The Automotive (& other mechanized vehicles) thread

[Dandolin]

ooh that Oliver Winterbottom jawn has got the retrofutures market cornered

[imJonWain]

So what about that Lotus? It's may now. Tell us.

[colin]

So what about that Lotus? It's may now. Tell us.

Ah totally forgot to make an update post here. I got it about 2 weeks ago, shift linkage decided to fuck off on my drive home, left me with nothing but neutral Had it towed back to the guy I bought it from and he fixed that up.

My girls absolutely love it, they'll spend hours playing in it just parked in the garage. There's no way to set up their big car seats in it safely right now, but I've just strapped them into the back seat with the lap belts a couple times and ripped around the quiet side streets around my house.

Having some trouble now, when it's up to full operating temp, the engine will sometimes stumble and die. Can get it running again once it cools down a bit. Currently suspecting the distributor rotor arm, planning to pull that later today or tomorrow to investigate.

[imJonWain]

beautiful! Hopefully you get those issues sorted out. It's already acting very British lol.

[Chankgeez]

[Chankgeez]

Colin, think i found your next Lotus:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UiD_PDEzlI

https://barnfinds.com/bf-auction-1966-lotus-elan-s-e

[Blackened Soul]

After a month and a half of waiting my doge van once again has a full pump! From what my mechanic was saying sounds like the last guys didn’t clean the sediment out correctly AND put the wrong size pump the last time I had to get this fixed.. It has a 35 gal tank not a 20…

[imJonWain]

#van life ?

[Blackened Soul]

#van life ?

For that kind of life you would have to stop the other life such as the moss growing in the carpet.. and you see, long ago in a distant time having a van and a band were one.

here is our purple Ramvan

Ram.jpg (34.85 KiB) Viewed 4488 times

[Velcro Bottom]

Vantastic.

[colin]

Small update on life with a Lotus: I still have not solved my persistent issue of it stumbling and stalling out once it's up to temperature. I've replaced the fuel pump and filter, distributor cap and rotor, ignition coil, spark plugs and wires and the same thing keeps happening. I'm not too concerned about having wasted some money on parts that didn't actually solve the problem, as I figure that everything I've put on it so far is good preventative maintenance and probably should be replaced anyway.

But I'm at a point where I've exhausted my not so great diagnostic skills, so it's off to the local Lotus guru this morning to hopefully get sorted properly so I can actually start driving it for more than 10 minutes without ending up dead on the side of the road.

[Chankgeez]

Hopefully all goes well.

local Lotus guru

Good band name.

[crochambeau]

I just spied this thing.

What appears to be an outhouse atop a supercharged V8 with drum brakes.





I'd like to think the windshield is just bog standard single pane pulled out of some old house, is that wrong?

[Chankgeez]

Recommended to me today:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytKzWZp__Gs

[colin]

I'm bringing this thread back from the dead!

Scrolled through the last page, and I see that my last post from a couple years ago here was my Lotus broken down on the back of a flatbed. So, it seems appropriate to start off here again with my Lotus broken down on a flatbed again.



So despite the fact that I keep posting photos of it broken down, 2.5 years into Lotus ownership and it hasn't bankrupted me yet. The intermittent issue I'd been dealing with a couple years ago ended up being a fuel supply issue. The fuel pump is external from the fuel tank, and replacing a foot of fuel line between the two sorted that out. It was basically problem free for a year and half after figuring that out, when it just died on me one day around the end of summer. Basically nothing in the electrical system works, apart from the horn and the clock (although the clock had never worked until then, weirdly). I believe I've tracked the problem down to the ignition switch, but I haven't actually gotten around to swapping in a new part yet.

So it's parked away in my garage until spring. My kids talked me into turning my VW into Santa's sleigh for the season, so that's keeping them happy at least.