There is autocross, British, and Lotus content here. I am going to take a
chance and post this to all three lists.
I wrote on the British and Lotus lists >
> This 1970 Lotus 65 Europa S2 (Renault) will be on the road tomorrow and
> entered in the last MAC autocross of the season on Sunday.
Amazingly enough, this prediction came true.
Saturday, October 9, after much sworking, it came out of the garage, the
video camera watching, and I drove it around the block. Damn, this is
fun. Warmed it up and took a quick run around the better roads close to
home. Steve Valin has been down the winding road near my house in the
Mighty K-wagon, so maybe he can picture it in his Europa. Picked up my
older daughter from her cashier job and motored to the AMOCO station to
feed it Ultimate from two pumps simultaneously. Took it home and did a
little alignment work and such until about midnight and hit the hay. I
left the charger on the battery.
Got up early and took the Mighty K-wagon to the office to run some results
and get the seasonal registration sheets (you don't think I wanted to park
the Lotus downtown, did you?). Went home and tossed the spare tire and
tools into the Mighty K-wagon and went to start the Lotus. It was not
happy. Did not look like it charged properly. Got it going and headed
for Canterbury Downs.
> The voltage stabilizer connection with the third tab going to ground seems
> to be correct. More later.
Not that much more, I guess. The gauges work fine. There is no ground to
the case. The first pair of tabs is input voltage. The second pair of
tabs is for the fuel gauge and temperature gauge. the third (single) tab
goes to ground.
Ran OK, but seemed to want some choke to idle. Steering was amazing.
Brakes spongy. Engine sounded strong. When it was warm and I nailed it
near the top of the tach, the term "ferocious" which Steve Valin used to
characterize his similar setup, sprang to mind. The gearchange is very
solid and precise, with a pattern about half the size of stock and lots of
effort required. It is all too easy to beat the synchros on a Renault
box. I find the best way to shift is click-click, one click out of the
gear to neutral, followed immediately by a second click into the next
gear. There is none of the vagueness or wander found in the stock linkage.
When I got there, the hose from the swirl pot to the water pump popped off
the swirl pump. Fast shutdown. Apparently my pal Larry used too short a
hose, or, more likely, the polished chrome is not conducive to retaining
hoses. Brian Erickson, mechanic and MGB pilot, always carries a spare MGB
radiator hose. It is longer, and seems to work OK. A trip to
Superamerica in netter Bill Fuhrmann's Fiero took care of the antifreeze.
And I was so careful to use distilled in the car. Now it has
Superamerica's hose water in it. Sigh. Brian suggests I take some coarse
sandpaper and groove the chrome. Why didn't Colin put the usual little
bulges on the pipes to hold the hose? I know, he was cheap.
The car gave me some problems starting, but I got it going by myself for
each of my five timed runs.
First run. Cold pavement. Nerves. Ragged. Got a lot of understeer at
times, and backing off didn't help. Should have steered out of it a bit,
but still having trouble remembering to do that. I realized I still had
some air in the brakes, and wouldn't be able to find time to bleed them
with my job as posting guru. This made me a bit nervous, as the braking
was not what it ought. 60.040, clean.
Second run. Went down 3 psi on the front tires to increase their contact
area. No worries about roll, as I am running 185-60 Yokohama A008RS tires
on 6" BWA rims. I was at about 18 psi front and 25 psi rear. Kids, don't
try this on your Honda. Handled a bit better, so I started pushing it,
lost it and caught it to learn the limits. Still got understeer problems
sometimes. 60.605, clean.
Third run. Pavement was starting to warm, I was starting to learn the
car. A reasonably smooth run, but I was not kidding myself that I had
figured out the right lines on this tricky Randy Williams course. 59.144,
clean.
Fourth run. Everything was going better than the last one when all of a
sudden the front end just washed out. I may have turned in too soon and
taken too early an apex. Backing off did not help and I saw the pylon
coming in slow motion. Bang. Penalty, and I had lost a mountain of time.
Tom Ring stopped me after my run and retrieved the cone from the front of
the car. He said it got caught in the RF suspension and was not being
dragged. 58.102 + P = 60.102.
Fifth run. Things were coming together. I was getting the hang of it,
but was still over-driving the car. Lots of wiggles and catches. Very
exciting, but not the fast way around. Regretted not getting all the
lines right. On one right-hander, I had the car in this neat drift, but
miscalculated the line slightly. There were three cones clustered at the
apex. I punted two of them into the next county and left the third one
standing. 57.639 + PP = 61.639.
Even if the fifth run had been clean, the time was not really that good.
Would have been 32nd of 83 entries. The car should be in the top twenty.
This is going to take awhile for me to learn. One guy asked how long I
had been driving it. I said "What time is it?", since it had been less
than a day.
The point is that I had a blast. The steering is fast and precise. The
Yokos give me all kinds of feel through the fat 13" steering wheel. I
only moved may hands on the wheel once all day, whilst catching a
particularly spooky slide. Still shouldn't have moved them. Don't wear a
diamond ring whilst driving a Europa. I don't, so the windscreen glass is
fine, it's my knuckles that are sore. The car just feels like a race car,
even with old stock (maybe) springs.
> The springs are all wrong. The car sits too high, especially in the
> front. I will probably get street/autocross springs over the winter. Is
> Bean the right choice for these? Suggestions?
Can anyone explain to me why the car seems to have positive camber in the
rear now? These are the same springs that were in there before, and the
car used to have negative camber. Lots of it. The tires that previous
owners left me were worn from street driving with a lot of negative camber
in the rear. It seems to sit higher now. I changed from Spax to Konis in
the rear, but I thought I measured the spring perches as the same height.
I suppose the resting time while the springs were out of the car had
something to do with it, and the wire that I took out weighed a lot
(people who think this is a joke did not see the car before I took the
wire out). On the other hand, the gas tanks are full now.
There is no point in tweaking anything else until I get the springs
changed.
At the end of the day, I wanted to take some folks for fun runs and let
some folks drive it. I got strapped in with netter Bob Fogt, turned the
key and got no response. The fuel pump didn't even tick. So we charged
it up with the NUMMI Nova Bob's wife, Liz, had brought out, loaded up and
headed for home.
I have since found that the contacts in the alternator relay are closed.
Must be welded. I can throw it round the garage and the ohmmeter still
shows a dead short. So the field of the alternator was drawing amps while
the car was parked. No wonder it did not charge right off the battery
charger. When I disconnected it from the car, the battery took the juice
just fine.
Not that the alternator itself was OK. There was quite a noise that
intermittently issued from it. And there was no evidence it was charging
the battery. The cover that is supposed to be peined into the back (well,
the front, on a Europa) was missing, allowing the bearing to move out and
let the fan blades scrape on the housing. Two of them have broken off. I
sent the alternator out for a rebuild, including a new fan. It is done,
and I pick it up tonight (Friday). $142! That and a new relay, and maybe
it will work. Unless, of course, the regulator is shot, too.
> The car is not pretty, although the dashboard and wheels are. Neither of
> these are Lotus parts. Do I sense a pattern here? The chassis and
> running gear should be OK, though, and I cannot wait to get out there and
> drive it. I get about two weeks, and then it goes to bed for the winter.
> All I will have is memories and a list of things to work on, but I think
> it is going to be worth it.
Has been so far. I will drive it yet this weekend (no autocrosses left)
with some Stabil in it and then dump the oil hot and put in some Valvoline
synthetic for the long winter's nap. The wakeup procedure should be
fairly straightforward, so I should be ready for my School/Warmup in April.
Phil Ethier, THE RIGHT LINE, 672 Orleans St, Saint Paul, MN 55107-2676
h (612) 224-3105 w (612) 266-6244 phile@stpaul.gov
"The workingman's GT-40" - Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman "And how!" - Me
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