Black s.e. re-shell and chassis

[jimbob]

Yesterday consisted of fitting the new handbrake cable which allowed me to fit the centre console, also fitted the sill trims and the seats and then managed to fit the plastic trims and a new seal into the hood stowage compartment. Im holding off fitting the carpets into the hood stowage compartment until I fit the boot lid because I have to adjust the hinges to suit and one of the carpets is glued over the top of the hinge plates.

[jimbob]

I spent most of the day today fitting the boot lid, rear bumper, rear lamps, no plate plinth, spoiler and hood stowage lid. It only took 2 hours to fit these parts and then another 10 or 12 hours to get them to fit so I had half decient gaps. There is no way they spent that much time at the factory getting the gaps right, I reckon most elan gaps have been tweeked by their owners or a local garage at one time or another. It was quite frightening to see the way the rear spoiler was sitting when I first sat it on the boot lid. A tip if anyone else has their back end in bits, start with the bumper and get it lined up with the rear wings, line the rear lamps up with the bumper, line the no plate plinth and brows up with the rear lamps, fit the boot lid, centralise and adjust height to suit plinth and brows and now fit the spoiler





what the hell did I do with those plastic shims


If you get it to fit first time then your a lucky devil


Anyway I only tried on the bits now so once they are painted (hopefully this weekend) I won't have to handle them so much.

[Mike Y]

Spot on work Jamie!!!

You will need the patience of a saint to shim up the front top shell and set the panel gaps for all the various parts believe me the rear rear end is a just a taster of a hell of a lot more to come.

Your attention to detail is brilliant (a man after my own heart).

Regards Mike

[johnny]

Coming along just lovely.





And i had trouble fitting a new Hazzard switch.

When finished, PM me your address, im gonna send you a voulcher for a or two for your hard work.




This car is not to see any rain.. Do you hear me young man.

[jimbob]

Looking forward to the beer/s,don't you mean with regards to the rain thing - it won't be seeing a drop, and if I wash it, it will be with deionised mineral water and then 6 hours with a chamois and a hair dryer. Come to think of it, I don't think the car will ever see Donington unless they move it to May onwards (too much salt on the roads up here)

[jimbob]

Spot on work Jamie!!!

You will need the patience of a saint to shim up the front top shell and set the panel gaps for all the various parts believe me the rear rear end is a just a taster of a hell of a lot more to come.

Your attention to detail is brilliant (a man after my own heart).

Regards Mike

No worries Mike patience is a thing I do well don't know about the saint thing though

[jimbob]

Here are the front upper wishbones I purchased from the surplus stock sale along with the progeron I bought prevously. Lotus must have a new policy of coating things in yellow passivative coating and cathodic black primer. Incedentially the yellow coating won't last long in this country and the cathodic primer should be overcoated.

You guys over in the states are so lucky with your climate!

Anyway, made good use of the spray booth last night and pressed the new bushes in this morning,should be painting some of the body panels today / tomorrow.

[GeoffSmith]

I phoned Adwest and they told me that they no longer had the tooling and couldn't recon my rack

Have you come across this thread though?

Geoff

[jimbob]

I phoned Adwest and they told me that they no longer had the tooling and couldn't recon my rack

Have you come across this thread though?

Geoff

Thats a good find , but it does raise questions as to why lotus hold such low stock levels of such important parts e.g power steering pump to rack pipes - now obsolete

Ford have / had a fairly good system called lifeline where the manufacturer would fax every main dealer in the country with part nos to see if anyone had key parts in stock and then they in turn would sent any parts they had to the dealer in question, this would go a little way to addressing the problems we encounter.

[GeoffSmith]

e.g power steering pump to rack pipes - now obsolete

I had a leak from the brazing around the exit pipe from the PAS pump and the pipe wouldn't come out of the rack without damage, so I had a new one made up by Pirtek. It wasn't cheap at ~£100, but they did a great job and they reclaimed and re-brazed the banjo union to the pump and had standard formed pipe for the rack connection.

Geoff

PS it's starting to look very, very good.

[Mike Y]

Pirtek are very good and have branches all over the country.

Lotus do not keep stock of a lot of parts (even the S1 Elise is now suffering from this) This is purely down to there current owners Proton.
They believe once a car is out of production they select not to renew certain components to stock (in particular slow moving parts such as PAS pipes). This I have been told from a Lotus insider is partly due to the bosses not fully understanding the classic status Lotus cars achieve, I believe this is also part of an underlying cultural difference also.

Can anyone name a classic Malaysian car?

Regards Mike

[Paul.P]

Can anyone name a classic Malaysian car?
Regards Mike

Didn't know the Malaysians had been making cars long enough to be called classics

[jimbob]

[jimbob]

Got the bits painted at the weekend - boot lid, spoiler, hood stowage lid, rear bumper, fuel flap, and N/S A panel. Most of the parts have now been flatted and polished and are back on the car with exeption of the hood stowage lid + A panel, a job for the next lot of days off. Spray booth before and after pics enclosed.

[jimbob]

Enclosed pics of the finished back end, spent the whole of today fitting the soft top - a real pain in the ass job, but I have to say Im reasonably happy with its new fit and operation, don't fancy fitting these things for a living though. Enough to drive you to drink.

Rear lights will be coming back off for a clean up and polish.

Oh, and another bit of factory bling that came yesterday for under the bonnet.

[Ekapol]

Very inspiring. Top rated! Way to go!

[Gazza]

jimbob

If you are going to take the rear lights out, why don't you change the indicator lenses to clear ones.

They look excellent on dark cars.

Gazza

[jimbob]

jimbob

If you are going to take the rear lights out, why don't you change the indicator lenses to clear ones.

They look excellent on dark cars.

Gazza

Hmm sounds alright, but I want to keep things as close to factory as possible, with the exception of an upgrade or two under the bonnet.

Today consisted of cutting the chassis up to be scrapped, after a little work with the measuring tape I discovered that the front bulkhead part of the chassis was back 20mm on the n/s. No wonder the n/s/f wheel appeared to be closer to the sill than the o/s.

Started on the engine today also, fitted the new oe water pump and the cam belt idler and tensioner pulleys that came from the states. Also cleaned up the rear hub carriers and got my rear brake caliper brackets blasted and into primer.

The local guy who does the blasting seems quite good so I took the anti roll bars and the front strut yokes round to him, so should be interesting to see what they turn out like.

Looks like I'll have to get a sump as the one thats on the engine just now has a nasty bash in it at its lowest point.

One of the other jobs I have to do on the engine is a couple of noisy tappets which may or may not just be air in them. If it is air, how did it get in there? Am I right in assuming that the tappets are a "dead end" with regards to the oil flow? The lotus service notes state when priming the tappets use a "light oil" as engine oil is too thick, what kind of oil do you think they are reffering to? Or would I get off with using warm - hot engine oil?

[lotuska]

Jimbob, check out the videos I did when I did my tappets...Videos...last but one posting on this page.

I used duck oil instead of engine oil, I tried to warm engine oil but it just didn't work that well.

As how the air gets into the tappet is anyones guess, it is a one way valve, all I can assume is that dirty oil prevents the little valve from sealing completely and it simply drains out.

[Mike Y]

Hi Jamie,
When I had the car it had 26,000 on the clock it always got noisy when layed up. I used to let it idle until warm then hold the revs at 3000 for a minute or so then switch off. leave for 15 mins come back start it up and hold the revs at 3000 again increasing to 4000 then switch off. I found if I repeated this procces the tappet noise would gradually reduce then vanish. I have repeated this proccess on other Elans I have owned and it works. Juf's has during its life been well serviced engine wise so I do not think tappet replacement etc would be required. This has happened to all my Elans when not used for a few months even with regular engine starting if the engine is not fully warmed up and sustained at revs held for periods of time gradually the tappets start to rattle. I think it is a slow proccess of the tappets oil draining out of them rather than air entering.

Regards Mike