BrianK

Thanks! It's just a basic Epson LW-400 with white on black label tape. Note: that model doesn't have text justification (several others do), so centering text is a bit of a pain.

..continuing the relay story (I intended to make this post the day after the previous post, but life sure seems to get in the way sometimes) As mentioned in the previous long-winded post, there are three relays behind the dash that control ignition, HVAC fan, and rear window defroster. Each of these have 4-pins, so I assumed they were all the same (spoiler: they aren't). In the wiring diagram, the three relays in question are here: Having convinced myself that Bosch-style relays are better than Lucas-style relays, and that a covered relay block for Bosch relays was the "better" way to mount them in the car, I went shopping. After a little more searching than I expected, I found a four-way relay block - with cover - from an RV supply store. In retrospect, it appears that Holley sells the exact same relay block for less money - not sure why I didn't find that one to begin with, but oh well. It's a plastic thing that holds wires with spade connectors tight enough in place that you can connect a Bosch-style automotive relay to groups of the connectors. From the pictures, I could see that the relays are mounted very close to one another in the block; so I ordered a 4-pack of 4-pin relays that have removable mounting tabs. I was sure to get relays with removable tabs so that they could be mounted tight up against one another - as required by the block. After everything arrived, I pulled off the mounting tabs, did a quick fit check and.... ...they didn't fit. :: sigh :: It turns out that while the mounting tabs can be removed, the clips that hold the mounting tabs were, themselves, too large. Now, I'm sure there exists 4-pin, SPST relays without any sort of mounting tab. In fact, after seeing that these didn't fit, I went to my local AutoZone to get some replacements, but the folks at AutoZone were shockingly inept (which is unusual - I usually get good service from those guys); so I went to Amazon where I found the correct replacements for $35/each. I didn't want to spend $100 on 3 relays when I bought this 4-pack for $20; so I thought to myself, "Well, they're just plastic, and plastic can be cut/sanded, and I have sanding devices..." Digging through the garage, I found disk sander that was previously used for building model ships (a hobby of a relative who is no longer with us). After some careful alignment and a couple passes on the sander, I had something that would work: ... but because I'm a perfectionist, I gave it a few more passes on a sanding block with 220 grit sand paper, and got a finish that looks OEM: problem solved! Moving on... Next up, mounting the relay block in the car. Originally, the three relays are mounted to the dash on bolts that are bonded into the dash's fiberglass core. There are three bolts in a row - one for each relay. The screws are absurdly long for the original relays, but this new block is much thicker, so the long bolts would be perfect. Wouldn't it be lucky if I could just mount the block to two of those three screws? Well, I wasn't so lucky, so an adaptor needed to be made. An easy and obvious choice for material for the adaptor is wood - easy to form, easy to drill, and a good hardwood should be strong enough to do the job, assuming it was properly prepped and treated. However, I thought that I might not want something so important mounted to wood - I didn't want to deal with making another one should the first one fail/rot for some reason (wood also seemed a bit low-rent for this purpose, if I'm being honest). So I pulled out some left over bits of steel flat bar that I'd used for a deck railing I made last year. While steel would be more than adequate for the job, it's much more of a pain to form and drill; and would still need treatment to prevent rust. I then came across a couple sheets of fairly hard, 3/8" thick plastic that I'd used on the same deck project as spacer material between the steel railing and wood deck. Plastic is easy to shape, easy to drill, and requires no prep or maintenance. Perfect! After a couple swipes of the saw, some filing, and a couple holes drilled, I had an adaptor plate. The two open holes match with the old relay bolts in the dash and the third (with the nut/bolt in this pic) simply hold the relay block to the bracket: Adaptor plate complete! On to wiring... The old, metal, Lucas SPST (single pole, single throw) relays have pins labeled W1 & W2 for the signal line, and C1 & C2 for the switched line, whereas Bosch relays use 85 & 86 for signal and 30 & 87 for switched power. Foreshadowing: there's also a C3 and 87A for SPDT relays, or relays that send power one way when the signal line has power and another when it doesn't. Again, because I'm new to this stuff, I needed to find a map for Lucas -> Bosch. Because it may be helpful, this is what I used as a guide: With all the pieces in place, it was just a matter of systematically replacing each wire's connector and running the wire to the correct spot in the relay block. Happily, I found that the relay block had the pin numbers labeled on the back side, which made getting everything in the correct place that much easier. The process wasn't perfectly straight forward - several of the pins had two wires in one connector. There may exist a tool that handles this, but I only had what I had, so all of the two-wire connectors required multi-stage crimping. And, of course I forgot to put my heat shrink on the wire before the connector, so adding heat shrink after the fact made the job that much more tedious. I'm not super proud of these first few crimps (I got much better during the process), but you can see the old, gray, shielded connectors next to the new, silver, unshielded connectors here (one of which has two wires into one connector): I know the shielding should have gone fully through the first crimp to ensure a good clamp, but I did a pretty hearty pull test without anything separating, so I think we're safe here. I would eventually slightly stretch heat shrink over the connector to cover the crimp, and future crimps were lined up better. Side note: After having done the 9-pin connector (in the previous post) with my cheapy wire strippers, I got a "Klein Tools 11063W Wire Cutter / Stripper" that made life so much easier. I wish I bought this tool years ago - it's so incredibly fast and easy to use when stripping wires. A single hand action clamps the wire, cuts the shielding, and strips the shielding off the wire, with perfect precision. Highly recommended. After the first relay (the ignition relay) was wired, I moved on the second - the heated rear screen. Checking the wiring diagram to map colors to numbers, I noticed that that relay uses C2 and C3 for switched power, whereas the other two used C1 and C2. hmm. Checking the conversion map above, that would mean that C2 and C3 are connected when there is NO power on the signal line, and DISCONNECTED when there IS power on the signal line - the opposite of the other two. In the relay world, this is called "normally closed." From what I gather (constant reminder: I don't know what I'm talking about, so take this with a grain of salt), the rear screen defroster is able to be turned on UNLESS the AC is on. When the AC is on, the rear screen relay's signal line gets power, which disconnects power to the rear screen defroster switch, so regardless of the switch position, there's no power going to the rear screen when the AC is on. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that the alternator on early Elites was of lower wattage than later models, and simply couldn't handle running both the AC and rear screen defroster at the same time. I tried finding a 4-pin, normally closed Bosch-style relay, but was unsuccessful. There were, however, 5-pin SPDT (single pole, dual throw), normally closed relays available, which were, importantly, made by the same manufacturer (and therefore the same color, finish, labelling, etc), so I ordered one. (side note: using only 4 of the 5 pins in a 5-pin relay would mean that one of the pins will sit in the relay block, not attached to anything - which shouldn't be a problem considering how buried it will be when everything is together). A 4-pack of these was available, but I only needed the one, and the only one I could find that came in a 1-pack had a weatherproof connector. "Weatherproof connector" means "a heck of a lot of plastic that you don't need surrounding the relay". Out came the sander, and after making a giant mess of plastic shavings, I had the relay I needed (I don't think it's necessary to post another before/after relay picture here, but if you're curious, it's on my flickr page). With that sorted, wiring can continue. The relay block is kinda neat - this is the bottom side. The yellow piece pulls outward to allow insertion of the group of wires with spade connector, then when everything is in place, you click the yellow piece down into the block which locks the wires/connectors in place: (in the above pic, the oddball rear-screen relay is the closest one - where the 87 pin is empty) To complete the project, I wanted the relays to be labeled so I won't have to do all this research in the event I need to service or replace a relay in the future. I went a little silly here, trying to print out labels that all had the same size box and spacing (note the pile of failed attempts in the background): ...and, in fact, I redid them again after this, as they weren't perfectly in-line on the cover. In the end, I put down a piece of tape to line up the bottom edge of each label... I must have a special kind of OCD. With everything together, I went to mount the block and found that one of the wires (that had been replaced by a previous owner) wasn't long enough to fit with this new configuration... So back off it came, out came that short wire, and it was replaced with an appropriately colored wire that I pulled off the remnants of the old engine wiring harness that I kept around for this very reason. A few twists of the wrench later, and (drum roll please): TADA! Modern, Bosch style relays, solidly mounted in the stock location. Was this necessary? Probably not. I probably could have simply replaced the old Lucas-style relays and been done with it. BUT, if I've learned anything doing all of this wiring, it's that wiring problems are often in the terminals/connectors more than anything else, so renewing the connectors was probably the most important part of this job, even though it was more a side effect than the main purpose. Since replacing the relays, the car starts right up, and I've not heard the random clicking from behind the dash. As a bonus, the interior fans now work - which is a first since I've owner the car. Time will tell is all is well, but until I hear otherwise... job done. 👍 To celebrate, I took the car back up to Newcombs Ranch for the impromptu Friday morning car meet, where the brown, corduroy-clad Elite is always a crowd favorite - especially when it winks, and doubly so when I push the winking light down and the other one pops up... hehehe Elite things. 😉

Agreed. I was prepared to live with the speedo being off by a percent or three, but the odo being off by 8-10% is more worrisome.

I took a bit of a pause on the speedo project. Long story short, the speedo reads correctly with the new driven gear - maybe 1-2 mph off, but I can live with that. However, on my last long drive, I compared my odometer with google maps & found that my odometer is, in fact, off by the amount I suspected (I guess the speedo is sightly off, but in such a way that it's almost right, now that the driven gear is wrong). So I'll resume the speedo project in the future. That aside, we have today's entry, wherein I demonstrate how to misdiagnose an electrical problem and cause a load of unnecessary work... Back in February, I took the Elite out for "one last good drive" before rotating it into storage for a few months. I drove for about an hour with zero issues. Parked the car at home and then got a call from a friend about 10 minutes later, asking to meet up. Being that it was running so well, I thought I'd take the Lotus; so I went to the garage, turned the key, and got nothing... no relay click, no fuel pump... nothing. Hopped out of the car to check under the hood and check the battery when I noticed the interior lights were on. I checked the battery - all good, so I tried turning on the headlights - they came on, full power... no problems. I called my friend back, told him I wasn't going to make it, then got out the multimeter and started working my way from battery to starter. Despite the fact that I replaced the main wiring harness, I still consider myself a novice when it comes to electric work (foreshadowing). Using first principles, I checked that there was power at the battery, then at the distribution point in the engine bay, then I checked power going to the ignition switch (not at the ignition switch... more foreshadowing) - all good. I checked all fuses and power at the fuse box - all good (well, at least there was power at the fuse box - it wasn't going where it needed to). But still, I got no fuel pump, ignition relay, or starter when turning the key. At this point, I suspected the switch, so I looked in the workshop manual to find some info on the actual switch's wiring, or, at the very least, how to remove it so I could check it on the bench. The workshop manual is absolutely useless here - as far as I could find, there are two sentences in whole of the workshop manual about the ignition switch - the first explains how to remove the switch: "pull off the plastic cover securing the switch to the steering lock ... disconnect switch cables and remove the switch"; The second is about reinstallation and is even less descriptive: "reverse the removal procedure". Great, thanks Lotus. Knowing that Lotus used a lot of other manufacturer's parts when building cars, I started looking at other BL marques and came across the Triumph TR6 ignition switch which looked identical. I found a wiring diagram for the switch, showing, importantly, which terminals should be active under which conditions, AND, showing how the switch is attached to its mount. Figuring all was the same, I tested the switch and found that it was not sending power after the first position. This seemed to jive with what I was seeing - no fuel pump on the main "on" position, but lights working otherwise. Did I mention I'm a novice with electrical issues? It never occurred to me to see if the switch position had any effect on the lights - certainly if the switch was broken to the point where it wouldn't allow power to the fuel pump or starter, then it would not send power to the lights in that position as well. This didn't occur to me, so I ordered a new switch from the UK and waited for its arrival. If you're not familiar, the ignition switch is a real PITA to reach. It's located under and behind the dash, which requires a bit of gymnastics to access. This could have been made a little easier by removing the steering wheel, but the last person who removed it put it back on with the strength of 10 gorillas, and I couldn't get it to budge; so any work under the dash involved legs out the door, back on the seat, and then arched under the wheel to reach the back of the dash. When under there, this is what you're greeted with (picture). The switch is between an HVAC vent hose and the dashboard. At the bottom of the switch, there's a tiny retaining screw. There's another on the top. There is no way to get a traditional screwdriver in there, but with a Phillips driver bit on a ratcheting handle, you can just get in there... blindly. Unfortunately, that vent hose would not survive, as it was too much in the way, so I ended up ripping it out (that will be a project for future me) After lots of time and effort, I finally got the old switch out and put the two next to one another where I discovered that the two switches are not identical: ...which meant I couldn't just move the wires over from one to the other, so I would need to re-test everything to make a conversion map to be sure it was wired correctly. Did I mention I'm a novice at this stuff? Well, after testing, I discovered that my first test procedure was done incorrectly. The old switch did, in fact, work as it was supposed to. All that work done in that uncomfortable position had been unnecessary. Drat. I'd come this far, and figured I may as well use the new part rather than the 50 year old one, so after figuring proper pin-out, I did as the workshop manual said and started the "reverse of removal" procedure. You'd think it would be as easy as putting the new switch in place and tightening the retaining screws, but nothing can be easy with this car. The new switch would not fully seat in its mount. Because it wouldn't seat, the key would not operate the switch. Assuming it must be a clearance problem, I did what I often do in these cases: mimicked what I see other people doing. 😉 I ran blue marker around the barrel of the switch, shoved it into it's mounting location, found where the scratches were, then sanded those areas down. After several rounds of marking and sanding, the switch was finally back in place. After discovering that my old switch was working as intended, I had very little hope that the new switch would fix my issue. With the new switch in place, I hooked the battery back up, turned the key and......... nothing. Same as before. Back to the drawing board. After re-examining the wiring diagram (and being thrown by the seatbelt buzzer on Federal cars - which I still don't fully understand), I saw that I should have been testing the brown/red wire for "main" power at the switch. My initial test only tested that wire in the engine bay - I just assumed if it was working on one side of the wire, it would also be working on the other side of the same wire. What I neglected to remember was that there's a connector between the engine bay and the ignition switch. In fact, because I had replaced the main harness, I'd replaced half of that very connector. Off came the interior kick panel where I found with this: A couple things of note: The brown/red wire had gotten very hot, and Autosparks (where I sourced the replacement main wiring harness) uses 3D printed connectors in their wiring harnesses when it needs to match old to new connectors. So this, clearly, was my problem. A big question is: why did it get so hot? We'll come back to that later. For then, I needed to fix the connector. My original plan was to unplug the connector, remove each one of the pins, then replace them into new connectors, but this thing was fused together - there was no way to disconnect it. After some hemming and hawing, I decided to cut the connector out and start from scratch. Once cut out, I was able to put half of the old connector in a vice and pry the other half off to expose the pins: I was hoping to see some obvious corrosion, or difference in pin size, or anything that would explain the overheating, but nothing here (that I could see). So I continued on with the process. This is a 9 pin connector, so 18 ends needed to be remade (it was actually 21 ends - 3 wires were doubles). I didn't have great wire strippers, so I used my cheap, old stripper/crimper combo tool that I bought for a couple dollars years ago. This was going to be a long-ish process, so to make life easier, the seat came out: After a few hours, the new connector was done. It doesn't have the OEM look I was going for, but of the three different connectors I ordered, this was the highest quality, so I went with it: With the new connector in place, I hooked everything back up, turned the key, and instantly heard the fuel pump. No need to try to start it because ... Problem solved!! ...but there was still the stinging question of "why?" For as long as I've owned the car, I have noticed an occasional, rapid, loud clicking sound coming from under the dash. It's infrequent enough that I hadn't paid too much attention to it. Investigating the sound had been on my list for a while. After replacing the main wiring harness, I had planned on redoing the interior harness; and when doing that, I would check out the click. Having found no other obvious reason as to why the main line had gotten so hot, my focus landed back on that click that I would hear on occasion. With the seat still out, I poked my head further under the dash to find three relays. Come to think of it, that clicking sound sounded an awful lot like a relay. Back to the wiring diagram I went, where I found three relays that appeared to be on the interior side of the harness. They were: ignition, HVAC fan, and rear window defroster - all of which seemed to have the potential of carrying a high load, and possibly overheating a wire if left on for a long period of time (especially if attached to something that was shorting, maybe?). A little more investigation found that one of those relays had been converted from Lucas to Bosch style - so maybe there was some sort of issue here in the past. As a "while you're in there," I decided now would be a good time to replace those relays. I couldn't be sure if the toggling relay was caused by a bad relay, or there was some sort of problem on one of the relays' signaling lines, but a good step 1 would be to make sure that all relays were functioning correctly. After all, the two remaining Lucas relays were old enough that they were rusty, so it was time. A slightly more sane person might just get three new 4-pin Bosch relays with mounting tabs, mount them to the existing three mount points under the dash, then simply move the wires from the old to new relays; but I am less sane, and wanted to "do it right". Doing it right meant connectors on all wires, using a covered relay block, and making a mount to fit it in the car. I should note that I knew almost zero about relays at this point, but that would soon change. As is often the case, I've already written a novel, so I'll continue to the relay replacement adventure in the next post...

This is in regards to my '74 Elite. Often times when chasing down a wiring issue, I run into this this thing (circled): What is it? More importantly, what happens when power is sent to it? To be more specific, I was trying to trace the white/red wire from the ignition switch - it runs into this thing, but then what? I also see that the yellow/pink wire goes from this thing to the ignition relay. I believe voltage on the yellow/pink is what flips the relay. How does yellow/pink get power? Lastly, is this plug what that diagram is referring to for the circled mystery thing? If so, what would it plug into? (this lives near the steering column in my US spec car)

Thanks for that, Dan - that's a good thought. One half of that plug is new - it was replaced along with the main wiring harness I replaced a couple years ago, but the other half is original to the car. I ordered a new 9-pin connector, thinking I will likely have to cut the old one out - maybe simply replacing the connector will solve the issue. I'll know more when I get the plug out. Thanks for the suggestion.

Followup: The switch gets power through the brown/red wire that's attached to the starter. I tested that the brown/red wire had power in the engine bay and assumed it had power at the switch. It didn't. So when I tested the switch & found that it was showing correct continuity but no voltage... it wasn't that the switch wasn't sending power where it should, rather, it was because the switch wasn't getting power. Unfortunately, I made this discovery after replacing the switch (which is an annoying under-dash job). The switch was not getting power because the connector between the interior and exterior harness melted where the brown/red wires connect & probably melted the connection. I haven't been able to pull them apart yet to diagnose, but the connector is visibly melted at that wire. Clearly something is drawing too much power. For the past few moths, I've been meaning to address an issue with one of the interior relays - I can here it flipping on/off while driving. I wonder if these two things are related? The relays appear to be original - they are the metal type & are pretty rusty so I'll be replacing them. If anyone has a suggestion of what I should be looking for when trying to find what's drawing enough power to melt the plug, I'm all ears.

After lots of tracing and testing, I re-tested the switch. It is, in fact, not sending power from 2-5 in position 2. New one on order. Is there a trick to removing the switching without removing the dash? I see there's a retaining screw at the bottom of the lock cylinder, but it seems impossible to get to with the lower part of the dash & HVAC tube being so close.

Am I sure I have power in position 2? I'm only sure that I have continuity between the correct terminals on the switch in position 2. The electric windows do not work, but the interior lights and headlights do work as expected. I didn't check the indicators. I'm at the office today, but will have a look at voltage at the pump and through the fuse box tomorrow. Thanks for the suggestion.

This is in regards to my 1974 Elite. I went for a drive last weekend. The car had been sitting for about a month, but it started right up after a couple pumps of the accelerator. I drove around for about 45 minutes, came home & parked. Got a call from a friend to go meet up maybe 15 minutes later. Went to the car and it acted like the key wasn't doing anything. All lights work, and the battery tests fine, but no fuel pump when switched on and nothing when you turn to start - not even a click. I found this image for a Triumph TR6 ignition switch. It appears the same as ours (I didn't find much info in the workshop manual about our actual switch), so I used it to test: I checked that there was no continuity between 2 & 5 with the key off; and that there was continuity between 2 & 5 at the first position; 2-5, 5-3 at second position; and 2-3, 3-1 when in the start position. With that, i think that the switch works. All my fuses are still whole (though, to be fair, I didn't test with a meter), and I gave them all a couple twists to get around what may be a bad connection - no help. Question 1: Is my test procedure for the ignition switch correct? Question 2: where do I go from here? I'm really thrown by the fact that neither the the fuel pump nor the starter are turning on with the key, but all electrics work, the witch works, the fuses are whole, and I drove the car for a good while immediately before the problem began. I should add that the electric windows do not work after the problem began - I believe they require the ignition switch to be at least in the aux position to go up/down.

Half way there... Long story short, a friend of mine, who is a machinist, has offered to make me a 17 tooth speedo driven gear. I'm sending them a drive gear and the old, shaved down driven gear. If all goes well, I'll have a correct replacement driven gear in the not too distant future (it's being done as a favor, so I don't expect it soon). In the meantime, I got a stand in 18-tooth gear so that I can at least have an idea of how fast I'm going & keep a reasonable tally of driven distance. I was able to get the 18-tooth drive gear, driven gear, and seal from Dave Bean, here CA. Replacing the driven gear is fairly straight-forward. The right-angle adaptor at the back of the transmission that attaches the speedo cable to the speedo driven gear via the drive housing comes off without tools, then two bolts hold the housing in place. It's tight here, but a thin-walled socket will do the job. With the bolts out, the housing pulls straight out. No sweat. When I pulled mine off, the housing gasket was past its expiration date & needed replacing. That part was NLA, but it's a paper gasket, so I planned on just making one. Unfortunately, I forgot to order gasket material, and the local auto parts store only had cork, so the housing gasket is cork for the time being (slathered with a bit of Aviation form-a-gasket for insurance). With the gear in place, I once again have a working speedo: The reading is off, as expected, but it was off more than I expected. There's also something a bit different about the mechanicals in the Frankenstein speedo that make the needle wiggle a bit - even at high speeds (60+ mph), I see the needle move +/- 2mph. (I wonder if the extra space created by the thick gasket I used for the speedo drive housing might move the gears ever so slightly out of alignment? hmmm). After all is said and done, the speedo appears to read about 10% high now (I expected it would be 6% low). This is all temporary, so I'm not going to worry too much about it. Let's hope that when the new gear arrives and with a new paper gasket in place, I don't have to get the Frankenstein speedo recalibrated. Because it had been such a long time since I'd driven the car, my initial test drive turned into an hour-long cruise. I sure do enjoy driving this thing. Excited to see how the new gear comes out...

Those gears are unobtanium, it appears. I've tried all the US suppliers + SJ & LotusBits. I've got requests in at a couple other places. I've reached out to speedo repair/calibration companies that specialize in Smith's gauges... no luck. There's an off chance that I have a spare in storage. I know that we replaced this drive gear when rebuilding the transmission - I may have hoarded it away in a box. Even then, it was replaced for a reason, so I don't hold much hope. I'm going to give 3D printing a try. If that doesn't work, then I'm going to live with a speedo that reads 6% low (difference between 17 and 18 tooth drive gear). Along those lines, I got a quote from one of the speedo recalibration services - $600 to recalibrate the speedo for the 18 tooth gear - and that's just the speedometer, not the odometer. I think I'll skip recalibration if I end up running the 18 tooth gear. 😛

After making the previous post last week, I called Dave Bean to see if they had replacement speedometer drive gears. I spoke to Ken, as I always do, who was happy to report than they did, in fact, have replacement drive gears... that's assuming I had the more common 4.10 final drive ratio that uses an 18-tooth speedo drive gear as opposed to the 17 tooth gear that works with the 3.73 final drive ratio cars. Being that I have a Lotus 5-speed transmission (as opposed to the Ford 4 speed or the automatic transmission), I assumed that my car had the 4.10 diff; but to be sure, I held off on placing the order until I pulled the gear to count gear teeth. I thought doing so would be a little more involved, so I waited until yesterday (the following weekend) to pull the drive gear... turns out, removal is super easy - unscrew and remove the right angle adaptor, then two bolts remove the housing & you're done. With that, i finally put eyes on the gear: Just as I thought, the teeth have been ground away. Much to my dismay, I have the less common 17-tooth speedo drive made for 3.73 final drive. To be sure I wasn't just running the wrong part, I made a post on one of the Facebook groups asking about the different differential options. If the comments are to be believed, the Elite originally came with 3.73 gears, but was later changed to 4.10 gears for a little better acceleration. When the automatic transmission was introduced, the 3.73 diff was brought back. This makes my car one of the seemingly more rare 3.73 final drive cars with a manual transmission, for which parts are more difficult to source. (FWIW, I did verify the old speedo with GPS a couple years ago, so this 17-tooth gear is correct for my car) I've called around to the parts stores I know in the US - no one stocks the 17 tooth drive gear. RD Enterprises said they last stocked that part in 1994. I may be SOL, but haven't given up yet. I'll call some UK parts suppliers tomorrow morning when they open back up. I've also reached out to a company that rebuilds Smith's gauges to see if they have any leads or spares sitting around. I've also put in a couple requests with companies that claim to be able to fabricate custom gears, though I have no idea if they'll do just one. If I come up empty, I may try to 3D print one; but if all else fails, I may just go with the 18 tooth version and live with the speedo reading 5-6% low. If anyone has any leads on where to find a 17-tooth speedo drive gear, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks for posting that, Gray. Despite the fact that I ordered a copy of that issue back in March, and despite the publishing company claiming that they've sent me 3 copies now, I still have not received a copy, so this is the only version of the article I've seen. It's a good read. Can't wait to post it on our team's page (hopefully some time this year) On to today's entry... It's been a while, as per usual. The Elite has been in storage over the summer - I pop over to its resting spot every month or so to run it around the block, but it's not in a place where I can pay much mechanical attention to it. A couple weeks ago, as the weather cooled down, I brought the Elite back home so I could get a few more 50th anniversary cruises in before the year is done. Driving it reminded me of the last problem that came up: the speedometer, which had developed a squeak not too long ago, had stopped working. This past Saturday, between a funeral I attended that morning and a concert that evening (an odd day, for sure), I decouple the speed sender from the transmission & attempted the turn the internal speedo cable by hand. It wouldn't budge. I then decoupled the cable from the speedometer & was able to turn the speedo cable, no problem. The issue, then, must be in the speedometer, itself. I've never worked on, or even seen the inside of a speedo, but I knew something had to be done, so I thought I'd crack it open to see what was going on. Step 1: Remove the gauge from the cluster. Removal is fairly straight forward, though I was not expecting the gasket/grommet material behind the bezel. I believe this is just for NVH, but because it was so old, it acted more like glue (side note: I think this is OEM, so this is likely the first time this gauge has been removed). The speedo, unlike the tach, is held in with two, separate clips (the tach uses a single bar that goes across two posts, whereas the speedo has a clip on each post), and a bar between the speedo and tach. The bar is held on with a nylock, which was surprisingly difficult to reach; but after a some contortion and a a few swipes at the bezel gromet with a knife, the gauge was out. Step 2: Disassembly. After prying loose the tabs that hold the bezel in place and undoing a couple retaining screws, the speedo comes apart to show its internals: This is 100% mechanical. I suppose I should have expected as much, but I was a bit surprised to see how it's all just gears and springs - not a wire in sight. Step 3: Diagnosis: I was able to stick a 00 screw driver down the speedo cable input on the back of the speedometer so that I could manually operate it & found that it was nearly impossible to turn. With some force, I could get it to move & when it moved, I would see the needle move and the odometer mechanism working, so all the trouble was in the rotating mechanism, itself. To be extra sure, I pulled the rotating section apart from everything else to check it in isolation, and, sure enough; it, alone, was the issue. Of note: when I managed to move it manually, I heard the squeaking noise I'd noticed before. I wish I'd known how serious that squeak was back when I heard it. This is a bit of a tangent, but I found this thing (the speedometer) fascinating. I remember when I was in college, I had a calculus class with an excellent professor - he was maybe the only instructor in all of my years of school who got me engaged in advanced level mathematics. When we were learning derivatives and integrals, the concept of measuring speed came up & I remember him asking the class if anyone knew how a speedometer worked - not just "the cable goes from transmission to gauge" explanation, but how the needle actually moved. He even offered extra credit for a good explanation (an unusual offer in his class), but no one in the class knew. This was before the internet was as searchable as it is now, so between then and now, the question of "how do speedometers work" has been rattling around in my head. With that, for the curious, here's a, couple pictures to show what's going on: Full disclosure: I am not an expert - I'm just writing what I see. I might be wrong about some of these details... At the bottom of the pic is the problem part. The speedo cable slots into the shaft on the far side of that component until it's coupled with the octagonal shaped piece on the near side - so the octagonal piece rotates at the same speed as the output shaft of the transmission. Attached to that octagonal piece is a bar that spans the octagon in one direction. That bar is a magnet. So when the speedo cable, which is driven by the output shaft on the transmission, rotates, it rotates the octagon and therefore the magnet. That magnet, then, fits just inside the platter on the part on the right - they don't quite touch, but they are very close. That platter has a watch/clock-style spring wrapped several times around its center shaft on the opposite side: Being that the platter is ferrous metal, as the magnet spins, it will impart a turning force on the platter. Without that clock spring, the platter would simply spin, but the spring only allows it to turn so much. The more force that's put into the platter, the more its able to tighten that spring, but when the spring is tight enough, it will stop the platter from moving, even though the magnet continues to try to turn it. The magic, then, is to attach a gauge face over the spring, and a needle onto the shaft that's rotating, but being help back by the spring... which is the same shaft that's attached to the platter... which is attempted to be moved by the magnet... which is spun by the cable... which is attached to the output shaft of the transmission. Simple. Elegant. Effective. (A further tangent is the odometer & the fact that a gear-reduced rocker pushes the odometer forward one tooth for every 20 or so rotations of the speedometer cable. pretty neat) Step 4: Repair. Back on topic: the problem I had was that the octagon would not freely spin. I had a thought to try to free it up using a penetrating liquid like WD40 or liquid wrench, but I wanted something more permanent & found it difficult to disassemble any further with the basic tools I had at my disposal. That plus the fact that I had a spare speedometer from the race car sitting in a box in the garage made me think I could simply swap out the entire speedometer rather than trying to repair the thing that I didn't think I could repair. The only issue was the the mileage didn't match between the two gauges: I originally planned on replacing only the rotating assembly while keeping the rest of the gauge. Doing so would allow me to keep the original odometer & not have to make any adjustments. To replace that part, however, I'd have to remove the needle; and getting the needle back in the right spot seemed pretty impossible (with my knowledge, that is); so I decided to keep the replacement gauge as assembled as possible, which meant I'd have to change the odometer.... without pulling the needle or gauge face. Being that I'd already given up on the broken speedo, I thought I'd try changing the mileage on it as a test. If I could successfully change the odometer on the broken one, I'd use the same technique on the replacement. I found that by sliding each of the odometer tumblers to the left, they would disengage from the odometer gearing just enough that each could be carefully rotated. Doing this was delicate -- I felt like I was right on the edge of breaking something, so I wanted to do as little adjusting as possible. Luckily, the two speedos were only a few numbers apart: 23128 vs 40200. That means 2->4, 3->0, 1->2, and I'd leave the 28 (I'd driven a few miles since the odometer stopped working, so those extra 30 miles seemed fair, if a little low). After some careful finagling with a couple tiny screw drivers, I got a reasonable readout: This shows 40229 rather than 40228 because I wanted to test that the odometer still functioned after changing the numbers. (It would eventually land on 40230 after another test) Step 5: Reassembly. With the gauge all taken apart, I took the opportunity to clean it up, then install was the reverse of assembly. I didn't have a bezel grommet to replace the old one (and could not find a part number for one), so I just used a couple black rubber bands. I suspect they'll eventually perish, at which point, I may need to find a suitable replacement, but until then, these will suffice. Before putting it all back together, I wanted to be sure the system was working, at least as far as I could test it without moving the car (I can't lift the back of the car in my garage to test it in gear). I connected everything except the speed sender to the transmission, then I connected a drill to the speed sender for a test: All appears to be well! So the final test was to get in the car, drive around the block, and revel in spoils of my labor. Alas, it was not to be. When the speedometer seized, it stopped the speedo cable from spinning. The speedo cable is coupled to rotating assemblies on either side, so when one side stops and the other keeps going, something has to give. In this case, the thing that gave was the plastic speedometer drive gear that lives inside the transmission. To be fair, this is just an assumption, as I haven't actually removed the part yet; but all signs point to the plastic bit being the one that lost the fight, being that everything else, including the 90 degree angle drive, tested well. I expected the speedo drive gear to be NLA, but a call to my local Lotus parts specialist says that there's one available. There are (at least) two different speedo drive gears for the Elite/Eclat - one with 18 teeth for cars with 4.10 gears in the diff (which they had in stock), and another with fewer teeth for cars with 3.73 gears in the diff (which they did not have in stock). I believe manual cars had 4.10 gears and the automatic had 3.73. I *think* the 18 tooth version will be right for my '74 with a Lotus 5-speed, but I'm going to pull my speedo drive gear to ensure its right before ordering the replacement. While I'm down there, I can finally replace the reverse switch that the last mechanic broke; and do a round of greasing and oiling of various components under the car that haven't been touched in a good while. It's been almost a year since I turned a wrench on the Elite (not including the countless hours I put into the race car this year, but that's a different story). It was like working with an old, but difficult, best friend - I know all of its nooks and crannies, all of its foibles, and just roll with the punches when things get tricky. Maybe that means I'm growing up... all it took was a 50 year old Lotus. More to come as parts arrive...

Scott: your front suspension looks great! I'm happy to have been a bit of inspiration that helped get the job done! I do recall the rack requiring a very specific set of angles and rotations to remove, and that's without the extra supports for your EV conversion. having to disassemble/reassemble the pinion in situ sounds like a real pain. Speaking of pains, if I need to get to the wheel cylinders again, I might try your access hole idea. That pic really shows how useful they could be. That said, I hope to not have to do that again any time soon - by the looks of it, the last time anyone was back there on my car was in the 1980s, so here's hoping it's the 2050s or 2060s before the next service. While I'm here, not much has happened with the Elite in the last several months. I've taken it out of storage a couple times just to keep the fluids moving, but it's always gone right back in. Because I only have a one car garage at home, I can only work on one project at a time, and another car has taken center stage for the last few months. As of last weekend, that car is ready to go, so the Elite will be coming back home shortly. First jobs on the list are to inspect an issue with the starter relay (it appears to be an aftermarket add-on), and diagnose the newly broken speedometer.