Lotus Europa Community
Lotus Europa Forums => Garage => Topic started by: 4129R on Wednesday,June 17, 2015, 10:29:11 AM
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Does anyone know if there is a source where changes in specification for the 4 different marks of Europas is listed?
I know that Lotus are famous for using whatever supplier will send them stuff on credit, but is there anywhere that it is listed that from chassis number xxxx to yyyy, they were fitted with engine cover hold open gas struts, or from chassis number aaaa to bbbb they were fitted with Dellorto carbs, and from bbbb to cccc they were fitted with Weber 40 DCOEs?
It would just be good to know what the updates were, and when they happened. I know there is a Registry of S1s, S2s, T/Cs, and TCSs, but within any of those 4 distinctly different spec cars, is there any source of info on what changes in specification within a mark were made, and when?
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Lotus will give you all the information it has on your car (or, I suppose any Lotus VIN), but I'm not aware of anything with the granularity you're looking for. I'd check with them, you might be surprised (in any number of ways :) ) and it would likely be interesting.
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In one of the Europa books (I don't have them here, but I'll check next week if nobody finds out first) there's a chapter on the differences.
It starts off with the S1s and specifies what changes were made, which were quite frequent on the S1s.
Ex:
Chassis # xxx onwards: new rear bearing carrier design with grease seals.
But I am not sure how far this goes, it could be that it's only listed for the S1s.
It's in either the Paul Robinshaw and Dave Francis book or in the Lotus Europa Gold Portfolio.
Kind regards,
Serge
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I'm guessing it's the Robinshaw/Francis book that you're thinking of. They do give a list (rtf copy attached) but they also do disclaimer to say it isn't an exhaustive listing, just the main things. I doubt there's a detailed list and it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear of them fitting whatever they had to hand in order to get cars out.
My Elan is an S3 registered in June '68, which makes it after the S4 was announced. Although a Weber car it had the Stromberg bulge bonnet from new, plus it had the later vinyl seat trim from the S4 but S3 dash. As I often joked, "it's an S3.5".... getting back on track, with things like that going on I reckon we'd struggle to get that detailed list together.
Brian
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I found this to be pretty informative
(http://www.lotuseuropa.org/gallery/albums/album13/LotusEuropaBook.jpg)