Restoration of UK Europa S2 54/2129

[Elanman39]

As requested I am going to try and put all of my posts relating to the Europa I am currently restoring into this one thread in order to try and create a useful reference source for other S2 restorers.  Each post will deal with one aspect of the resotration and will have a title at the top of the post that hopefully makes it clear what that is, the hope being that I will find time to index it at some point in the future.
Many of the posts will be questions to the other members of the forum as I am building this car for a customer from a large pile of parts and I have not seen it all together and therefore will need help getting things assembled correctly.  I welcome all responses to questions or corrections to things I have got wrong!
I worked in vehicle development at Lotus for some 30 years, leading the test and development on the S2 Elise, Federal Elises and Exiges and heading up the design and production of the 2-Eleven.  As such it is fascinating for me to see some of the solutions lotus found to various design issues within the Europa and I will occasionally offer a few thoughts on some of these, I hop you find these thoughts interesting and maybe the fuel for some debate!
I live near the Lotus factory in the UK and hope that at some stage I will get to meet some of you in the flesh should you find yourself in this neck of the woods.
Regards,  Nick Adams

[Elanman39]

Exhaust Silencer

Can anybody help me with some pictures showing what the standard silencer install should look like on a domestic market S2?  The slencer that came with the car has a double maounting bracket welded to one side but it is far from obvious what it attaches to.  Is it the correct silencer?
Thanks

[Kendo]

Nick, I look forward to seeing your progress, and stories of Lotus Cars related points of interest.

Regarding the posts you have already made, each post's title/subject line is a link to itself. So you could edit say the first post here and add links to all of your previous posts.

[Kendo]

If you look on page 266 here, https://www.lotuseuropa.org/images/WorkshopManual/PARTS%20MANUALrev.pdf the parts list shows a completely different muffler. So you might have a part to another car.

[BDA]

Elanman39, I assume you have a printed manual but even if you do, this webpage: http://lotus-europa.com/manuals/ should be very helpful. The manuals at the top of the page are searchable for text. Below that are lots of useful links to articles for maintenance and some useful mods. Further down are color wiring diagrams. It is one page every Europa owner (or restorer in your case) should have bookmarked.

Like Kendo, I'm looking forward to your progress and questions. I've learned that there are a lot more differences between an S2 and a TC or TCS than just a different engine and transaxle so I doubt I'll be much help but I'll be watching nonetheless! When you're done, maybe you can take some time and index it similar to how I did a TC build (https://www.lotuseuropa.org/LotusForum/index.php?topic=4871.msg52756#msg52756).

[Elanman39]

Hi Guys, thanks for the replies.  I do have the service parts list and manual for the car but unfortunately the illustrations in both are often for the earlier variants and do not show parts that often replaced them.  The silencer is a case in point, the illustration shows the A046 S0010 version which was introduced very early in the S1 Europa build sequence but subsequently replaced at some unspeciifed chassis number by the B046 S0010 silencer, which may or may not be the one I have. 
Lotus was always a pretty chaotic place and it was quite normal for updates to the service manuals to take so long to get introduced that they often got forgotten or remained unfinished as everyone rushed on to the next exciting project.  In the early days ( up to the 1990's) all the manuals were printed inhouse by a chap called Colin Mace who had an old fashioned offset litho printing machine at the back of the main office.  He would print a run of manuals when requested by the service parts dept, usually a batch of just 100 or so for the older models and these could take a year or two to be sold out to the dealers. He copied each batch from a master manual held by the Tech Service guys, these were regularly used by the tech advice guys for reference and also occasionally borrowed by old Lotus enthusiasts like myself when working on our own cars and they became rather battered and scruffy as a result.  Quite often you will see handwritten notes in the manuals and some of these were actually written by us when we found errors or updates that had been missed back in period!
   I suspect Kendo is right and I have some part from another car altogether but in terms of size, length and even tailpipe design it's so close that it seems a heck of a co-incidence.  I'll probably end up making new brackets and attaching it to the isolated side of the gearbox mount, but it would nice to know if it's correct.
Best,  Nick

[BDA]

For parts like mufflers, some electric switches, etc. that are somewhat "generic" I would suggest that Lotus got a batch of them to build cars and for some spares and, in the case of mufflers, would would modify them for the particular application. When those ran out and the design of the muffler itself was likely changed over time, some suppliers probably took it upon themselves to reproduce those parts to maintain a "bolts-on" capability. Shops like SJSportscars and Lotus Supplies (or Europa Engineering) in the UK and r.d. enterprises (and likely Dave Bean Engr.) in the US are examples of this. Commonly, they are provided with uprated materials. I just looked at Lotus Supplies' and SJSportcars' websites and they both provide stainless steel mufflers for S2s and S1s. In fact, curiously, SJSportscars lists the muffler for the S1 as a "Lotus Genuine Part" but the muffler for the S2 is not (to my eye, they look VERY similar so I suspect that designation was left off by accident).

So in some cases the best you're likely to get is a part that might "look like" and probably "fits" or "mounts like" and "works like" the original but might but could be easily identified as not by someone who would know. Sadly, there are fewer and fewer of those who would know because of father time!