Never a straight line

[BDA]

I've read and posted to other guy's posts about getting their cars put together so I guess it's my turn.

It's been a few years now, but I had to replace the ignition and while the car was down, I thought I'd fix a few other things. My engine was built by Dave Bean around 1980. At the time, the Allison unit was the trick (or at least one of them). This is was a light triggered ignition (a light was broken by a disk with slots. When the light was detected through a slot, it fired the plug. Anyway, on the way home from work (in the left lane of the highway, of course), the engine just died. I managed to get drive off an exit and a friend with a trailer dragged the car home for me.

Apparently, the light failed so I got a Pertronix ignition. Anybody with a TC knows changing the distributor is not a simple operation. While the car was on stands, I took the opportunity to re-adjust the rack tie-rods as they were too loose. I think I did a few other things, too. That took forever but when I had finally finished, I took it for a spin around the neighborhood. On the way home, I downshifted into second coming into a turn. The tires chirped, I let out the clutch and tried to think what had just happened... the only gears I had left were third and fourth. When I decided the only thing to do was to take it out, it took forever to take it out and try to figure out what to do. I opened the tranny and found the speedo gears were stripped and shards of plastic were all over the back section of the tranny. I needed someone who knows what they are doing for this.

 A call to Richard at Lotus Engineering in England as usual tried to be helpful, but I really couldn't follow him. I found a place in Canada that works on Renault equipment and had my tranny boxed up and ready to send, till I found out how expensive it is to ship it and do customs. About this time, I found a guy who does trannies for Porsches and has some experience with Lotus trannies so I decided to give it to him. When we finally got together I gave him the tranny and he was pretty confident that he could decide its health and put it together successfully. A few months later, I got it back from him.

As usual, with work and the rest of life, it took a long time to get the rear end of the car put together. I just got it put together and put on the floor of the garage and now I still can't get any but third and fourth gears. 

Well, the next thing is to make sure that there isn't something wrong with the linkage. If the linkage is good, then I have to decide if I want to give that guy another go at it or just buy another from Richard.

At some point, I have to fit the electronic speedo that I'm using now since I wasn't able to get new speedo gears. As I say, there are no straight lines with this car - everything requires numerous steps and side paths. I am committed to DRIVING my car to LOG 34 (I dragged my car to LOG 18 in Atlanta because it wasn't finished and to a friend's house for LOG 29 in Birmingham - though I did drive it from my friend's house to some of the LOG events) and I'll be damned if I'm going to drag it anywhere again (unless I have to!)

Well, this post is longer than I intended. Thankfully for you, I shortened it! 

I'll keep you all posted and I hope to see you all in Asheville this September!

[Grumblebuns]

Did the Porsche specialist tell you what he found wrong in the tranny and what he did to fix it? Tearing into transmissions is one of the areas in the Lotus that I try to avoid.

Joji Tokumoto
Fallbrook, Ca

[BDA]

I try to avoid working with the guts of transmissions too. I did open the case of my 365 (I have an NG3 now) and put it back together successfully and at one point, I considered building a new tranny for my MG Midget race car (but never really started it). That's the extent of what I've done with the insides of a transmission (well, I did change gear sets in the Hewland in my race car, but that certainly doesn't count for anything!  )

No, the only thing he saw wrong was the shards of the plastic speedo gears (likely stripped because the cable had seized). He said he cleaned it out, inspected it, put it back together, checked that all the gears were there (he said everything seemed to be pretty smooth), and gave it back to me. I don't expect that he's lying to me and I am sure he's competent at transmissions. Today I'll disconnect the linkage and make sure I can get all the gears at the shift input shaft (and if I can't, I'll hunt him down like a dog -- just kidding  ). If I can't, he said he'd look at it again. Of course, there is quite a bit of pain associated with taking the tranny out and installing it again! 

[Grumblebuns]

The linkage is the most probable culprit and easy to check. I know about installing the tranny. Just installed the engine/tranny unit in the TCS a couple of months ago. A bit stressful trying not to rub or scratch anything in the just painted and detailed engine compartment and frame.

Joji Tokumoto
Fallbrook, Ca

[BDA]

You obviously have an appreciation for what's involved by my setup is a little more complicated. I have a twin link rear suspension with a larger cross member. I also have an oil cooler that is ducted out next to the license plate. The tranny would not come out with the duct I had so I had to modify it so that part of it would come off (unfortunately, the duct is about the ugliest part of the car (I made it  ). The tranny has to come up and out of the car. It can be done by one but it's not a lot of fun.

Minor update: I have a rod end at the end of my linkage that requires high misalignment. The "washers" that provide that are 'hat' shaped. The one on the bottom was turned upside down so it didn't allow all the movement I needed. I now have reverse, first, and second (it looks like I was mistaken about having third and fourth). I disconnected the linkage and directly manipulated the selector shaft by hand and was still not able to get beyond second... I'm hoping the guy who helped me with it can show me that I missed something. I REALLY don't want to pull the tranny out again!

[Grumblebuns]

Yikes, your modifications do complicate the problem. Interested to see how this turns out.

[BDA]

In order to monkey with the tranny selector shaft, I had to take the oil cooler with part of the duct work out so if I have to yank the tranny out, I'm a LITTLE further down the road. I also took a look at the linkage and there doesn't seem to be anything obviously wrong with it (nothing is broken, bent or loose.

Just another episode in the soap opera that is my Europa! I'll keep you informed with my progress.

[BDA]

Well, I'm just having more fun than a barrel of monkeys! I went to replace the brake fluid last night. I opened up a bleed valve and pushed the brake pedal but the pedal didn't come back up... Strange... I'd never seen or heard of anything like that. It worried me so I checked around and I've decided that the master cylinder needs to be rebuilt.

 In my youth, I've rebuilt several master cylinders and for whatever reason, I was successful only half the time. I called Dave Bean and they have them at $380 + core. Ray at r.d. enterprises only had rebuild kits but he pointed me to some rebuild shops (Apple Hydraulics, Stainless Steel Brake Corp., and White Post Restorations). White Post is in Virginia so it's pretty close to me. They will rebuild my master cylinder for $225 so I'll be sending it to them along with the rear calipers since those were used when I got them (I have four wheel disks).

Anyway, I thought the information about the restoration shops might be useful to someone and I might also provide some entertainment for others who enjoy hearing about other people's problems  .

[Grumblebuns]

I was at the same decision point on brake master cylinders as you a couple of years ago. When a new seal kit wouldn't get brake pressure back,  had to decide between a re-sleeve or replacement of the MC. Not wanting to deal with the frustrations of dealing with a possible bad re-sleeve job, I decided to go with replacement.  What DBE offers is probably a refurbished, re-sleeved stock MC, thus the core requirements.

Did a bit of research in the knowledge base to see what other people had done. The predominant swap was to use the F10 MC. Unfortunately the F10 MC is almost impossible to find nowadays anywhere. A bit more searching turned up the MC from the Ford Courier which I used. If I had to do it all over again, I would have gone with the Spitfire MC at least for the S2. For the TCS with working boosters, I would get mine re-sleeved or find an original working Girling.

[BDA]

You're right about DBE's cylinder. Their's is re-sleeved as you expected. It sounds like they got a company similar to White Post to re-sleeve some cylinders for them. White Post claims the result is better than new and gives a written lifetime warranty.

I was a little surprised that this would be a problem. The cylinder is not original to the car. I bought it new probably twenty years ago and it's been on the car for about fifteen - very little use unfortunately.

I was aware of the F10 swap - but not aware they were also hard to find. One thing I'm not interested in fooling with is a plumbing change so getting mine re-sleeved is an added benefit and the one week turnaround is very reasonable. Also, I still use boosters.

White Post claims to rebuild boosters for any car. I hope it's true and I hope I don't need that too! (I upgraded to the Lockheed replacements so hopefully they have a lot of life left in them.

[cal44]

I know some guys that have use White Post, no problems.  I think they re-sleeve with brass or bronze.......or was it stainless.   They have been an advertiser in Hemmings for a very long time.

I think I mentioned this before here...or not.....I use the Pheonix brake system bleeder.   You push the brake fluid up from each bleeder.  Furthest point away, working your way to the closest bleeder to the MC.
One person operation.  Pushes all air out the MC and works every time without fail.
No affiliation.
http://www.brakebleeder.com/
mike

[BDA]

I believe the guy I talked to said they sleeve it with bronze. Maybe I ought to start looking at Hemmings again!

I have a similar pressure bleeder from Motive (http://www.motiveproducts.com/index.html), but I don't have the proper adapter for the Girling reservoir. Maybe it is good I was using the old fashioned method because I might not have found out about my MC! 

[3929R]

Reading this thread makes me both thankful and scared. I drove today without issues (although someone called the police on me for making too much screeching tire noise in a church parking lot ).

A couple of years ago I removed my boosters and went with the F10 MC because it seemed the simplest way to get the car back on the road (after 20 years in storage). I guess I lucked out because the F10 MC was cheap and easy to find. Maybe I got one of the last ones?

Good luck with your transmission and please post updates.

[BDA]

Don't be scared!!! The F10 cylinder is a good inexpensive solution.

I sent off my MC and my rear calipers to White Post. The turn around time is supposed to be about a week so I should be getting it back toward the end of next week.

The guy who worked on my tranny came over to my house to see why I wasn't getting all the gears. I demonstrated that I got three gears and turned to go find something while he monkeyed with it. A little while later, he said, "I got a couple more!" In short order, I felt like an idiot because they were all there. We hooked up the linkage and I got them again! He couldn't say what he had done. It might have been that the shafts needed to turn (I thought I had tried that), but whatever it was, I couldn't thank him enough! I thought that while he was there, I would run the motor for him so we listened to it run for a while. I feel 50 lbs lighter!

After the brakes, I have an aluminum radiator and an electric speedo to install.  There is always something to do on it but it feels like I'm reaching a plateau!

Life is good! 

[Bainford]

Congrats on the tranny fix, that must be a load off the mind. You'll be rolling soon. Cheers