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: 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...

  TL;DR: Sub-optimal The highlight of that week-end was supposed to be our 3rd participation to the Distinguished Gentleman's Drive, but there would be none of that. I woke up early and began the day by removing the seats to get on with the polishing of the tunnel. It's bare aluminium, battered and scratched. That's not a bad thing, but it would look better if it was shiny. As I was using acetone to remove a perished sticker that must have shown the gear grid at some point, I also took a few cotton swabs to remove the red pigment that was applied on the dashboard rivets earlier this year. That rejuvenation with some leather creme looked good initially, but it didn't last. At least now the rivets don't look like they were painted red anymore.  With the tunnel clear from glue residue, it was time for Belgom Alu again. This time I followed D3Sshooter  who uses paper towel for the polishing, saving the cotton wool for the buffing only ( I was getting short on cotton, ...

TL;DR: Shakedown continued With the technical inspection passed on Thursday and paperwork sorted in extremis  the following morning, we could finally bring the Lotus home . Just in time to take part in the Distinguished Gentleman's Drive on Sunday. Eagle-eyed among you will see the new license plates were still in transit, so the Caterham's plates would have to do. That was a whole story in itself as I had to go to the paint shop just before close to get hold of them... We wanted to shoot a video of my first lift-off, but I stalled twice with the engine still cold. What you'll see is actually the 3rd and final take. Anyway, I drove at least 400 meters before losing power completely. I managed to get just enough juice to turn around that very busy national road, and had to push a little to get to the incline then let gravity do the rest. I got back to the safer side-road where House of Speed is located (with my mechanic following me already by that point) . The issue wa...