am sure there is no bad wiring. The only way to be properly sure that its not the module, is to get the resistance correct in the system.

So I decided next step was to get the lights sorted out; there are some decisions to make about how much additional lighting I install.

I pulled all the headlight lenses from the pods by removing the screws which mount to the outer of the pods, one had to be drilled off (circled):

To get the actual lenses out you firstly have to turn them round inside the pod to pull out the harness (circled), then once slid out you need to remove the little cable retainer (arrowed):

Position is important so nothing fouls on re-install. Looking at the state of the insulation on my cables, they've been fouling for a while:

I'll need to fix that up on the main beam cables. I will probably run the halo wires inside the new sleeves.

Removal is easy enough for the inner (main beam) light, but the outer beam (dip) necessitates spinning the light inside the pod, exposing the rubber boot:

….and pulling off the centre right-angle (+ve) and outer straight clamp terminals (once the light is out, its obvious these are red and black).

Then you can undo the screw inside the pod:

Once I'd got the lights out, I grabbed the group buy headlight pod kit. There are nice fresh springs and screws in there, and Dave Pink had already sorted me out a bling kit which contains some of the pod mount screws, polished.

I'm going to be replacing the sidelights with LEDs.

The other thing I want to do is GoM100Go's Halo mod, and possibly some DRLs.

All of this needs to be reversible. I spent some time revising the DVLA/UN rules.

It seems like DRLs are fine to install but should switch off with the headlights coming on. So I will need some wiring for that.

LED sidelights are also OK but to be safe, I'm going to try to work it so that you can quickly switch to the original bulbs. So I will need a switch for that. As fitting for all of this is going to be done with the bumpers off, I need to set it up so its easily changeable with bumpers on.

The Halo's are purely cosmetic, but the halo-type casings recommended by James are a direct retro-fit to our headlight pods (by the look of things):

So they seemed like a good purchase, it must have been 2 years back I bought them so they seemed at the time the best way to clean that area and make it look new again, the halo's being the least of the reasons.

I thought about it for a while and the best thing is to have a seperate switch for the Halos, that can be activated to let them run inline with the dipped or main headlight beams.

The way I want to do this is:

Ignition on: DRLs on (but need a master kill switch in case they affect the front indicator visibility)
Switch sidelights on: DRLs remain on, sidelights come on
Switch headlights on: DRLs turn off, sidelights do whatever they always did

Press indicator: sidelight at correct side dims if on, front, side & rear indicators flash

Press Halo switch - if light pods are up, halos come on

The best way to test all of this is on the car, so the task list for this is:

Remove front bumper (which I am best to wait & do after the suspension is out - in fact no, I could do this now)
Build refinishing greenhouse (you'll see!)
Refinish back lights
Install original light system completely

At present, the outer beam lights continuously when headlights are on, activating the high beam switch puts the inner one on.

The pod opens and closes only at the main dip/full beam setting.

I made a mockup with various lights and these are the ones I decided upon - they are Osrams, fully road legal and come with the fitting kit - sounds like they can be automatically dimmed when the main beams come on. So I am very pleased with that:

Dismantling the full beam assembly first, all seemed straightforward. Remove the top surrounds:

Then undo some bolts at the back and it all falls apart:

The dipped beams are set at an angle, hence the springs. I'll learn how to do this before I go to MOT.

The housings take an H4 bulb; and James mentioned he had gone with an H4 conversion, so I'd ordered what he specified including the wedge bulbs for the halo surrounds.

However, in his picture he has H4 as his dip beam lights too. Wasn't 100% sure about this. Did some reading and an H4 bulb has two filaments, one for low and one for high beam. So looking at the pin layout I found this useful diagram: http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/CheapTricks ... Pinout.jpg

So I can connect the H4s as low beam on one section, and high beam on the other. This does open up the option for a double high beam, so that when the high beams come on, they come on to both lights. But I dismissed this idea for now as I want it to get through an MOT and you are not recommended to fire both filaments at the same time, so you'd need to jig it so that when the high beam came on both the outer and inner, the outer dip filament went off. Also there might be issues with the resistance running 2 lights, so given the tightness inside the pod, and the fact the inner fullbeam H4 connector was already a bit melted after 20 years, I decided to keep things as-is but go for all new connectors. I could only find wired ones and I don't want to increase the wiring length inside the pod, but I'll cross that bridge when I see them.

I decided to hang on with the suspension job looming, I need to refurbish a lot of parts so the next step is to get my assembly line going!

[Jeemy]

Continuing to plan the wiring, I went to look at the halos next. The wedge bulbs James recommended dropped in perfectly:

So the next step is power. I want a switch inside the car, so I ordered some discrete little rocker switches. Not quite sure where to fit them yet:

Screen Shot 2014-01-29 at 17.33.25.png (41.41 KiB) Viewed 17695 times

I then only want the halo's to light when the pods are up. The circuit must be broken when the pods are down. Just for the sake of completeness and to do it properly; obviously you can manually flip it but if you are driving and want the extra light, you should not be fumbling for hidden switches - and equally I don't want heat even though the LEDs generate little-to-none, and I don't want the pods glowing weirdly when they are down.

So I decided to wait until the DRL kit arrives. This should explain clearly how to 'read' this information and process it so when the headlights come up, the dimmed system becomes active. Hopefully I can rig something so that the halo's perform in the opposite way - if they are in circuit, they come on with the beams as the DRLs dim.

All very exciting. A relay, I guess. Maybe the DRL and halo can share one!

Next was the sidelight modification. Another one of James's.

I can't replace the lamp holders until they are refurbished, and they go behind the bumper. The bumper needs to come back off.

I'd asked my paint guy just to leave the bumpers off after the spray, but in his wisdom he decided to put them back on; the back is squint and rubbing on the exhaust and the front is so loose it rattles. To cap it off, the reason I'd asked him to leave them off is that the bolts were so rusted they wouldn't take another use and I wanted to rebuild the fixings and use new ones.

Needless to say when I went under the wing arch to try and remove the bolts, they started snapping. He's not my paint guy anymore and this is another reason why not.

So I just removed what I could from the 10mm height adjusters, leaving the busted bolts to be dealt with once the delicate bumper is out the way:

He'd also reattached the 13mm bolts accessible (if you've removed the grilles) from through the side air ducts, otherwise from the bottom grommets:

Once those were out, the bumper pulled back off easily.

The front looks super classy, San Diego, but the back is a mess from where I repaired the grilles on the car, before I knew this was to happen. I bought a trestle as I have a lot of bumpers to refinish….

Now its off I see it won't work to hold the bumper steady while I fix the fibreglass fixing points on the back, remove the old grilles and make new ones which will hold the DRLs, so I need to work out a mod to allow me to hold a bumper backwards:

[Jeemy]

No pictures for now, but a progress update for comments which I'll split out later with the pics.

These inner bolts are still problematic. My initial 24cm "long" 13mm spanner has an angled ring head and an open head. The latter is rounding, the former is too angled to get in on the rounded head. I have a 35cm long flat-angle ratchet coming, and a 43cm long one with a right-angled pull handle. I've been heating from the opposite side so as not to damage the rubber, plying it with GT85, will move to Plusgas when my new aerosol arrives and finally some freeze spray when that arrives, together with grinding off the edges between bolt head and plate, and scrubbing the paint off the other side. If it still won't move I will need to take the alternator out, and I am now considering replacing that anyway - then I can use Irwin Bolt Grips or whatever they are called.

The bumper balances absolutely fine upside down on the trestle.

Happy enough with this that I can start to cut out the old grille mountings and betaseal, and remake the fibreglass captive nuts which broke when removing her.

I started to work on the sidelight/headlight wiring.

The big connector is the indicator and the small the sidelight, perversely.

I did as James instructed, snipped the bulb holder end off the LED decoder and connected it up - it didn't light. I reversed the polarity and blew the fuse. Oh well, the fuses all needed a replace/check anyway.

With a new 5A fuse in slot 7, the RH sidelight lit, so I left it for an hour, no fuse blew!

I did the same process with the indicator and lo and behold they work perfectly. They are locked to 'switchback' mode (when the orange indicator LEDs light, the white switch off) but the bulb-holder decoders mean that as long as the decoder units themselves are safely routed off somewhere, you could change for bulbs, but you'd have to find a place to put the faux bulb connectors.

The indicators still flash double time with the right-hand side connected. I won't be able to be sure its not the module until I connect up all 6 corners.

Which means I need the back light modules in and checked. They are from memory all one part and I have stuff to do before I can access them, so I left that for now and started on the halo wiring.

James powered his from an unused park lights socket. I don't have such a thing, and I want them switchable. Thats easy, but where to take the power from?

There were two choices basically - take it direct from the dip beam power, or take it from a seperate area. Either way I need wires running all the way back to the switch, which implies a seperate area is more sensible.

Fuse 25 is unused so I looked into how the cable would need to be run. There's in fact very easy access from the headlight grommet, through the wheel arch, to the drivers' side, and somewhat less easy access from the passenger side through to the fuse box. But it should be possible to run the negative cables through to the earth point inside each wheel arch, and run the positives to meet at the switch. So its just working out how to make them only come on when the dip beams come on.

There's a dip beam relay F above the instrument cluster which controls the dip beams, together with 2 fuses, one per side.

So I should be able to tap the relay output or the fuse output for a positive feed to the new relay. I believe fuse 25 is unused from something I read on here.

So the first thing is to try and tap out power from fuse 25.

A single screw underneath the fusebox (cover's been off for a while) allows the metal cover to lift outwards from the bottom and then slide up off its hooks. Then you can spin the fuse box and get a look. Sadly, fuse 25 has no metal connections behind it. I could solder in female blade terminals but there's no guarantee they'd be solid, and so I decided after a little research that the commercially available "Add-a-Circuit" fuse taps would be a more professional solution to get the power out to the lights.

In fact, there are several other fuses one could use which are unused such as 2, 8 and 9, but access to those areas is very tight and pulling all the wiring to solder in a new connection then putting it all back is asking for trouble.

So the DLRs are going to tap off fuse 14 for the interior lamps (on the basis these get little current draw and only operate with the keys in, plus, I think they have a delay which is nice), the Halo's will tap off fuse 24 for the cigarette lighter which won't get used (and might be replaced with an engine start switch). There's also the wiper motors as a possible tap point.

So next, I decided I needed to draw up the wiring diagrams for the engine start switch, halo's and DLRs all in one go and do some testing of whats on, when.

Interior lights: with the key taken out and the door shut, they fade after a second. Genius for the DLRs if I can incorporate the fade but lose the door switching, so thats almost certainly my tap point.

Halos:

Cigarette lighter: this does not function until the ignition is on. So thats good for the halo's, but I need to plan a way to get them running off a relay so they are only on when the dip beams are on. I need to research whether just tapping off the dips would be best, much earlier in the circuit.
Tapping the dip beam fuse seems a much better idea…..I don't see why I don't just tap fuses 5 & 6 from fusebox C inside the binnacle - these are 7.5A fuses and the halo's would need the same but 20A is the max rating for the Add-a-Circuit so this would be well within acceptable tolerances…..

Engine Start:

I grabbed out the wiring diagram for this.

It immediately recommends the cigarette lighter as the power source, so thats the halo's decided, I'll tap the dip beam fuses and forget a relay.
You then use the lighting circuit for the cig lighter for the lights on the engine start button, so thats decided.

The first thing to do was identify the leads from the ignition barrel to the starter motor solenoid. Sheet 2 of the Circuit diagrams in the Electrical Manual shows this.

Looking at the picture here, START-RELAY is the starter motor solenoid. BR > WR vis ISHC-AI. Seems obvious. Looking at the Convention in Appendix one, this means a black with red-stripe wire going to a white with red stripe wire, via AI, which I can't identify, connected to ISHC which is something to do with a security harness. The manual says this should be the thickest wires coming from the ignition barrel. I am not sure if I can look at these yet until the dash comes back out.

So next task is to see if I can find the wires from the ignition barrel, and get the kit out to plug it in.

This leaves the amplifier and speakers to work out. Neither of which I am concerned about, I've done lots of this stuff, amp will come straight from the battery, with a long cable for an ignition key, and speakers is just routing. Other thing is the aerial, I have a little one, just need to see if it needs power.

If anybody has thoughts on the plate bolts or tapping the power, I'd be glad to hear them. Have a good weekend,

J

[novacaine]

I made a mockup with various lights and these are the ones I decided upon - they are Osrams, fully road legal and come with the fitting kit - sounds like they can be automatically dimmed when the main beams come on.

I've been looking for DRLs for a while now, cant seem to find any that "look right" in my opinion. But those look like a perfect fit. Any idea of the model number?

[Jeemy]

PRX-4 mate. 160mm wide, they should fit exactly as per the mockup I made.

[novacaine]

look good and easy to fit with the kit they give you. Might have to spend more money lol