jono

Great Pictures ! I really like yours Luke, with the ragstone walls - very nice.

ROFL No comment...

Hi Stephan, I think I met you at last years meet as well, I think it's really great you can come all the way from Cologne to the UK for the meet and make all the effort to drive your wonderful car here (I thought I had a hard time driving 300 miles!). I tip my hat to you sir ! B) The car looks great with the OZ Saturn wheels on it, really look forward to looking at your pictures again like last years. Glad you had a safe and memorable journey here and back, it's brilliant to see such dedicated enthusiasts. Roll on next year !!

The new garage we've just built - still finishing it off but it should be fully kitted out (insulated, lifts, live in roof conversion, linked playstations LOL etc by the middle of next year). Should be where I'm planning to spend most of my working year in 2006 if Plan K takes off... Each one of the cars takes turns at living in the new one and the one attached to the house on the far left which is much smaller - Esprit is in there at the moment and it only just about fits ! (it's 2" smaller than the door span) The green car is in the new garage, oldman and I are restoring it atm - which means the Elise is stuck out in the pouring rain Good job it doensn't...leak...ummmm.... Need more garages ! (one like Mikes should just about do)

Hehe - the movie of the Vulcan burning up and down the runway is on Lotus Esprit World here.

Now I have got my firewire cable back I got this sorted this morning. Courtesy of Oldman productions Clicky McDave at the end - hehe.

Ya, or send it to me and I'll re-weld it / make a new one - will take me 10mins to restore it. The part can only cost a few quid anyways, all it is is a bit of 5/6mm studding, C bracket with a small hole drilled through it. Boot floor is also worth a try, at least you have some options before doing teh un-thinkable !

A nice website on all Lotus types can be found HERE - not the best web design but good pictures and info, esp on the F1 cars. One of my favourites is the Type 62 Europa.

Have a look at the attachment : (60) is obviously the lever, (61) is the part that you can see with the weld on it in your photo (65) is what holds it on. Normally to get at it you'd take the nut (65) off but you cant get at that unless you open the rear hatch (not very helpful eh?) So what I reakon is by gently grinding part (61) where the thread is welded on that should drop the thread off. The thread, washer and bolt should fall off inside the rear half of the car allowing you to take the lever and pivot assemly off. Then it looks like a case of just prising the plastic trim off and that should (key word = should) expose a larger hole for you to get at that cable. If not then you can always enlarge it with a drill and use a tool to find the cable, like a magnetic grabber or similar (I have some useful stuff here like that if you need it) - just seems the more attractive alternative to me.

Nooooooo ! Don't do it From what it looks like the lever assembly can be removed from the bulkhead. I have the day off tomorrow/today I'm doing some work on mine so lemme have a look. If it can be done you might be able to grind off the fixing from the lever pivot to the bulkhead, remove the trim and get at the cable that way. From your picture, under the pivot at the top you can clearly see the silver pin holding the lever onto the pivot. Directly below that is a weld - if you can dremel that off (slowly, slowly cus the heat will build up on the metal as you grind and melt the plastic trim - use water to cool it periodicly) the lever will come off and the thread holding the trim will fall off too which should allow you to withdraw the plastic trim and lever out giving you larger access to the end of the cable - you should then be able to pull the cable manually. Either that or punch a largr hole into the plastic trim. Its worth a go, this is exactly what I would do before even thinking of taking it out on the GRP. If all goes wrong these parts are easily replacable - if you need a new thread made up or re-welded lemme know cus I can do that at work.

It was designated the Type 90 I believe, was supposed to be the replacement for the Elan but the car was defered to Toyota (used Toyota running gear incidently) - a little rumor I read was that it wasn't up to much which is why it got dumped. Then Toyota take it on and make one helluva sports car out of it thats still being produced today....best car Lotus never made ? Got some more pics of the Type 90 at home. If you look close up and personal to a MK2 they are very similar to an Esprit in many respects not just styling, when we went to a Jap meet not so long ago I was very suprised on how similar it is to sit in and the overall feel of it....think the guy was running at over 400 donkeys on that one, insane.

Chased one home last night on the 25, chap didn't wave....then again I was close to my max speed......Always liked the Elans although I do think they both are a little bit 'pretty' and the back end is terrible on the newer one. Never driven one but perhaps I will some weekend to compare it. If I could I'd definatly get hold of one...never really heard a bad word against them from owners considering they are fwd etc.

Ahhh crap - you dont have the best of luck with that thing, I remember last year when we had to use the force to stop that white van man making a mess of your rear bumper, then the Range Rover incident and now this - how you get back on the road asap !

Only to second other people's comments - big thanks to the organisers on an excellent meet. Nice to see old faces as well as some new ones too !

Cool, yep it was a cracking day we set off at 8am and only just got back (11:30pm) - couldn't have been better weather, the Elise was on FIRE around them B roads, PratNav worked perfectly, Lotus guys were excellent as usual and it' was just a great meet, ran very smoothly. Much prefered the lunch meeting point over the past location, seeing all them cars out there in a row was awesome - who was the guy in the 360 ? Nice also to see some other cars there....gonna have to use my "Join our Hoon" sign next time.