Elan S2 advice requested

[B_land]

If I can arrange time this weekend I'm hoping to look at this elan being sold on Autotrader. It is a bit of a journey and have asked seller to send further pics to confirm condition etc, The engine bay looks clean and It does need a new roof, but I'll be using it in good weather with roof down and will eventually get round to replacing it sometime.
However what concerns me is the windscreen which shows some problems with the sun strip, I've not seen this before and wondered if this is an easy & relatively cheap fix. There is also some repair to the roof which looks like araldite but I cannot make out what this is and whether this can be sorted cheaply?

http://www2.autotrader.co.uk/classified ... ?logcode=p

Grateful for any advice.

The car is in Surrey (GU15) if any member has a free hour this weekend to help with the viewing.

Thanks

Bruce

[Fredjohn]

Bruce
Car looks clean and tidy, but roof will cost about £1200 to replace and cracked/araldited internal roof panel is no longer available. Might be able to find one at Don Valley Breakers (Steve Strange) on flea-bay, but they charge a fortune for everything (eg £20 for switch blanks!!) Just check out their prices. Not everyone's favourite breaker on LEC.

Knowing the cambelt/water pump was recently changed and a good service history is always good news.
Personally not sure about the windscreen: might be water ingress and delamination/cracking, but someone on here is sure to know.

However, you may be buying a unique car: it has folding rear seats and will be a boon if you have small kids

Seriously though, read the buyers guide on this site: full of things to look for and beware of.

Good luck!

John

[Jeemy]

Not much experience, but that looks like moisture ingress to the windscreen laminate. Unfixable. A new windscreen can be had for £138 plus vat, alternativley it won't fail Mot unless it spreads into the wiper blade span. Might never get any worse either. You can cover with black window tint vinyl.......

[hatters]

Not much experience, but that looks like moisture ingress to the windscreen laminate. Unfixable. A new windscreen can be had for £138 plus vat, alternativley it won't fail Mot unless it spreads into the wiper blade span. Might never get any worse either. You can cover with black window tint vinyl.......

+1

[B_land]

Thanks for the replies.
Is the front hood panel the same on the SE and S2? Will it function correctly?

Thanks

B

[jHamshaw]

Thanks for the replies.
Is the front hood panel the same on the SE and S2? Will it function correctly?

Thanks

B

I can confirm that as I did the same on my S2 - completely interchangeable, and the SE ones are made of a darker, more flexible plastic as opposed to what seems like the stale cheese that the S2 ones are made from....

About 70 quid from Douglass Valle Breakers, though, IIRC....

[B_land]

Thanks JIm
How did you go about changing the panel.
Did you provide the replacement to your fitter when they changed the hood?

B

[Jeemy]

There's as far as I am concerned absolutely no reason why you can't take that panel off, either break/cut out the Araldite or sand it flat, and then wrap it with vinyl and put it back on. Fibreglass is super-easy to work with and you could further repair it with that, once dry you can just sand it like wood.

Putting the vinyl on a shape like that is really easy, if you heat it with a hairdryer it goes floppy and you can push or stretch it into shape. It'll more than likely either be held on with screws or push fittings which you may break on removal.

£70 isn't much for a new piece considering it'll probably take you an hour to remove, an hour to sand & fix, and maybe 2-3 hours struggling before you get the knack and get the vinyl to stick - plus wastage costs. 5-6 hours work getting it perfect compared to £70 for the part, 1-2 hours removing and replacing and no vinyl costs......just weigh it up. Service Manual might show you how it comes off.

In fact I just checked, section VD10 tells you, its called a header rail, you just pull the sun visor hinge covers and the top ends of the A-pillar trims and remove the screws underneath. I've just realized I am going to have to remove these and cover them to match the rest of the trim!

[B_land]

Jeemy
Very interesting reply and now seriously considering as the breakers do not have a replacement and I'm keen to get a new hood fitted. I need to do some research and see if I can do a quality job, i'm prepared to spend the time on it if there is a positive result. My only reservations would be whether the repair would be noticeable (desired finish), and have the required strength.
Grateful if you could recommend appropriate reading material for this type of work.

B

[jHamshaw]

Thanks JIm
How did you go about changing the panel.
Did you provide the replacement to your fitter when they changed the hood?

B

IIRC just a dozen or so allen-head bolts (hood catches and 3 or 4 in the middle behind that odd bit of fabric in your picture - I'm pretty sure that's non-standard? ) to remove and replace - easy 20-minute job independent of anything else....

[Jeemy]

B,

I honestly think you can do a good job on this. Use youtube to have a look at the technique for vinyl repair/replacement - the 3M vinyl under heat will change from a standard vinyl consistency to almost a clingfilm-like one - it gets very floppy and will "waver in the wind" - your job is then to have good tools to push it down and out and around; small rollers for wallpaper edging (also good for testing drive belt noise), plastic cards and pusher tools, spatulas, golf or squash balls for corners, that kind of thing.

The problem is going to be matching the vinyl colour. My interior (and I am going to replace it so I might not be averse to swapping panels and covering yours in my leather, you take mine as-is, but it might not match) is a bluey-black - sun aging and dye differences over the years are key here.

I have bought 2, but never used either, 3M Vinyl Repair kits - these are a kit with an amount of various dyes, and various patterns. For presumably chemical reasons, they are not easily available in the UK - they are only $20 each but Autogeek.net whom I got mine from are a minimum $100 spend for UK delivery and the charges aren't easy to bear.

With these you can technically dye/wash the vinyl and cure the black with some brown, blue, grey etc to bring it into line and even heat and then press the leathergrain pattern into it with various sizes of grain template.

But really, its at the top of your eyeline, the sun is pushing past it and it depends how much of a perfectionist you are - I work as hard as I can on things until they become too much to bear and then live with the fact its the best I can do - I'd say even if it doesn't match, if you can get the technique down, as long as the panel itself is consistent, the overall effect will be good to the eye.

With regard to strength I am not sure how much strength you require here…..the hood clips locate into metal and I haven't researched this area thoroughly although as noted above, I really need to; but I can't believe they locate into the header panel only. I would guess the metal reciving plates locate into the usual Elan captive nuts secured by fibreglass, across the header rail of the windscreen which has to be strong enough to protect you from dying when you flip the car….... I cannot stress enough how super-easy fibreglass is to work with, and re-do if you make a mistake. East Coast fibreglass do an all-in-one repair kit with measuring cups, glass compound, hardener, matting, wooden stirrers, and instructions which you'll find either on ebay under car repairs or on windsurf/surf board repair sites. Thats what I've got and with a pack of 10 5ml syringes from the local chemist and a pack of 100 30ml measuring cups from Amazon, it will last a lifetime off 1l of fibreglass main material.

It might take 2-4 sheets of vinyl before you get the technique down pat, but its a lot easier than the centre cover I did and although I STILL made a bit of a botch of it, it looks great as part of the whole.

[Jeemy]

OK, I've just been and grabbed one of these 3M vinyl & leather repair kits for a look. They contain 7 different heat cure repair compounds - black, brown, blue etc. They are PVC - polyvinylchloride, diluted with Dinonyl Phthalate and pigments. I would guess you can mix them. They come with a set of 3 grain papers, a heat transfer tool and a practice vinyl piece. The vinyl adhesive included seems to be used to fill in the repair, then you heat an iron, use the iron to heat the transfer tool, then lay the sheet of grain paper over the top and rub the hot transfer tool on to cure the vinyl adhesive/filler and embed the grain. Then you rub the dye over the top.

I'd guess mixing blue, black and brown, you could make up an overpaint dye that would work. I've had brilliant results using a rag with good paint and rubbing it over stone-chipped bonnets, then polishing, to remove 1000 stone chips at once.

So I'd say if you can get a PVC vinyl dye in black and one in blue, you could mix up a custom color and rub it over. You can have one of these kits if you want for what it cost me to buy plus what it cost me to ship. I just don't know if there is enough here to wipe over a whole panel like this. Hycote vinyl spray paint is something I am looking at for my van dash & doors as a refurb in place type of deal. Let me know. I think this could be easy and rewarding with the right repair kit.

[B_land]

Thanks Jeemy
I take ownership of the elan on Saturday I'll then get a good look at the panel, can gauge on the cracking and whether it has spread.