Lotus Europa Community

Hi

Can I just check please that there are no differences between Fedral and UK cars with respect to the rear shocks? UK cars did not use a different top mounting?

I am sure they did not but I am not 100% sure.......

Many thanks

Berni

I'm pretty sure the right move here is jumping directly to a hardened shoulder bolt. May need to grind a small taper on the end to hammer it in nicely, and likely will require match drilling to get everything just perfect without slop. I do this with pretty much every cross pin in anything, except the ones designed to fail and protect other components.

I've thought through a few ways of doing this, will post with part numbers if/when I implement it.

Wonder if stainless steel pins might be worth a try? They area bit more ductile.

It's good to be reminded that proper shimming of the inner u-joint is important.

The TC and TCS use spirol pins which are rolled spring steel. The hardness (and therefore brittleness) of spring steel and the thin section of that steel in the spirol pins encourages cracking. I would expect that the u-joint being loose also encourages cracking because shock loading would be more likely to cause a crack than simple shear caused by tension or compression forces on the u-joint.

They crack because they are not shimmed tight enough which allows flex, causing the cracking and breakages.  It is not a big deal as they will run just fine without any pins installed as long as you don't jack the car up our Keanu Reeves your car off hill crests.