Lotus Seven Adventures

  TL;DR: Once common The S2 came with one good and one perished wiper, preventing any use unless I removed the wiper arm entirely to avoid scratching the windscreen. I removed the bad one to have a look at the fitting and found something I had never seen before. As luck would have it, I found a single matching wiper blade and various lengths of arms at a car exchange. The guy who sold it to me for 3€ seemed to have some serious beef with the ridiculous size of wipers on British cars of that era. He himself specialized in Italian brands.  Overall, there was very little of interest for British cars at that event. However, I was happy to find a set of four vintage Lucas glass fuses (35A, 17A continuous), complete with the small piece of paper inside. They were identical to the ones that were on the Seven when I got it. One of mine might be faulty, and I killed the other while fiddling with the tachometer. Anyway, back to the wipers. With the car back from the workshop, I could ...

TL;DR: Another easy fix The other day the car broke down in our alley, preventing us from attending the Distinguished Gentleman's Drive . Deleting the fuel pressure regulator seems to do the trick, but I'm not sure the Facet cube fuel pump really remains within the allowed pressure range for the Weber carburetors. Today I opened the Holley regulator to check what happened to it. It's clear that the diaphragm has seen better days, now rather rigid with a skewed resting position. The casting reads 34R 6657B, and the Internet told me it's compatible to the current 12-804 for which diaphragm repair kits are readily available. An interesting option would be to use one that is fully compatible with ethanol (E85). That would make it absolutely safe for modern fuel that has between 5% and 15% ethanol in it. A good source for a standard kit would be gooze.com , in the Netherlands (14€ for the parts, 6€ for shipping) . Before committing to that repair, I ordered a 1 bar/15 PSI ...

TL;DR: We covered about everything now, I think Earlier in the week, I got the car back from the garage after the fuel pressure issue had been solved. It's no surprise that my first few weeks are a proper shakedown for a car that hadn't really moved over the last 10 years. About everything has noew been checked and serviced one way or another, except for the dynamo and voltage regulator. So the obvious happened: at some point the ammeter was only going into negative territory. That was validated with the multimeter that showed no voltage able to charge the battery. I began with the accessory belt, that was tight and rotating freely. The dynamo couldn't be pulled further away from the engine block as some light scratches indicate that it's already touching the steering column at times. As the connectors on the dynamo are very hard to reach under the (hot) exhaust manifold, I got the multimeter in the "control box" (mechanical voltage regulator) ins...

TL;DR:  Hi-Vis Orange As previously established, my Seven spent most of its life in the U.S.A. (43 years and 98% of its mileage) . That's why it was equipped with red flashers. Those looked rather dim, and they are not something people expect to see in Europe: a dangerous double whammy on an already invisible car. In the user manual, we can read  "L539 Rear Flasher Lamp" with the explanation on how to replace the standard 5/21W bulb. It was no issue to source amber lenses for those L539. I think it cost me about 82€ for a set of three. I got properly screwed on the "combined shipping" as I got a 3€ discount on 3x £12. That guy won't get any feedback on eBay but I have to admit the packing was excellent. Replacing those lenses presented no difficulty when following the instructions provided in the manual: "Press the rim and lens assembly inwards and turn it anti-clockwise to release" .  Good luck figuring that one out by yourself. The orange cap...

  TL;DR: They're alright Out of the factory, the Seven was expected to come with bolt-on Lotus Elan steel wheels. Mine came with a set of what can be described as 13x5 "ribbed" Minilites, a model I was not familiar with and one that hasn't been imitated by copycats. The advertisements I've found makes me believe they came out in 1971, which makes them period-correct enough for me. After a quick calculation based on the 1973 ad, the asking price of £35 was actually not cheap as it would be close to 900€ in today's money. Being made of light alloy allowed them to age well. This wouldn't have been the case had they been made of magnesium like earlier Minilite wheels, they would have gone porous and dangerous. From what I know, they were fitted to the car before 1989 when the car was sold in Denver, Colorado. Other pictures show that the centre caps were blank well into the 90s, and they appear in the pictures from 2009. They were provided with aluminium nut...

TL;DR: Sisyphus Lotus      Super Sevens came standard with a Smiths RVI electronic tachometer, mine is a 1400/00A model. After 60 years, the capacitors need to be replaced and even the germanium transistors can fail.     In any case, It just briefly came to life during our test-drive and it's known not to be fully compatible with the 123ignition system I had installed before delivery of the car. I tried the wiring workaround that consists in feeding the coil control wire in the inductive sensor, but it did nothing. The only outcome was burning a vintage 35A fuse.     Beside the obvious solution of replacing the capacitors and calibrating the current circuit board , there are a few upgrade options to modernize those RVI. Most of them have to be imported from the UK, and some sellers don't let overseas customers place an order at all, even on eBay.     I got a new PCB from  Clocks4Classics  who can provide two flavours of boards : Ea...