soldave

Right, so the MOT tester said yesterday the front wheel bearings on both sides could do with tightening up a little, but didn't warrant an advisory or anything. Went for a drive yesterday and I think there was a humming at 50mph on the passenger side, but which seemed to go away when I turned right and there was weight on it. Under 50mph I couldn't sense anything. Got the car jacked up today and both sides sound like the video below: Question is: is that amount of sound "normal" or do they need replacing once again? The passenger side did need tightening up by one flat of the castellated nut, and that removed the little bit of 12 & 6 movement, but I've not done the driver's side as I wanted to get some thoughts from you knowledgeable folk first.

So, the factory manual says that engine oil & filter should be changed every 3,000 miles, and transmission & diff fluids every 6,000 miles. Thought it might be interesting to see if everyone is following that religiously, or adopting their own fluid change routines. If you're feeling particularly inclusive, then throw in coolant change intervals too

MOT passed second time through, with new radius arms fitted, and following some carb tweaking, much lower CO emissions (2.68%) within both MOT and Lotus factory specs. Tester did point out a couple of things which could do with a look at: Front wheel bearings need tightening up ever so slightly. One of the rear exhaust clamps is cracked Rear driver's side handbrake, whilst within spec, is close to not being First two of those shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully the third won't be a big issue but is a little annoying just because I know how I had to contort myself to put the new cable in and adjust it last Autumn.

Success. Re-did MOT today and got CO emissions of 2.68% and HC of 685ppm which is much better, and also within the Lotus factory specs for CO emissions. All good and problem solved

Well, many thanks to a very generous fellow, I have been able to do some exhaust emissions testing after work today. According to the meter I started at 5.6% CO which is pretty close to what the MOT centre had. Went through the carb balancing process and once done tested again. 3% was the final figure which I'm pretty happy with. We'll find out on Saturday what the official figures say but, touch wood, I should be in a good place.

Did a bit of work on the car today, as I had new spark plug wires and distributor cap arrive during the week. The wires were Accuspark universal ones and so I cut them down to length as described in the guide. On the shortest wire (45cm, going to cylinder 4), the previous Magnecor blue wire had a resistance of 5.5k ohms; the replacement Accuspark around 3.2k ohms. Not sure whether it'll make much of a difference in the whole scheme of things, but my thinking is hopefully that will lead to a stronger spark. However, with the smooth comes the rough - I'm having a devil of job keeping the wire boots secured on the distributor side. They keep slipping off the distributor, and as they do they have a tendency to pull out the wire going into the distributor too. I've got them in right now, but need to warm the car up and make sure that the head doesn't cause any of them to come off. Really frustrating as the Magnecor leads don't have any issues with them. If I'm in any doubt about them being secure, then I'll just switch back to the Magnecors. New radius arms are coming from Lotus Bits so that will be next week's job, before I try for MOT once again.

Might try all of those. HC were only 329 (limit of 1200) so hot plenty wiggle room on that side of things. Thanks for the advice 👍

I think these may have seen better days!

Failed MOT this morning on two particular majors First off, emissions failed which is a little surprising as I've not done much since last year except the tuning session. CO was at 5.51% when it should be 4.5% so need to bring that down by just over 1%. More serious in my eyes though was that the rear passenger radius arm was rotten through at the rear, and the driver's side one has an advisory. They said they reckon it would be weldable if I didn't want to fork out the £145 + VAT and delivery for replacements. This afternoon/tomorrow's job is going to be pulling both radius arms so a garage can have a good look at them and confirm if they can be repaired.

One of my MOT failures this year was CO emissions, which I've not had before. Whilst 4.5% is permitted, I had a value of 5.51%. A little strange as nothing's really been done on that side apart from a tune last summer, but that's besides the point. The main point is that I need to bring down CO levels by 1% and I'm not sure how best to do it. Is it a case of pulling out the Colourtune and making sure everything looks good in terms of spark colour in the cylinders, or is there a better method? Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

Agreed. I don't know too much about the other Lotus models (and it's up for debate how much I know about these ones, given the problems I have/create!), but I've really enjoyed the magazines so far and the coverage into the Lotus scene.

A bit late to the party here, but I've nothing but good things to say about Winner Racing. I used them (admittedly quite a few years ago) to make a custom radiator for my Mitsubshi Evo and the quality was outstanding. How much was the recore, if you don't mind me asking? May look at that at some distant point in the future. Would also love to have a radiator that actually had a drain plug and place to drain from too!

Those spring compressor looks amazing! Is there enough space for that to work with the body on as well? If so I might have to rent that from you at some point this year 😉

A foggy night so what better opportunity to go out and test the car and its new alternator/earth wiring etc. Also a good chance to get some interesting shots. Unfortunately I realised that my Canon 20D (yes, those things still exist!) really needs its mirror cleaning - apologies for all the marks :( Because it's a Lotus and because there's always something electrical, I did spot the tach showing up to 6000rpm which was quite impressive when the engine was off! I'm guessing one of the connections to the coil needs checking out, so that's next weekend's job.

Bit of an update and a related question for you. Before I got the car back together I decided to do a couple of tests on the voltmeter (or what the factory manual likes to call the "battery condition indicator"!) in the car itself. The gauge seems to be reading pretty much fine; tested it across the battery and it was just under 13V. Used a multimeter on the gauge terminals in the dash and was getting about 1V less than that. Looked in the factory manual but can't really tell where the green wire that goes into the meter is coming from. Can anyone else take a look and let me know what they think? If I can work out what that circle in the diagram that the 2 green wires and the white/slate wires go into then I'll be able to find out if it's the output from that or the wire where I have an issue. I like to think I can read wiring diagrams in a reasonable manner (about the only thing I can do reasonably when it comes to electrics!), but not sure about this component. Any ideas?

Right, it's awards time! If you said that it was the alternator that was bad then you win... the prize that money can't buy: a virtual high five from me! Picked up the alternator today and the shop said that pretty much everything inside had burned out, and that it was impressive it was giving out anything at all! If you said it was a bad earth then you win...this! Yeah it's good enough and probably a bad earth or positive was put forward by the alternator shop as the cause of frying the internals. We've already seen the ground wire on the driver's side of the engine which is not exactly in pristine condition. If you said that I was just lousy at car mechanics you win... the honorary KBG Agent award for being harsh, but fair! I don't like car electrics and generally they don't like me. We just have that kind of relationship but it's something I do need to get better at. And that concludes the award ceremony so we'll go back to seriousness. I've got a new 345 amp rated earthing cable coming in early next week so that's going to replace that ground cable, and the alternator's ready to bolt back on. Once that's all done we can get the engine fired up again and see how our voltages are looking. I would love to give the car a full rewire at some point, but I doubt it would be cheap and I most certainly don't have the skills to do it!

I do. Actually When I said negative I should have said the thinner wire. Apologies - made a mistake there. Was still giving me some sort of continuity through to the battery terminal though, which does question my abilities! Tomorrow I'll do some more testing or resistance across individual wires, to see what I can find. Will probably start going negative battery terminal to where it grounds out, and then work from there.

Popped into the garage after work and cracked open the multimeter (does a multimeter open? Anyway, I digress). Did some resistance checking of wires. First, positive cable which runs from from alternator and eventually to battery. Result: close enough to zero for me to be satisfied. Then I looked at the negative wire from the alternator. 20 ohms of resistance running from alternator connector to the negative battery terminal. Checked a little further; around 10 ohms from alternator connector to coil, and 20 ohms between coil and negative battery terminal. Should I be getting this much resistance between these areas? Seems pretty damn high unless there's a special reason for it.

Good point. Those copper locking washers aren't so common to find, but I'll do some hunting tomorrow and find some. Will also clean up both contact areas when the new cable goes on.

That's a good call actually, on both strap and amperage. Will look into both straps and cables.

Got it. Thanks for doing the maths there. Does a 170a amp ground cable sound like it would do the trick? Would probably be happier with a cable over a strap, for reasons I can't explain!

Decided to take some guidance on the bad earth front and take off the earthing strap which runs from the driver's side of the engine down to the chassis. Bit of a pain to get off with a stiff bolt in the chassis partially blocked by a pipe going into the power steering rack (I believe). A bit of lost skin and swearing and I got there in the end. Now the earthing strap does look like it's seen better days! But I did some resistance checks across it and it was showing as having 0.8 ohms of resistance. That doesn't seem to me to be so bad. But it does look like it could do with renewing so that's what I'm going to do. Got my eyes on this (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/170-Amp-Car-Battery-Power-Earth-Cable-Choose-Colour-Length-Terminal-Hole-Sizes/222662654414), if 170 amps would be OK. Not quite sure on what amperage I'd need, so if that is way below what I'd want then please do let me know.

Old one that I thought was Lucas, sticker come off so no. Current one: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LOTUS-ECLAT-ESPRITE-ELITE-UPGRADE-65AMP-BRAND-NEW-ALTERNATOR-1973-onwards/281723431091

Yeah it is looking that way. If it's confirmed, I'm wondering if I should get the latest eBay alternator rebuilt or the older Lucas one. Lucas one might have better quality internals (although needs rebuilding) but I'd need to modify the wiring a little. It has spade connectors only at the back whereas the current one connects through one spade connector and two ring connectors. Only a small mod but the less fiddling with wiring the better for me! Only chance would be if the Lucas alternator can have a threaded fitting to it so I can attach the ring connectors directly. None of that probably makes any sense!

Did another quick test of voltage output from the alternator instead of across the battery. 15.1 volts with accessories off and 12.8 with accessories on, using a chassis earthing point. My diagnosis continues, but will include some sort of testing of the multimeter itself too, just in case!