Princess 2 - 14/12 Lotus ON

[Vulgalour]

I've been trying to find out what else could be amiss with the fitment and I've come to a few conclusions. I know the offset is okay and I know the PCD is identical. I know the sleeve nuts and locking nuts I bought are the correct length and thread for the wheels and I know I'm getting no banging or other horrible noises or generating any heat in the wheel nuts even at higher speeds, which would lead me to believe there's no untoward stresses on them.

I suspect I've measured incorrectly, there's a trick of the light making things appear wonkier than they are or that the sleeve nuts are actually a little too thin allowing some movement. I'm also not sure spigot rings are the answer because there's no shoulder on the rear hubs for it to locate on anyway, just the hub nut cover which I don't think the spigot ring is designed to locate against.

I have to shelve any spending anyway, I'm all spent up now until after I've done the Maidstone meet, but research is generally free.

[Vulgalour]

The wheel fitment issue has been discovered and it's down to shank thickness. I've since discovered that Lotus had wheel nuts made specifically for these wheels and they have a slighter thicker than normal shank so regular sleeve nuts will allow the wheel to move off centre quite easily when fitting. With no shoulder on the rear hub to utilise I can't make use of spigot rings for helping me line things up either.

So I'm on the look out for 12 Lotus Elite or Eclat specific wheel nuts. Places that have listed them online - usually at around £55 for 12 - are out of stock and Dad is presently chasing up a potential supplier to get this sorted.

I could continue to run the car on the existing sleeve nuts but since the fitment is less than perfect I'm not going to. The wheels are the only thing keeping me and the tarmac apart so I want to make sure they're on the car properly.

[PlumDuff]

£55 for 12? Thats rough so you've got to buy two sets for one car?

[Seth]

How about a thin spacer that has a spigot incorporated at its centre. The spacer would need to locate reasonably well on the studs ie. not have massive 'universal' sized holes/slots. A thicker spacer (eg 10mm) could be machined down to leave it only a few mm thick except at the centre to suit the wheel bore.

[Vulgalour]

I've found a few places selling proper wheel nuts cheaper, but they all seem to be out of stock. Spacer suggestion has been made by others, and I'd had thoughts of finding stepped washers to serve a similar purpose. I *may* have found a supplier offering the correct wheel nuts at £2 each which is considerably more affordable but I've also come across suppliers not wanting to part with the wheel nuts unless I buy the wheels as well and since I don't want or need, or indeed can afford to buy, another set of these wheels that's not really an option.

I'll keep looking, I'll find a solution. For now I'm going to focus on the myriad other jobs I've stacked up on the HLS as they're more important than putting fancy wheels on the HL.

[Vulgalour]

I can has the choonz! Okay, so it's not fully properly installed because to make the radio sit in the dash perfectly I have to remove the binnacle to screw it all in place as there's no cage for the radio with these dashboards. But, my brown Panasonic radio-cassette is now wired in and fully functional. It has a delightful yellowy glow when turned on and while it is stereo, my car only has enough wires for Mono and the radio goes louder than the factory door speakers can cope with... not ideal then, but it's better than driving in silence. Here's a rubbish picture.


Additionally, Dad did some hunting while I've been catching up with my man-flu and injury related work back log and has ordered a set of 12 correct brand new wheel nuts direct from Lotus for £50 (inc. postage) because he experienced how rubbish my tyres are in the wet and would rather see me safe on the tyres fitted to the Lotus alloys. It's also because he thinks the Lotus alloys are awesome and he commented with amazement at how much better the car now feels as a passenger than it did when I first got it.

I don't know why, but today feels like a bit of a milestone. I feel rather positive about my old boat. So that probably means something is about to go terribly wrong.

[Vulgalour]

07/12/2013
Today, the Princess was being used to tootle over to Lubenham which is just off J20 of the M1 for a Triumph Club open day.  All was well, no issues of note at all, but about 30 miles from our destination the temp gauge suddenly jumped up from the usual 1/2 to 3/4.  I backed off and the temperature dropped a bit but the car didn't seem too bad.  We pulled off at Leicester Forest East just for a loo break and I popped the bonnet just in case.
 

 
The thermostat housing had a bit of steam coming from it and had overflowed.  At first I thought the bodge of chemical metal had failed and it had just dumped all the water out again.

 
But popping off the oil filler cap proved otherwise.  I'd checked the water and oil a couple of days ago and there was no mayonnaise or warning that anything was amiss.

 
We filled the expansion tank and started the car to see what would happen.  Lots of water and steam out the exhaust was about the result of that and the gauge rising steadily.  That proved conclusively that it was a head gasket failure.

 
Thankfully, back in February I signed up for AA membership and today was the first time I've ever had to make use of it.  The first AA thing to arrive was a van and I laughed when the driver suggested we might be able to put K-seal in, and then he laughed when he saw the contents of the oil filler.  He didn't have the relevant A-frame* with him so we waited for a big lorry to take us home instead.

 
Tonight I spent my last bit of cash on 4ltrs of oil.  I'll get the head off, check it for level and use the stuff I bought to do the HLS head on the HL instead now.  The only thing I need to acquire is some engine flush to clean out the gunk and I can borrow the relevant stem seal tool so that can be done at the same time.
 
It's a frustrating set back, but it will allow me to get the engine in tip top health, something I was putting off until the Spring as I'll likely have to do this job in the street as I don't have enough driveway space to use.

10/12/2013
Progress, of a sort. I've got what I hope is the correct valve spring compressor in the post to me, a suitable quantity of oil, a full gasket set, antifreeze, de-ionised water, torque wrench and all manner of other tools and stuff to sort the engine out. Thankfully, I don't need to use the car this week so I can wait for all my various things to get to me to do all the engine jobs at once.

Entirely by chance we found the source of my minor oil leak on the engine. As my brother came on the drive tonight his headlights swept the front of my car which now sits higher after the suspension pump up and is facing the opposite side to usual. This highlighted the fresh oil on the gearbox end plate and it looks like a couple of nuts are looser than they should be and that the gasket is leaking. What's annoying about that is that I've been under the car and cleaned bits to try and locate the oil leak and consistently failed to find anything conclusive before now.

We'll get the head off, change the valve stem seals and reseal the rocker cover thus eliminating the very minor weep from there. We'll then do the head gasket and after we've drained the first lot of oil we'll get the end plate resealed. Then we'll fix the inevitable exhaust blow at least twice and threaten to set fire to it before calling the job finished.

Oh, and my wheel nuts were posted today too.

[Jonny69]

That's a bit of an annoyance, to say the least. At least you spotted it immediately, so chances are if you change the gasket and just scoop out the mayo and change the oil and water it should be ok. I guess it's your choice if you have the head skimmed. Stick a straight edge across it in a few places to see if it's warped, but if it's not too bad the head bolts/studs will easily pull it flat when you torque it up anyway.

[Vulgalour]

It'll give me good practice for doing the HLS too, which needs exactly the same work doing.

[Vulgalour]

Today we fixed the head gasket. I found out that the weird 'Coalite-y' smell I'd get through the vents occasionally was coming from the engine, it was pretty pungent once the head was split from the block and after some thinking about it, Dad reckons it's the same smell as a product called Seal-It (may be spelled differently). So that's another bodge uncovered and rectified. The entire block face was covered in a strange black goop but the head face was lovely and clean and flat as I'd expected it to be.

Speaking of bodges, I'm not sure what monkey had been at the engine before but the rocker cover bolts are dogged up so tight they can't be undone so I couldn't do the valve stem seals without risk of shearing bolts. The headbolts were no better with 9 of the 10 far too tight and one far too loose.

The head gasket had blown between cylinders three and four but also showed signs of blowing across compression. It looks like it blew in a minor way some time ago and it was only recently that it properly failed. This might explain the peculiar cutting out issue I would randomly get and why now some of the strange little noises and driving sensations that I could never pin down have now gone away.



 



We made sure to clear all the water out of the bores and headbolt threads before bolting the engine back together. Casualties of the work were one sheared manifold bolt, one shattered sparkplug and quite a few skinned knuckles. Eventually I'll need to get the bolts for teh manifold replaced as two of them are not in great shape and one seems to have partially stripped the thread in the block. This does mean that the small blow on one corner of the manifold gasket is still there but it's so minor that it doesn't really effect anything. We're probably going to gum things up short term to try and resolve it properly.

After some cleaning and checking of surfaces we had no reason to believe things couldn't just be bolted together so that's what we did. Bit of confusion over the firing order since I had nothing to mark the spark leads with and apart from a comedy backfire-with-flames through the exhaust we got the firing order correct and the car now burbles away quite happily.

Took the car for a quick drive and the first thing was how much more torque was available low down where there was nothing before. I didn't have to go up and down the gearbox as much and the temperature gauge barely got to quarter when normally the run we did would have pushed it to half. Things are quieter and less smelly in the cabin too so I reckon we've cured quite a few niggles that I could never pin down to one thing by doing this job.

Happily, my Lotus wheel nuts arrived today too so I can get the alloys on properly and make sure the rear suspension arms are set correctly as they may be the cause of the strangeness with the rear end settling lower when the car isn't being used.