Lotus Europa Community

The Europa has a very light front end.  In order for the brakes to work properly, you need weight transfer to occur before serious braking begins -- very much like a motorcycle.  Pads with a high initial bite may well lead to the fronts simply locking.

From personal experience, green stuff pads will fade in severe use.  Mintex 1144s are better.

 
Good first post Horace.
As 4129R says drill the bolts out and replacements are available from Rimmers. As an aside, where you are is near to http://www.guglielmimotorsport.co.uk/. Thoroughly recommend him for any Europa suspension issues and setting up. He has done a few Europa's and mine was a different car after a visit. I'm in Oxfordshire so not too far from you.

Cheers Neil

 

....from a wet west country

That sounded scary. Think i'd bin the lock aswell

.....hmmm update just nipped to where I keep my S2 and it's not quite as easy to remove the locking rod as I'd imagined. So have left a working steering lock alone for time being.

I want to add the first questions:

• Washing the car, I experienced loads of water collecting in the spare wheel compartment. I assume somewhere must be a drain hole or even a drain valve, but it is missing on my car (no spare wheel, holes are shut). Can you give me the position and a suitable solution? Do you have some further recommendations to keep the water out of the car as good as possible?
• There is no seatbelt installed to the car, is it possible that there was none for some of the S1s? For example in Germany there was no obligation to install them to new cars until 1974.

Hi and  from (sometimes) sunny Lincolnshire !

Locked steering sounds very scary, you've dodged a bullet with that one. 

I don't know for certain but would guess that the lock is most likely Triumph, the one on my '72 TC definitely is but I think the later cars had a re-designed steering controls ?   It might be worth scanning the Rimmer catalogue to see if you recognise anything ?  Personally I'd be tempted to take it off and remove the locking mechanism, no-one is going to steal these cars for a joy ride and if someone does want it they'll turn up with a low loader in the night. A steering lock isn't going to stop them.

As for brakes, there's a fair bit of info on this forum about pad material and I guess you'll know most of it from the Westfield.  The summary seems to be Greenstuff for initial bite & dusty wheels, personally I've gone for Mintex 1144 pads without a servo but I guess everyone has their own favourite.

Brian