The Lotus Grand Tourers

This might be of some help

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10272&hilit=rear+lights

Also a guy in the Club Lotus Staffordshire branch is restoring an Eclat/Excel (early one) and writes an article for the Newsletter each month. Here is what he did with his lights.



Also page 78 of Absolut Lotus magazine issue 21 has an interesting article showing what an Esprit owner (same light unit) did with his.

The rear bumper repaint and light improvements took rather longer than planned, but finally got car rebuilt and on the road last Saturday evening ready for the Hinckley day out on Sunday.
Quick test drive turned out to be not so quick with eventual return home on a recovery truck - Silky Red had turned into Sulky Red and she clearly wasn't interested in attending the Hinckley show.

Instinct was telling me it was fuel starvation, but as often happens, when I tried the car first thing Sunday, pump pulsed away as it should, car started first time and may well have been OK for the 40 mile drive - But I didn't trust it. Maybe there is muck in the Fuel filter I was thinking.

Diagnosis : Took all apart this afternoon including lifting carb tops, and not a spot of muck anywhere, But I think I know the problem:

I'm pretty sure there should be an O ring on the central boss that the filter sits on. Then fuel enters the filter on the outside, flows through the paper filter to the inside, then up the centre and exits.
But on mine no inner O ring. My initial instinct was that it simply meant fuel bypassed the paper element and went straight to the carbs unfilter. Hence this wasn't the route cause of my FTRH ( fail to return home).
But on reflection, without the inner O ring, the top steel plate of the filter element is in direct annular contact with both the inner and outer steel rings, severely restricting the fuel delivery. Maybe most of the time there's enough clearance for the fuel under pressure to sneak through, but just occasionally it closes and starves the fuel. Wait 10 minutes, and enough fuel passes to drive a bit further - which was the symptoms I experienced.

That's my theory anyway. Just need to get a new filter set with seals, cross my fingers and just maybe it's sorted.

Tony

Very pleased to report my thoughts above appear correct.
Got a new filter with seals and it was a smaller diameter than the old filter.!!
So - wrong filter fitted and no seal resulting in severely restricted fuel flow.

Since I got the car, I'd had a flat spot when accelerating around 2000 RPM. Bad enough that in 3rd, you couldn't accelerate from around 2000 without dropping a gear. - THE FLAT SPOTS NOW GONE . Seems it was caused by fuel starvation.
This maybe also explains the events back in July when it just didn't want to start, - then a few days later it did - and certainly the reason for not getting it to Hinckley.

New rear tyres and an MOT next week.

Tony

Excellent result Tony! Great work.

Cheers, Richard

Good one! I wonder if other people's experience of flat spots could be similarly related - old, partially clogged filters?

Pete

Good thinking. Another issue to add to the list of causes for flat spots.

Re: fuel pump faiure. When my fuel pump slowly died I had intermittant fuel stavation but there was no ever-present flat spot as such. It was more a case that the engine died completely, apparently at random, then recovered, with recovery times getting progressively worse as the pump further deterioated to the point it needed a 'smack' during the journey to get me back home.

One notable condition of my pump failure which came to light despite the apparent randomness, was starvation occuring once warmed-up, the warm-up-to-failure period getting shorter as the pump deterioated further over the longer term.

A replacement pump was the permanent fix. Fuel filter wasn't touched.

The conditional circumstances help to point to the cause.

The worst area for lacquer peal is (was) on my boot lid - Two patches, one each side, both fairly large.

Ooops !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Got carried away with that razor blade again last week ( see earlier post on paint repair in this thread) :



- And only a couple of weeks before the NEC show. Best get busy.

Tony

Paint it black. Excel Sprint!

Cheers, Richard

MetBlue wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 23, 2021 17:54

The worst area for lacquer peal is (was) on my boot lid - Two patches, one each side, both fairly large.

Ooops !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Got carried away with that razor blade again last week ( see earlier post on paint repair in this thread) :



- And only a couple of weeks before the NEC show. Best get busy.

Tony

Didn’t your mother warn you about picking as would only make it bigger

It's happened again!!!!!!!!!! One job leads to 3, or in this case 5 or 6.

Last weekend, took the heater console panel out to access the cables to get some oil down them and free up a little. An afternoons job surely, then back on the road.

Then I diagnose that the internal cable to the heater diverting flaps is almost solid - unhooked the cable at both ends and could hardly move the cable, so it needed to come out. But to access the lower clamp of the outer cable, the radio / clock panel needed to come out.
Then the though process went something like :
- Really ought to recolour that centre leather dash before refit.
- if I'm going to recolour that bit, then best do the rest of the dash at the same time.
- OK. To do that properly I need to remove the black centre binnacle. I know that's not easy having read all about others trauma for this job.

So now I have the dash area in many bits scattered to the 4 corners of the garage. - but the all important central binnacle still resisting all attempts at removal.

Whilst in there, I have a job to do on the wiper. Often now when in use, I hear a kind of relay chatter for about 1/3 of the return sweep. I'm thinking it could be the Pretron? module, but appreciate any other thoughts.
I'll also do the instrument lights at the same time. Think some red LED's are the solution as a number of those little red rubber socks are either missing or perished.

Tony

And you're supposed to be starting on the Elite again!

Pete

leave the wiper module, just dont use it on intermittent. no chatter then

Hawaiis0 wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 10, 2021 23:42

leave the wiper module, just dont use it on intermittent. no chatter then

The chatter is there Irrespective of wiper mode. Doesn't do it every sweep, but it doesn't sound nice. A bit sparky - which makes me nervous. Anyone know if the control module is just stuck to the top of the peddle box with double sided tape? I can't see any obvious fastener, but it's pretty well stuck down.

Tony

Tony they are normally just floating from my experience. PO interference I think.

My module chatters on intermittent only but is fine on constant.

Just had a look at mine, looks/feels like it's stuck on with double sided tape.

Edited to add in a picture - has mounting lugs, but they don't appear to be used.....



Neil