Lotus Europa Forums > Garage

3780R Resto - Engine Restart

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EuropaTC:
One thing that's occured to me during the day about this question is the simple fact that if you can drive the car then you're in a far better position to do a full scale renovation should you need to, and that's a really big plus.

I drove my Elan for probably 3 or maybe even 4 years before embarking on the chassis change.  By that point I had lists of all the things I wanted to do and had been collecting parts for months; it was definitely a planned job and went like clockwork with the car off the road for less than a week.

The Europa took far longer. I'd driven it for years but the chassis problems came as a surprise, it wasn't that well planned and took ages to sort it out.  But even so I knew the health of all the mechanical components and so knew that putting the gearbox back untouched (for example) was going to work. 

I'm not going to argue that a body off, chassis up rebuild will be better because of course it will.

However it's also the most expensive and time consuming thing you can do because you either take the risk that "the gearbox will be fine" or you overhaul everything. Even outsourcing jobs that's not going to happen quickly, just look how long some restorations have taken on this forum (and we're all enthusiastic about the cars).

If it's a pile of bits then that's entirely different and there's nothing to do apart from a full rebuild. But John & BDA are right, if it's running, drive it. At least then you'll know if you like the car and would be prepared to spend weeks/months of your time and certainly a ton of cash in rebuilding it.

BDA:
I would also say that it's very difficult (at least for me) to do a limited restoration. There is always something else to fix up!  :)

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