My very brown 74 Elite project

[ChrisJ]

Love them all - the first image is great

[Tony D]

Superb pictures. Worthy of publicity brochures. 👍

[Bling]

Great photos. Makes me want to buy one !

[BrianK]

A couple more artsy pictures. Same spot, different day.

This one (above) is a bit out of focus - it was too dark to see the car to set focus (I didn't think to use the flashlight to help until after I left), so I set to infinity and hoped for the best.  Got the mountains in focus, but the car... not so much.

The light on the car comes from the flashlight on my phone - without it, the car would have been as dark as the mountains behind it. I kept the camera shutter open for 30 seconds, then walked the flashlight back and forth in front of the car to "paint" light on it (a fun lighting trick - not something I invented). Even though I'm walking between the camera and the car, you can't see me because I'm wearing all black and there's no light on me, but you can see my phone's flashlight reflecting off the car - it's those long streaks that look like overhead lights.

 

Similar here - 30 second exposure, phone-flashlight walked in front of and around the car, and a random passing car driving down the road behind (the red streaks are from the passing car's tail and side-marker lights; and the yellowish glow on the road are reflections from its headlights)

In more on-topic news, I've ordered new seals for both filler caps - as they tend to spray fuel when I'm driving up here (the car handles so well, it's hard to go slow ). I almost lost a tail light on the trip, so I'll have to dig into the rear bumper and lighting just like I did with the front - make new mounts, secure everything, make sure wiring is good, permanently fix the in-boot light covers, etc.

I put over 250 miles on the car last week - mostly in the mountains. I'm growing to like it more and more with each trip. Maybe that's why I'm taking so many photos.   

Edited May 4 by BrianK

[jep]

Brilliant.

Justin

 

[TAR]

I absolutely love that 1st shot. Understanding how you composed it makes it even better for me  

[soldave]

The quality and extent of work you've done on the car, the photos you've taken, and even your write-up here are really inspiring. Massive respect for what must be a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and money that's gone into this build. I hope it's as fun a drive for you as it looks.

[BrianK]

Thanks for the kind words, guys.  Photography is kind of a hobby & these were some of the first pics taken with a new-to-me camera.  Still learning how to use the new camera, but I think these shots came out pretty good.  

Today's entry is another small curiosity worth sharing: Fuel filler sealing rings.

Backstory: fuel was sloshing out of the tanks in tight corners. It was coming out through the fillers, as was evident by dried up streams of fuel on the body below and behind each filler. In addition to obvious signs of spillage on the outside of the car, I was also getting a good bit of fuel smell in the cabin when driving through the canyons (which was especially bad on my first higher speed outing). While I didn't think my filler seals looked *that* bad, I thought I'd go ahead and replace them to try to keep fuel inside the car.

SJ sells the sealing ring, by itself; or the whole cap.  Caps aren't that expensive, but for whatever reason, I decided to try to save my filler caps rather than get replacements - so I just wanted to replace the seals. Each seal, importantly, is two pieces - the plate/ring that mates with the filler neck, and a gasket behind the seal plate that forms a seal between the sealing plate (on which the seal ring sits) and the cap, itself.  My gasket (would you call that a gasket? grommet? stopper? whatever...) was fairly brittle and cracked, so it needed replacing.

While SJ sells the seal ring, they only carry the ring - not the plat on which the ring sits or the gasket behind the plate. Our filler caps are shared with the Norton Commando. I was able to find complete filler cap seal kits from a Norton dealer in the UK (I found none in the US).  I ordered two sets - installation took all of 5 minutes. It's dead simple - remove the old retaining screw & replace the whole thing. Make sure the spring is turned the right way when you reassemble (the spring won't land correctly if its reversed, but it will still work just fine)

BUT! There's a difference between the Norton seal and the Lotus seal.  The Norton seal has a vent.  Lotus expects the tank to be vented elsewhere. See pics below:

Old, Lotus seal:

 

New, Norton seal:

 

Notice the vent hole just below center?

I hadn't noticed this until after I put the car in storage for the next month or so.  My plan, when it comes back out, is to simply seal the vent hole with some sort of metal epoxy (JB Weld, likely) & call it a day.

After sharing this story with another Elite owner in LA, he walked me through all of his fuel system ventilation upgrades. I think it's about time to start paying attention to mine - I recently disconnected vacuum from the charcoal canister because it allowing too much air to the carb (was acting like a leaky carb), so I suspect there's a broken connection or cracked hose somewhere. That might also explain the fuel smell.

I also notice my brakes are a little sticky - they don't release right away & squeak a bit for the first few rotations after braking.  I think I'll rebuild the front calipers during the next service.  Will likely do the master cylinder at the same time & hope I don't have to deal with the rears at all.

 

[EXCEL V8]

That's the little hole I mentioned - the one that acts as the vent on cars that don't have the little take-off on the neck.  I don't know when the system changed over from one to the other though.

Just get your old bit re-plated - or is the rubber seal bonded to the steel element?

Pete

[BrianK]

On 17/05/2022 at 03:44, EXCEL V8 said:

That's the little hole I mentioned - the one that acts as the vent on cars that don't have the little take-off on the neck.  I don't know when the system changed over from one to the other though.

Just get your old bit re-plated - or is the rubber seal bonded to the steel element?

Ahhhh, yes. I didn't realize it was *this* hole you were talking about - for some reason I thought it was some sort of larger hole in the cap itself. For that reason, when ordering these new ones, it didn't even cross my mind to check that there was a difference in seals.

In trying to break my pack-rat habit, I threw the old, hole-less seals away. D'oh!

If this doesn't end up sealing well after plugging that hole, I'll likely order entire new caps from SJ and replace the filler necks while I'm at it. 

Thanks for the advice. It's a shame I didn't take it.