Restoration of 2358R

[BDA]

As usual, John is spot on. An unnamed person who should know better advised me to assemble the rear hubs with red loctite. Use the right stuff and ignore any suggestions to the contrary.

[EuropaTC]

hmm, as John says, that hub looks far too clean. Normally you need a session with a torch to heat up & destroy the loctite before struggling with a puller to get the hub off. The axle normally looks a mess after removal with something similar inside the hub splines. 

Indicators like the "no loctite" thing would have me looking at everything else. For example the output shafts from the transaxle should be shimmed in place with no practical movement and that's a critical item to the gearbox life.

Windscreen - are you intending to paint the car ? If so I wouldn't stick it in place. Actually, thinking about it I doubt I would put the new one in until the body was going back on for good, I'd leave the new one nice and safe somewhere.

Brian

[Certified Lotus]

JB I agree the rear hub should not have just pulled of by hand. Everything was greased, no loctite on the spines. Brian, the hub is clean because I media blasted it before I took the picture.

I'm not sure I'm going to paint the car. Still thinking about it. I kind of like the patina. The only thing that really bothers me is the rear deck lid for the engine was reglassed for a crack and repainted. The yellow doesn't match. Now that I know the windshield isn't structural, I'll leave it off and think about repainting over the winter while I disassemble the chassis.

Big question on the paint color of the wheels. I looked at dozens of photos last night and the overwhelming majority of the picture I saw seem to have a Matt black finish on the parts of the wheel that aren't the ridges. A few are glossy black paint. Anyone have the actual spec for the paint?

Equally important is the color of the center wheel cap. I bought all new ones (none came with the car) and they are supplied in grey plastic. The vast majority of the photos show the caps on wheels in the original grey molded plastic with a Lotus emblem in the middle. Some where painted black and a couple painted silver. What is the OEM spec?

[BDA]

The wheels were a grey/green color - mostly grey with a tinge of green. It had a glossy finish. I'll see if I can find a good picture for you. The center caps are grey with a black roundel in it. If it is painted, the owner did that.

[BDA]

This is the best picture I could find. The green is impossible to see, but hopefully you can get a sense of the shade of the grey. As I say, the green is just a tinge - it sort of softens the grey. Your second picture is probably as good as you're going to find.



Looking through the lotuseuropa yahoo group posts (great group to join), I found some suggestions:

• Porsche Metallic Graphite POR723
• charcoal metallic gray is very close to the color of the 80 Z28 Camaro
• Eastwood sells a dark charcoal wheel paint that is an almost exact match
• Eastwoods Charcoal Gray Rally wheel paint #1003Z was almost a perfect match to the original. The original is almost a little green in cast and has a little metal flake I believe.

There was at least one guy who said his were black (I've owned two TCSs and none of my wheels were black), another guy said that so few people really know that it doesn't really matter, and another guy said that Minilite doesn't even know the correct color for their 40 year old wheels. I don't know how much I'd agree with the comments above, but they seemed like they'd probably be good. I don't remember any metal flake at all.

I hope that helps.

[Certified Lotus]

Thanks BDA. Appreciate the additional insights. I spoke with the wheel restorer and thinks the black will hold up better than the grey paint. Why I'm not really sure (I sense it was purely due to the paint he had in stock) but considering I'm restoring a drivers cars and not a concour car AND that most people don't really know I'm going with the black.  It was good to know the real info though. Nothing like being an authority on aluminum wheel color for a twin cam Europa ;-)

[Certified Lotus]

Had couple of hours today to disassemble the right rear brakes and hub.  This time it was on tight and I had to use a torch to remove the nut and capture washer.  Pulling the hub off was easier that taking the nut off.  I used my small puller and the hub came right off (once it was warm from the torch). Media blasted everything and wrote down the parts I needed for reassembly. One of the bolts snapped off that holds the brake shield onto the hub carrier, I'll have to drill that out later on.

My new windshield came this week and the wheels will be refinished by next week.  So far no big surprises, but its early in the restoration project so I'm being realistic about what will pop up that I am totally unaware of.

BDA, I noticed on the photo of the black Europa above there are no holes on the lower rear panel for water drainage.  My car has a 1/2" hole on each side.  What is typical?

[BDA]

I assume you're talking about behind the license plate area. There should be two or three (don't remember exactly how many) to drain water as you said. I wouldn't expect to see them in that picture!

[Certified Lotus]

These holes are closer to the front hinge area of the door.  See below. Both left and right side, same location.

[BDA]

Ok. I see what you mean. Those are the access holes for the hinge pins. They are covered up with the silver panels under the doors.

That brings up a question - S2s don't have those panels but those holes don't show up on their bodies... 

[Certified Lotus]

I'm confused. This car is a 72 Twin Cam, not an S2. As I'm new to Europa's I know enough to be dangerous....... but as I understand it the 72 model year was unique as the following year specials were built and the engine was now the big valve.

Are there aspects of the body that are unique to the twin cam (like no silver panels).

[BDA]

All the TCs came with those trim panels. They cover the access hole to the hinge pin and the riveted joint of the outside body to the bottom or inside (not exactly sure at the moment). Here is the link to the parts manual (http://lotus-europa.com/manuals/tcparts/b/index.htm). The S2 didn't have that so that area of the body was more finished.

You may want to take the hinge pin out to replace it. Quite often, they are very rusted.  r.d. enterprises sells a kit with stainless steel parts and Richard at Banks sells a clever brass system that is probably better. If you do, you can screw either a 1/4 - 20 or 5/16 - 18 bolt in the end of the pin to help you get it out.

The TC started in '72, but I think I remember somebody here saying they had or heard of a '72 S2 (an anomaly to be sure if I remembered it correctly). I ought to know better, but I think all the Federal TCs (destined for the States) were Specials and they all had big valve TC motors with Stromberg carbs. The "small valve" TC Europas with DellOrto or Weber carbs were for the UK and elsewhere.

Andy Graham is the archivist at Lotus who would love to hear about your car - and I'm sure would be glad to help straighten you out on models, years, etc. His email address is: AGraham at lotuscars dot com.

I would guess those panels would be hard to get, but since they would be easy enough to copy, maybe I'm wrong. Sports Car World (http://www.sportscarworld-lotus.com/ Google has their phone number as  (972) 620-7285) outside of Dallas used to be big in used parts. After that, you can try the usual suspects (Dave Bean, r.d. enterprises, Banks Service Station. In case you haven't seen this, here is a pretty decent list of useful sites (http://www.lotuseuropa.org/LotusForum/index.php?topic=1389.0).

[Arizona]

The early TC's did not have the trim panel, that came with the TC Special. Pre-special TC's were imported to the US but they came with the big valve engine, presumably because the non big valve engine had not been certified to pass emissions standards.

[Roger]

The Federal Big Valve head is a bit of a fudge. It is a low-compression head with big valves, unlike the UK spec Big Valve head which is 40 thou (1mm) shallower and hence higher compression.
There were other high compression heads on the Elan SE engines, with standard size valves. It's the high compression that doesn't pass the tests, not the valve size.
I don't think any Europas had the small valve engine, but that's only from memory. I also don't think they had Weber carbs, Dell'Orto was the standard by then except for Federal cars.

I don't believe the engine specifications for Federal TCs are any different from Federal TCSes. Elans too had the same strangled engine, with the Big Valve low-comp head. They also have the SE camshafts rather than the Type D "Sprint" shafts used elsewhere, and about 25 -30 less horsepower.

 

[E Paul]

Someone else mentioned chamfered lug nuts...Good idea. But the wheels will have to have a matching chamfer machined into them. Make sure that whoever does the work properly centers the wheel or the shake will be baked in (pun intended).