Lotus Elan Central

Ya, so I took out my old head unit (which was aftermarket, and crap, and terribly installed), and thought, "gee, that's a really nasty rat's nest of wires back there. Wouldn't it be nice to clean that up a bit?" Then I thought, "maybe at the same time I can figure out how to mount my instrument bezel properly" (it was just sitting in there resting on the odometer reset pin , and had been annoying me for literally two years.)

One thing led to another, and...






^^ Eww...

This probably won't be as involved as Candles' or Elanlover's replacement fascia, but it's a good opportunity for me to clean up some of the nagging interior faults that have been bugging me forever.

So, here's the to-do list:

- Get the car drivable as is. I at least need to put the headlight switch back in, and that means the instrument wiring harness should go back in, which means putting a quick release plug on the boost/voltage/oil pressure gauges because I don't feel like taking those off. I also want to rig a temporary mount for the bezel; since I got speed-cameraed at, like, 40 in a 30 km/h zone AGAIN I at least want the speedo back in there.

- Clean up the look of the fascia. Fix all the broken bits, try to get everything to line up better, remove all the GOO that's stuck everywhere, and maybe give it a nice rattle-canning of matte black paint.


^^ What the heck is with all this GOO everywhere? It's on everything, it's sticky as all hell, and it really sucks to get on your hands, especially if you're taking pics with your shiny new camera. Surely Lotus didn't use this sh^t to build the car originally? Assuming I can dissolve it away, I reckon I can find something better.

- Clean up the wiring. Get the driver's side and rear speakers working.

- If I get really into this I'm going to take off the whole dash pad and install my new heater core, but I don't know if I'll get to that. This is just an after work / weekend project and I don't have any kind of shop/garage to work on this thing in, so we'll see how far it goes.

So that's the status so far. Hopefully I can get it back together in somewhat the same way as it came out!

TJi wrote:Surely Lotus didn't use this sh^t to build the car originally?

Indeed they did, and they certainly weren't stingy with it!

Adam

It's called "Double Bubble" apparently:

forum.lotuselancentral.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=15187&hilit=double+bubble#p201656

www.glueonline.co.uk/shop/Two_Part_Epoxy_Adhesives.html

Adam

Well, I finally found a use for the alcohol-based hand disenfecting foam that the health & safety ninnies went and installed all over my office building last year. It disolves "double bubble" off fingers pretty nicely.

BTW when I grew up in Canada, "double bubble" was a type of chewing gum! Very appropriate name.

double bubble was also the brand name of a 'chuddy' in the UK

Right, so started sorting through the wiring mess. It should be noted that I really really regret not jumping on a brand new fascia from Aftersales at Donington 2009. Anyone still got one kicking around?

Blocked off the vacuum lines since I'll be running the car without that switch for a bit (note: yes, I cut the lines. It was dumb, but those are included on my new heater core so I don't need them anyway...)


Is this stock? (Note: I predict this will be a reoccurring theme in this thread.)

It just looks a bit dodgy to me with the extra spade connectors bundled into the tape harness like that... Can someone confirm?

More mystery wires - these had to do with the P.O.'s horrid sound system install. The house-style speaker wire shows up at the battery compartment too, thankfully not hooked up. At least he didn't try to wire in an alarm...




The ribbon type wiring here is for this transponder thing. I still don't know what it did. Garage door maybe?



Okay, I know this isn't stock!




What. The. F**k ?!

Previous owner also spliced some wires into the clock for who knows what...

TJi wrote:
What. The. F**k ?!

Remains of previous owners underwear ...atfer vicious overboost ???

Ha ha ha!

I love the pictures and the comments
Keep em coming!

I decided to do some experimental weapons testing for the War on Goo. I took apart the headlight switch since I had it out anyway to see if soaking the plastic casing in alcohol would dissolve it away.



Don't do this! It's a pain in the butt and there's lots of fiddly little bits to break. That said... The alcohol did an okay job, but it still involved some scrubbing, and it ate the rubber grommet on the inside that I thought was plastic. Didn't really need that anyway, right?

Tomorrow I'm going to try a toothbrush for Goo removal purposes.

More wiring hell. Of COURSE nothing is soldered or done at all properly. Lots of wires just wrapped around other wires and secured with years old, brittle electrical tape. No wonder nothing worked...





Mystery transponder removed... A little stabbery took the adhesive nicely off the windscreen.


^^ BTW look at all that pollen! No wonder my allergies are going nuts. ARGH.

Time for another round of... Is this stock?



Some kind of bandpass filter for the stereo I think. It looks awfully tidy sitting in there but the P.O.'s crappy wiring goes into it, which makes me question whether it's original. Did Lotus put it there?

I'm not sure about what to do with these. I while ago I was driving around and identical one fell out of the driver's side under my feet. Probably why my RH door speaker has never worked. Here it is:



My inkling is to take them out. Don't get me wrong, I love having a decent stereo in my car but I reckon I could buy some Ebay-specials that are miles better than these things. Advice please?

ANYWAY... I needed the car back on the road. I need to go to the hardware store and pick up some things before I can finish this project. That meant putting some of the stuff I'd taken out back in.

First to bodge in the instrument bezel. I decided if I could put a flat piece of metal between the two bottom mount points, it would sit quite nicely on the plastic shelf behind the steering wheel. Now, I thought to myself, with all the junk I have in my office, wouldn't it be nice if I could just go in there and find a perfectly sized piece of metal with holes already drilled in exactly the right spots?



Holy s**t! I went into my office and found... a perfectly sized piece of metal with holes already drilled in exactly the right spots. Seriously, I didn't drill or cut that at all. I took it right off a junked metal frame for something that I'd scavenged from somewhere or other. Fear me, universe, for my powers are mighty!



Secondly I needed the wiring harness to go back in. Time to get with the unplugging. Always carefully mark what you disconnect so that it becomes even more annoying when the permanent marker wears off in a day.



Peeled the harness off the fascia and plugged in the bezel:


Headlight switch, now a la carte:


In she goes. Hook up the speedo cable and we're back in business. Looks like crap but it'll drive around fine.



...WELL, almost. Turns out you need the hazard light switch installed for the turn signals to work. D'oh. Fortunately I discovered this as I was turning from the campus onto the very quiet, wooded street that goes to the entrance. Back to the office we go; took the switch out of the fascia and popped it on the end of the cable. Worked perfect.

At this point my fingers were innundated with even more Goo, so you get no pic.

That's it for now! Tune in tomorrow for another installment of "how to expend significant amounts of time and energy making your car worse!" Well, I may have dampened the car's appeal to potential hot dates, but at least I haven't broken anything yet. Don't worry, I'll find a way soon.

1. Think the mystery 'transponder' is an active aerial.
2. The 2-Wege box is not standard Lotus and divides up the sound -- usually in a 2 way into either high (tweeter) and the rest or low(woofer) and the rest.
3. Keep the photos and comments are coming -- best laugh I've had in ages.

Love the knitting and 'loosely crimped' connections!

Similar Bosch windscreen aerial....


Just had a though: As the body is fibreglass, there's no need to mount the windscreen aerial on the windscreen - it could have been mounted inside a body panel!

I do silly things, just start pulling things apart and then stand back and think 's**t!!!'

Really good write up Jay i wish id taken more photos of the first day of wishbone removal.

Like an idiot I forgot it was a holiday today (not Victoria Day over here - some Christian thing, don't ask me...) so I went into my office this morning and of course there was no one else there. Well, I figured if I was there anyway, might as well do a bit more work on this thing...

So you'd think that in behind the face vents you would find some ducting, air, maybe a little dust, mould, and possibly mouse poops. Well in my car you might find all that (thankfully minus the mould and mouse poops), but you would also find... tweeters!




I have to say, I did think this was pretty clever... except that they were just sitting in there stuck in blobs of hot glue. Now I love my hot glue as much as the next guy, but there are right ways and wrong ways to mount speakers. This is not one of the 'right' ways.

Regardless, I tested them with my laptop, and they didn't sound very good, so out they came...

Speaker testing:


This worked surprisingly well. It even had enough power to drive the rears, although it didn't make for what you would call high fidelity. I now know two things that I didn't before: that all four standard speakers work, and more importantly, which wires go to which speakers, as the original wires were on the "unlabeled" side of those 2-way splitter things.

Masking tape - the tape of PROGRESS.


Empty! Maybe now the airflow in the cabin will be a bit better... Well, after I bodge the HVAC controls back in anyway.


Oh yeah, speaking of those 2-way splitter things, I still had one left in the car. Out!


Remember how I said it looked like a tidy install? Well it was as tidy as you could get with a ginormous blob of rubber weatherproofing tape.


Sigh...

Another mystery cable splice, this one way over on the left past the glove box. It's the black wire spliced into the purple wire just before the connector here:

Testing with a voltmeter failed to determine what it does. Does purple always mean +12V?

What the heck is this? Random turnable knob on the right side behind the glove box, right next to the centre console... It wasn't secured in any way, just sitting in there loosely.


It is starting to look cleaner in here, just a few more mystery wires to go:


Two permanent +12V lines?


The electrical manual doesn't mention this one. I would have guessed 12V from the ignition switch, but the mighty voltmeter tells me that it doesn't seem to do anything. I wish I could remember what it was connected to on the old stereo, but like a numpty I just snipped it off in order to get the thing out. There's no corresponding bit on the old harness, so now you can guess which body of water I went up without a paddle.


This is a nice, thick one. Also does nothing. I'm willing to bet I'll find the other end of it in the battery box, disconnected.


Weight savings!


Colin Chapman would undoubtedly approve of this additional lightness. However he would, I suspect, scoff condescendingly at the notion that I'll be replacing some of it.

TJi wrote:What the heck is this? Random turnable knob on the right side behind the glove box, right next to the centre console... It wasn't secured in any way, just sitting in there loosely.

Isn't that the CO adjustment pot?

I don't think so? My car is closed loop/cat, so I shouldn't have one? It also doesn't sound like the description in the Wiki page (i.e. not fixed to anything, not blue, has knob rather than slot screw to adjust.)

I'll have a better look at it tomorrow when it's light out.

TJi wrote:What the heck is this? Random turnable knob on the right side behind the glove box, right next to the centre console... It wasn't secured in any way, just sitting in there loosely.

How many and what colour wires are going into the turnable knob?

Haven't done much on this in the last couple days, too busy at work. I'm pretty happy with how much I've been able to simplify the under-dash wiring though. Here's a quick update...

Here's a couple more pics of the mystery knob:


Seems to be important so I'm not going to touch it...

The yellow wire under the centre console terminates at this bigass fuse here:

I'm just going to leave it in case I need to draw power from back there for some reason in the future.

BTW it's really hard to get at the battery with an SPC rollbar installed! I hope I don't have to replace it anytime soon:


So I had a couple of nasty cracks in the fascia itself. Here's probably the worst of them:



How the heck am I going to fix that?! Well, first I needed something the right shape to brace it in position. I knew this would come in handy!


I save all my old toothbrushes when I stop using them, y'know, on my teeth. Never know when you'll need a toothbrush for something.

Add a strap to keep the ends tight:


Hey! Remember this thing?


It will live on as an integral part of my car...





I'm sure I'll find out later that it was a priceless tapestry stolen from the Sultan of Johor's collection in 1862 or something like that, but for now it gives up a nice, high-tensile piece of woven fabric that will hopefully keep my styrofoam dash together. Plus they told me in elementary school that recycling is good.



I'll wait for the glue to dry and see how that turns out. Not sure if it was the right stuff to use on this.

I was all gung-ho to rattle-can the fascia black, but now I'm having second thoughts about doing something that permanent to it. I'd eventually like to dye the whole intereior black (not a fan of the faded grey) but it's going to be ages before I get around to that. Has anyone got a pic of a blacked out fascia against a grey dashboard so I can see how it looks?

In the second pic it looks to have a capillary tube coming off it, so it senses temp of some kind? aux switch for fan? aux switch for electric cooling pump?

saska wrote:

TJi wrote:What the heck is this? Random turnable knob on the right side behind the glove box, right next to the centre console... It wasn't secured in any way, just sitting in there loosely.

How many and what colour wires are going into the turnable knob?

I had some pics in the LGM thread under projects major. My facia is wraped in black suede. Deffo the dog's.....

Fantastic job on the cleanup!!! I did the same when I bought mine almost 10 years ago. Looks as though yours had quite the stereo installed by monkeys. MB Quart is decent gear. Wish they did a better install.

Thanks Marie, I just checked out your thread (for the eleventy-billionth time, heh. Your car is a huge inspiration...) That does look pretty good. If I can get all the goo cleaned off for the paint job, black it is. Mine won't be suede though, I'm not posh enough for that.

I'm thinking I might put the tweeters back in (or rather, new ones) with the crossover boxes. I reckon I can fit 6x9s in the rear speaker boxes and maybe find room for a small sub + amp somewhere (where? I have no idea.) I don't want to go overboard though. Not exactly hard to break into a soft-top.