Lotus Elite 1976 with V8 engine conversion

Lotus Elite 503. Made 1976. Bought by me in 2001. Fitted with Rover V8 engine by previous owner, stainless exhausts.

I am putting this page up simply because there are so few of these cars left on the road in any form, tatty or otherwise. If my experiences here can help anyone else keep one of these alive then it will be worth it.

Everything is divided into rough sections.

Description
Headlights use a VW/Audi window winder cable "winch" system to pull them down. Wheels are Rover 827 (very large offset needed to fit the rear suspension without wheels sticking out too far). Rear suspension is Jaguar XJ6 early with inboard discs. Stainless exhaust.

Bonnet bulge needed to clear air filter on Holley carb. Inlet manifold is already very low profile. Those old enough will notice the bulge is strangely similar to that on a Ford Capri.
Inlet manifold has been cut down and welded, you can see the weld line. This has been done to reduce height of carb and air filter to allow bonnet to (almost) fit. Bonnet still needed a small bulge grafting into it to make everything work.
Clutch to Rover 5 speed manual gearbox is hydraulic.
Master cylinders to brakes and clutch are both Lockheed and side by side.
This means there is no room for a brake servo/master cylinder combination. The solution to this has been to fit a remote servo. The are quite expensive new but if you can find them they were fitted to the old 7 series BMW's with the thin "A" pillars and also to the Rover P6 saloon I think.
The only space to fit the servo was the in the boot. This works fine but meant miles of brake pipe plumbing.

Radiator sprang leaks and was decrepit. Had it recored and cleaned up and refitted the fan housing (Ricketts Radiators Swansea). Not sure if the housing is from original Lotus or if it has been made from two fan housing from different models of car...note the big weld down the centre joining the two halves together.

Heater/demister was so bad I assumed the demister hoses had come off. Took whole thing apart to find a Mini heater mechanism working perfectly. The problem is just that
the Mini unit was always pretty feeble. It has obviously been used due to its small size. Some kit car suppliers now do very compact heater/demister units for small "seven" type cars with high output. These are expensive so on my "future mods" list.
Heater turned on and off via a Mini choke cable attached to a cable operated valve in the water hose from the engine to the heater matrix.
Headlamp up/down operated by an electric window rocker switch from a Renault.
Headlamp motor / wiring saga I will add at a later date.
Night illumination provided by a rear number plate light facing dash! I need to find a more subtle way of doing this.

Some of the original fake wood trim has now been fitted instead of the existing mock carbon fibre, thanks to Mike Taylor of LotusBits. The aerial plug coming out of the dash is meant to be there! It fits into the side of a mock cartridge for the 8-track player that is actually an FM radio. This sends the audio signal into the 8 track player via contact with the tape pick up of the player. Pic of this period accessory to follow soon.

Trim
Several items of interior trim were missing and the glovebox had the "carbon fibre look" finish to it. Interior was very dark indeed.

It really is no wonder these cars turned out so expensive to make. The man hours in each one must have been huge. Just to assemble a door must have taken a fair while. The wood effect door trim is made of thin steel with wood effect coating. Then a flimsy alloy trim is clipped on all around the outer edge and held in place with tape on the back. There are then about 6 projecting bolt threads on rear surface that have to be fed through holes in the inner door skin. A washer and nyloc nut is carefully done up on the back surface on all 6, two more hold the ash tray assembly in place.

The glovebox lid comes as two parts: the base of the glovebox and the flip down lid hinged at the bottom to the baseplate. To fit the lid you actually bolt the baseplate down in position with 4 small nuts on underside. This means doing it by touch or lying face up in the footwell to get the nuts on.

Engine mounting and front suspension
You can see here how the crossmember under the engine has had a "dropped" section welded into it to allow the engine to sit a little lower than it would have otherwise. Steering rack mounts have been fabricated.

Rather unusual trailing arm setup. Anti roll bar has been completely removed and replaced by trailing arm welded onto lower suspension arm. It rolls a bit on the corners now
! maybe previous owner built it just for drag racing as at one time it had a supercharger sticking out through the hood.

Changing front shock absorbers

Photos taken during change of front dampers.
The black stuff is not underseal. I scraped all this off one summer and painted whole chassis with POR15. This is a chemical anti-rust paint that is incredibly durable. If you get it on your skin you have to wait 2 weeks for it to "grow" off. I ended up in the heat of the summer wearing an old tracksuit top, eye goggles, hat, scarf with rubber gloves taped to the arms of the tracksuit top. I still managed to get small spots of the paint on my head. Since this grey paint is not UV stable I coated everything with black waxoyl just for good measure (it rains a lot over here, well it used to in the old days anyway).

Loosely reassembled front suspension after coilover shock removed.

The front suspension has a coil over shock arrangement. The plan was to take wheel off, undo top nut holding shock and undo lower bolt that runs sideways through lower suspension arm, lower the bottom suspension arm towards ground to open up some space and take out coil-over.
I had done something vaguely similar on my Renault 5 years ago when spring seat collapsed, so was reasonably confident.

No, of course it is not quite as simple as this.
The downward travel of the lower suspension arm is quite limited compared to many normal cars so it cannot be lowered to the ground to make space for the coil-over shock to come out.
I removed the two cross bolts holding the "Triumph Herald" upper wishbones to the top of the upright. These were loosened, one wishbone taken off and one folded upwards.
Next the top bolt of the coilover shock was removed. Lower one loosened but not removed yet.
Good quality (like everything I learned this the hard way long ago) coil spring compressors applied and the coil spring gradually compressed. The coil spring is not fully accessible so the spring compressors need to be applied to the lower half of the spring and as far towards each side as you can manage. They will even then not be quite evenly spaced but both slightly offset towards you.
Tighten them up slowly and keep levering the top of the shock down and loosening up the top rubber mount etc.
Try to pull the top of the shock out towards you first. Remove lower bolt and the shock "drops" further into the lower suspension arm a few mm just to give you a tiny bit more leeway at the top. When top is out towards you then wiggle everything around / lever / push and pull upwards until whole lot comes out of the lower suspension arm.
New Gaz shocks ordered and photo taken (below) of the compressed spring so I know exactly how to place the spring clamps back on again so the new spring/shock can be compressed enough and yet I can still get the assembly recessed back into the "Tower" that envelops the top half of the spring.
Next step while I wait for the shocks to come is some rust prevention behind spring while I have good access and especially the interior of the lower suspension arm.
The black stuff is not underseal. Last summer I scraped all underseal off metal parts with heatgun and painted with a chemical paint POR15 from Frosts. This is not UV stable so all metal parts then coated in Black Waxoyl for good measure. Not pretty but hopefully the combination will keep most rust at bay.
An update:
GAZ shocks are made to order and took a month to arrive (this morning). The price was very good however. Spent most of today fitting them.
Comments:
1) The springs seats are perfect and the spring is an exact fit over the inner metal locating ring at bottom end.
2) The shock is fully extended just before the lower suspension arm reaches its maximum downward travel. With previous shock the maximum downward suspension travel was limited by the lower arm hitting part of the chassis structure. Unlike the previous presumably original shock this means that when suspension at its maximum downward point, the shock is taking the residual force of the spring. The rubber bushes at the top of the shock are different sizes, the one located "on top" being quite small.
In the end I used a mixture of fittings from the top of the old shock and beefier topmost bushes.
3) The lower end of the shock sits in a hole in the lower suspension arm and a horizontal bolt then runs through the bush on the end of the shock. The base of the GAZ shock seems wider than on the previous one (not the bush but the body of the shock itself). To get the shock to sit sufficiently low enough for the horizontal bolt to go through the bush, this hole had to be widened about 2mm each side at two small points.
4) Compressing the springs was if anything easier than was the case when removing the old shocks.

Rear suspension removal and renovation

New coil-over shock absorbers were fitted, 2 each side. The mounting rings for the springs had to be recovered from old scrap shocks as new ones unavailable.
Rear diff working fine, calipers were removed for a recondition/rebuild. Drilled discs did not polish up, too rusty, so new discs found...about �25 each. You can see how on the Jaguar system the top link of the suspension actually IS the driveshaft to the wheel with a huge Hooke type universal joint at inner and outer ends.
All eventually finished and reinstalled. New pads, new discs, reconditioned calipers, whole handbrake adjustment mechanism dismantled, cleaned, greased and reassembled. New handbrake cable made in a single day by local company for �30 cash, and that included adjusters each end and some lathe work.

Exhaust

I thought it was even louder than usual when the rear mufflers (the only ones) rusted right through. The new ones are all stainless steel.

New air filter

One problem I have is ensuring adequate air flow to the Holley carb with a very small bonnet clearance. The previous owner actually punched holes in the existing foam filter as when on a rolling road he was told the filter was restricting the engine. This obviously ruined its filtration ability though! The question was how to accurately measure the clearance as the bonnet slopes and is not flat! I have been to some childrens parties recently with crisps, cake, the token sandwiches nobody eats anyway and lots of nibbles on cocktail sticks, whereupon I hit upon an idea I shall call the "Birthday party cake method". It sounds crazy but it works really well. It beats peering through one of the bonnet louvres with an old cystoscope (meant for bladder examinations) which was my original not-so-great plan.

1) I was wanting to use a US style 14inch pancake filter. The question was, what was the maximum depth of circular filter could I get to fit under my bonnet? 2) Using a deep downward dished baseplate clamped temporarily in place (Pipercross), I made a cardboard air filter replica matching the minimum possible depth filter I could potentially buy (2inches deep). You could make the whole thing out of cardboard I suppose, just has to be well fixed in place. 3) Into the top I stuck a ring of cocktail sticks (left over from said parties) so they all stuck out about 2 inches further from the top of the replica air filter. At this point it looks a bit like a birthday cake with candles on it.

4) This is the best bit - cross fingers and slam the bonnet shut! 5) Open the bonnet and, assuming they have not all bent or snapped, the cocktail sticks will have been pushed back into the top of the cardboard filter by different amounts. 6) The amount they are now sticking out replicates the underside shape of the bonnet above the air filter. 7) Measure everything over and over again, then get on the phone to V8Tuner Ltd and order, in my case, a 2.5inch circular K and N filter.

Remote Brake Servo

Master cylinders to brakes and clutch are both Lockheed and side by side. This means there is no room for a brake servo/master cylinder combination. The solution to this has been to fit a remote servo. The are quite expensive new but if you can find them they were fitted to the old 7 series BMW's with the thin "A" pillars and also to the Rover P6 saloon I think. The only space to fit the servo was the in the boot (trunk). This works fine but meant miles of brake pipe plumbing.

Differential

Bad photo of me feeling very smug having invented a cunning (Jaguar) differential oil filling system consisting of a pile of boxes, lots of jubilee clips and smaller and smaller hose, ending up poked into filling port of rear diff. The oil is very thick (Millers diff oil), the idea was to fill the funnel, leave it for a bit and have a beer, come back and add some more, repeat until full volume in the diff.
30 min later I had big puddle of slime on garage floor as an air lock had stopped the oil going into diff and it just overflowed. I could not get the mid level drain port off (to let air out as it filled) so in the end I added about 7 pints of thick oil to diff by lying under car with a 50ml syringe for about 3 messy hours until 2am. Another job done.

More to follow