1979 Yellow Lotus Eclat: My project thread

[dixi4uk]

Appreciate it

Well upon inspection my Elite has a vacuum advance unit on the distributor but is not connected to anything the same as your Eclat.

So where does it connect to on the inlet manifold?

This needs further investigation.

Any clues would be helpful.

[soldave]

Another educational day.  Decided to use my newly-obtained oil gun and grease some lubrication points.  Had mixed success.

Front passenger side: oil squirted in, old dirty grease out, job's a good 'un.

Front driver's side: found the nipple wouldn't take the oil.  Took it off the car and couldn't get any oil through it at all. For the price of them I'll replace it.

Rear passenger driveshaft, (inner): here things got interesting.  Only found a hole here and no nipple.  So definitely need a nipple here to go in there.

Rear passenger driveshaft (inner): a bit of a struggle, but I think I got oil in there and coming out.

Rear passenger driveshaft (outer): Found the angle of this won't work with my straight-on oil gun.  Am going to have to get some sort of flexible adapter for it.  Not entirely sure how to get to these just yet, unless I switch out for a 45 degree nipple.

Car running nicely now apart from that

[Dunc]

Dave,

Although oil is acceptable on the front trunions - the rear UJ's should be Grease. Castrol BNS is recommended over LM grease by Lotusbits.

The joints live a hard life and regular and correct lubrication is important. Oil is waaaaay to thin here in my opinion. I would suggest regreasing before driving.

And yes, a flexible grease gun end is required for the rear UJ's. - you can get them from most toolstores or ebay.

note: not all UJ's have grease nips on them. Some are sealed for life - but if you have a threaded hole for a nipple, you can obviously fit one.

Dunc

[dixi4uk]

I second Duncs' post which is entirely correct.

I was contemplating compliling a post almost identical.

Dunc beat me to it.

[soldave]

On 1 December 2014 at 13:54, Dunc said:

Dave,

Although oil is acceptable on the front trunions - the rear UJ's should be Grease. Castrol BNS is recommended over LM grease by Lotusbits.

The joints live a hard life and regular and correct lubrication is important. Oil is waaaaay to thin here in my opinion. I would suggest regreasing before driving.

And yes, a flexible grease gun end is required for the rear UJ's. - you can get them from most toolstores or ebay.

note: not all UJ's have grease nips on them. Some are sealed for life - but if you have a threaded hole for a nipple, you can obviously fit one.

Dunc

Thanks Dunc.  Although I thought Castrol BNS was discontinued now.  If that's the case, what's a decent alternative?

[Dunc]

some googling suggests BNS is still available.

http://www.gannonoils.co.uk/Automotive/Classic_Car_Lubricants/Classic_Grease/Castrol_Classic_Grease.html

If you can't get it, I'd  go for a wheel bearing grease with the highest melting point you can get. Castrol LMX or something similar.

(I know the Lotus bits pdf page states not to use LM grease and use BNS - but LMX is higher temp application than LM)

[soldave]

Thanks for that.  Grease gun and Castrol High Performance Grease ordered.

Also got a pair of Nexen CP641 tyres ordered to be delivered and fitted tomorrow.  One of my rears has dry cracks and a puncture somewhere and fresh rubber is always nice

[soldave]

Got new rubber on the car on the back today so am pleased with that.  Was thinking about getting 225/60R14 tyres for the rear in the future but there aren't many tyres of that size around these days.  Think I'd be happy with more of the 205s though

Got one little query for you out there.  When I'm driving slowly or stood and I put my foot on the brakes, I hear a "shhh, shhh, shhh" noise in time with the engine ticking over.  It doesn't happen when I'm at speed and from what I've read online it suggests the brake servo.  I've checked the hose going from brake servo to engine and that's in perfect condition.  Braking seems ok for a 35 year old car although I don't know how it would compare to another Eclat.

Anyone have any thoughts on this one?

[dixi4uk]

If the shhh sound occurs each time when applying the brakes then this is the operation of the servo. If you are hearing it for the first time maybe you have distrurbed some insulation and the sound is travelling into the cabin when nomally it would not.

If it is a shhh, shhh, shhh sound with a single application of the brakes then it sounds more like air leak.

By the way 205/60 x 14 Nankang at mytryes.co.uk are £42.80 inc delivery. A very good price.

[johnpwalsh]

I would tend to agree, sounds like a leak, can you pinpoint where it is coming from when the car is static on tickover, as in near the footwell or from engine bay.

[soldave]

I would say without an investigation that it's footwell.  Mainly going from the thinking that that kind of sound would be different if it was coming from the engine bay (meaning pitch and tone).  Will try to look into it this weekend though.

[johnpwalsh]

OK, try removeng the panel that covers the vacume pods in the drivers footwell, held on by a couple of selt tapping screws, just at your right knee and have a listen, I would suspect a leaking vacume pipe, as an afterthought, even in the engine bay the note/tone would not change if it's the servo as it will be going through it's cycle. Have the car on tickover and stick your head into the various awkward positions to see if you can get a better idea of where it is coming from.

[soldave]

I'll do that and have a good listen.  Not sure it will be the vacuum pods as the air sound is limited to me putting my foot on the brake, but you never know.  Will limber up this weekend and contort myself into the driver's footwell this weekend

[johnpwalsh]

If it is only when you put your foot on the brake then it must be servo related, have you someone who can press the pedalwhile you have a look/listen, that would be easier.

John.

[markgenesis]

Ah, i get that hissing sound too, thought it might have just been due to the carpets and sound proofing missing, i'll need to investigate it then.

[johnpwalsh]

Hi Dave, how did you get on with the brakes/servo.

[soldave]

Not checked it out yet actually.  Although it's been there since the drive back from Scotland.

One thing I have to have a look at is the past few days when I've started the car the IGNITION light has stayed on and voltage stayed below 11 until I've actually been driving for a minute or so.  Then it'll pop up, the light will go out and all will be well.  Wondering if it's an early sign of an alternator going out or something else. Will have to do some multimeter testing this week.

[johnpwalsh]

Yep, thats the alternator for sure, check the excitor wire has not come loose, thats the single wire, white with a stripe on it cant remember what the stripe is, if it's connected ok then definatly the alternator on the way out. It is repairable, the last one I did with the same problem on my S4 just a couple of months ago cost me 25 pounds. On that particular alternator there are to components which are readily available, thats the brushes, an easy change and I cant for the life of me remember the name of the other part, but again a simple change out. Have you checked the belt tension.

[soldave]

Will try to check the excitor and belt tension tonight or tomorrow night. If it's not that I'll be buying a rebuild kit.

[soldave]

Got a mini hall-pass from the wife this evening while she made dinner so I managed to dash into the garage and check a couple of things.  Tightened the fanbelt which was a little loose and then started her up.  Multimeter over the battery gave me 12V.  Blipped the throttle to 2000rpm and straight up to 13.8V when it went back to idle and was steady.  One thing I realised is that this may have started happening when I changed the ignition bulb in the dash to LED.  I remember reading (possibly about Minis) that if there's a problem with the bulb in the dash the alternator won't charge as it's an important part of the circuit.  Might change back to a regular bulb and see what happens.

Second up was listening to the brakes.  Definitely sounds like it's coming from the brake servo, but I can only hear it on the interior-side.  In the engine bay I can't hear a thing.  Wondering if the servo might need replacing, and if it is an air leak, if a new servo would really tighten up the brakes.

[Wilf]

I seem to remember you need a certain amount of current to flow through the ignition warning lamp for the exciter to work. It should "self excite" above a certain rpm so that is probably why the blip worked. If you want an led one trick is to put a resistor in parallel to draw more current.

[soldave]

Good knowledge. Thanks for that :-)

[soldave]

Got front bulbs changed to some (hopefully) brighter ones, and also done a bit more testing on the brake servo.

First off, the brakes don't seem to "pump up" much at all even with the engine off.  I know the brakes were bled just before I bought it, I'm wondering if they need another bleed.  But when I fired up the engine there certainly wasn't any movement of the pedal down.  Got talking to Lotusbits this afternoon about getting one and was told he was unsure whether they had any later Eclat brake servos in (will check over the weekend), but that they had some '74-76 Eclat servos in.  The earlier one would fit in a similar way but the master cylinder would be about 1" closer (or further away - I forget) to the firewall, meaning the brake lines would have to be flexed a little.  The early ones are £40 and the later ones £80.  Think with the history of my car I'd rather go for the correct model, but it all depends on what is available.

I also received an early Christmas present too.  As I've got a bit of an old school tool, I thought I'd go similar with my tools.  Who needs a wideband for tuning when you have a Gunson's Colortune 500!

Will be checking my fuelling at idle with it over the next day or two.  Still have to go over the suspension as well and grease those lower link studs.

[CharlieCroker]

That looks cool, don't know what it does but love the packaging.

[soldave]

It's the latest design, don't you know.

It will show you how rich or lean the flame is inside your cylinder.  Here's a vid showing you how it will (hopefully) work: