Restoration of 2358R

[Roger]

How odd! I started my motoring life with Austin Sevens and other Olde English cars, and have a full set of BSB spanners and sockets. However, I didn't need them at all for my Europa, 2345R, only 13 away from yours. AF and metric fitted everything apart from a couple of electrical instances of BA.

[BDA]

Roger, did you have the original nuts on your bumper bolts? It might be possible that you dealt with replacements that are more "normal". I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me that the nuts on the bumper bolts might be something odd (at least in relation to the rest of the car). I believe it was my Lola race car that had some odd 10-32 nuts to hold the windscreen on the body. The screws were "normal", but I didn't have an SAE or metric wrench to fit those nuts. Maybe they were BS (hows that for an appropriate anacronym?).

[Roger]

I'm pretty sure they're original, and since they almost certainly were a Ford part, it's surprising to find such an old thread type. Are they fine or Whitworth threads?
Hardly any BSF or BSW were being made by the 70s.

[Certified Lotus]

Whitworth threads. I was equally surprised. And now that I have the tools will probably never need them 😎

[Roger]

Out of curiosity I checked mine today, and I suspect you're right and they've been replaced at some time. They're M8x1.25.

[Certified Lotus]

This week two more boxes of parts from RD Enterprises. I'm always amazed at the inventory of parts Ray & George have and they are very quick in shipping them. As mentioned last week I took the front and rear bumpers off with just a bit of difficulty and while bagging all the bolts for use when I reassemble noted that they all need to be re-chromed (along with my bumpers).  Did a quick check of how much it would cost to re-chrome these along with my bumpers and the price RD wanted for new ones. Easy answer, RD's chrome bumper bolts were half the price!

Also found out that George is in the midst of restoring a Europa S2!  He has a great project and Ill have to make sure I see it in person next time I stop by to pick up parts.

Yesterday was Kyle Kaulback's winter stress reliever at his Lotus Barn, an annual even that is not to be missed. So instead of working on my car I drove the 2 hours (one way) to Kyle's and met up with all the Lotus faithful to talk about everything Lotus. I was fortunate enough to meet a number of Europa owners and got them all talking about their cars (that was easy to do) and their individual experiences with maintaining and rebuilding them. The stories covered vast subject matter, all valuable and for further thought at a later point in time while I'm rebuilding my car. One thing I will say about Europa owners, they are extremely faithful to their model of Lotus car!

[Lou Drozdowski]

Glen, As we discussed yesterday...these are the chaps I used for some bits of chroming. They are quite close to you in Philadelphia.    www.precisionchrome.com

[Certified Lotus]

Thanks Lou! I will be reaching out to them to get a quote. They are the closest facility yet!

[andy harwood]

"Kyle Kaulback's winter stress reliever at his Lotus Barn"
Now this looks like a lot of fun!

[tedtaylor]

That's my yellow M100 Elan behind the Europa S2 !!! 

[Certified Lotus]

My friend Bruce came over yesterday with his recently acquired '72 Europa Twin Cam to show me his latest acquisition, discuss the transaxle and brake work he just did and let me drive his car down a couple of local country roads.  Bruce inspired me years ago to start searching for a Lotus Elan as he has a great early Elan that I admired and it kept appearing at various Lotus events just to keep me inspired.  His Europa is in fantastic original condition and the weber head engine is exactly what I am doing to my car (more on that later).

Bruce keeps up with my regular postings on the projects I am working on and was surprised I wasn't further along on my Europa rebuild (he knows from past experience how quickly I get these rebuilds done). Well...... work got in the way, I've been traveling a lot, just back from a week of scuba diving in Little Cayman and most of all, with the body repainting not being completed until fall 2017 I'm not in a rush.

Just heard back from Quick Silver Racing regarding my twin cam engine they are rebuilding. Seems the weber head is in fantastic condition with no signs of being shaved down, valves like new, intake cam is a Cosworth cam and exhaust has been reground.  The block had been completely rebuilt many years ago and although lots of new parts, it looked like the engine had been started up to test with no oil as the bearings and crank were slightly scored. We went thru my list of requirements to build a 150HP engine with lots of mid-range torque that will run on 92 octane pump gas. Should be another month or so before its done and I go down to see it run on the dyno.

My current Europa list of work is to rebuild the front bake calipers, finish painting suspension parts, rebuild the steering rack and tear down the transaxle to soda blast the housing and then reassemble. Plus I need to install the new airhose system in my garage from the compressor. I'm getting too much moisture in my current setup and I am changing out the entire system with new supply hose and remote fittings, a couple of new pressure regulators and better moisture capture in two places.

Bruce's 72 Europa TC:

[BDA]

That's an insanely clean Europa! Something tells me you'll keep yours that clean too!

[EuropaTC]

ahh, now slightly off topic but of much current interest to me.....   that exhaust manifold peeking out looks to be a tubular one, and if so, do you have a better shot of it ?

The reason is I'm planning my next project for my newly acquired tig welder and I'm leaning towards making a tubular exhaust for my TC, which currently has the cast iron manifold. One problem I'm hitting at the moment is how to get all the primaries the same (or similar) lengths because the images I've seen of the SJS stainless manifolds look as if 1-4 are signficantly  different lengths, and if I'm going to make one I'd like to be reasonably on track with the theory.

So any pictures of what others have done would be appreciated.....   

Brian

[Certified Lotus]

Brian, interesting that you bring up the exhaust manifold might be a tubular made version.  Bruce and I were trying to figure out who made it.  I had a number of Jim Valentine's exhaust systems on my Exige and they were all well designed. I did not know that Tubular made headers for the twin cam.  Here is a better shot of them:

[EuropaTC]

 

Thanks, that's a great shot. And very interesting, is it a 4-2-1 or  4-1 going into a collector  like Roddymac has done ?  It is an interesting shot.  I hadn't thought of bringing the rearmost pipe out like that  and had discounted the 4-1 option because I didn't think it would fit. 

You can get tubular manifolds but not always without snags, one member of this forum couldn't get his newly purchased one to fit IIRC.

Another snag, like the one fitted to my Elan, is that the tubes are on the small side and branching 1-4, 2-3 results in a long pipe for #1 & short for #4, very much like the OEM casting.  From what I've read so far the idea is to get the primary tubes the same length for best results. With only guesswork to go on I'm working on Dave Vizard's recommendation of 13" lengths for a 4-2-1 system but very open to suggestions from what others have done. My default is to copy the commercial ones (SJS version below) but I'd like to try for better if I can.

Brian