LOTUS:11 & Clubman Notes the Official Magazine of Lotus Club Victoria, Lotus Club Queensland
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17/06 August 2011 $8.00 LOTUS:11 & Clubman Notes The Official Magazine of Lotus Club Victoria, Lotus Club Queensland Features: Snetterton 60th Goodwood 2011 Le Barge Pt3 How to Find Uranus Elite 6 SML at Earls Court Start of an autocross at Hatfield. This might have been the one with EXTENDED ELITE no brakes but can't be sure since I did a few others there as well. By John Hellings (UK) Editor’s Note: The following article was published in the June issue of Club Elite News (UK) magazine. John has agreed that it be published in Lotus Notes. It is a fascinating story of a “production prototype” Elite invoiced from the factory in March 1959. My interest in Lotus in particular, as opposed to sports cars in general, developed at Hatfield during my time as an engineering student at the de Havilland Aeronautical Technical School and subsequently. Here we learnt all about the importance of efficient structural design, the sine qua non of minimum weight, and aerodynamic drag. Names there who moonlighted on occasions for the burgeoning Colin Chapman included Gilbert Mackintosh, Frank Costin and Maurice Phillipe, all of whom I knew and who vicariously fed this interest. I don’t remember the Elite at Earls Court in 1957 but soon became aware of this extremely pretty and doubtless highly efficient car. The fact that it employed good streamlining and a lightweight monocoque construction scored heavily in any aeronautical engineer’s eyes, although I never at that stage had any thoughts of owning one, being well satisfied with my TR2. Page 10 Lotus & Clubman Notes July 2011 However in 1960 I must have made enquiries at the Chequered Flag for I have a letter from them dated May that year offering two used Elites, a BRG one having been raced extensively by Jim Clark here and abroad “with immense success”. At £1665 it had extensive engine and brake modifications and was, they said, capable of “in excess of 130mph”. At £1685 the other (#1008) in pale blue was the October 1958 Motor 6 SML with PRW 130 Show Stand Model, subsequently covering 15000 miles in the hands of “one well known owner” who was, it transpired, Keith Hall, a Lotus works sports car driver at the time. The car was “hand built” and had a Stage II tuned engine. After some careful thought I went for the blue one and they graciously accepted the humble TR2 in part- exchange. As I took delivery I fervently hoped 6 SML wasn’t flattering to deceive. It didn’t take long to find out. The next 3½ Climax powered years saw a mixture of emotional highs and financial lows in broadly equal measure. The highs come to mind more readily, some of them stories in their own right. As well as everyday transport, the Elite provided plenty of fun from sprinting at Brands Hatch and elsewhere, night rallying, the occasional autocross (once managing to satisfy the scrutineer with no brakes whatsoever) to a race round 12 nominated pubs scattered throughout the length and breadth of Hertfordshire during opening hours one Sunday evening, an obligatory alcoholic drink being consumed at each. Everyone reached the finishing pub before closing time and our total mileage, as I recall, was around 100. It competed in sprints against the clock in the dark hours around a circuit of narrow lanes starting and finishing in Ayot St. Lawrence. Good to relate, 6 SML held the lap record for a while until taken by someone on a motor bike. For some unaccountable reason, Being driven into the Bristol Freighter at Lympne. Not by sense must have prevailed at that juncture and we didn’t try me(!) hence able to take the picture myself to wrest it back. On another occasion concealed police took exception to my driving as they (thought they) saw it and radioed ahead for me to be stopped. The attempt failed and by pure luck we avoided a road block thoughtfully set up a few miles further down the road especially for our benefit. Next day we were honoured with a personal visit by a police Lotus & Clubman Notes July 2011 Page 11 officer. Fortunately it all ended fairly amicably with a grudging letter Full of foreboding I accompanied them out to the car, still on the tarmac. from Police HQ in Kidlington: “Having considered the matter…… no Despite prolonged efforts they had failed to discover how to open the further action on this occasion…….. however I should warn you…… bonnet to check chassis and engine numbers against the paperwork. etc.” The usual stuff. Their injured pride was palpable and satisfying. In the very early days a trip made was to Italy, where the car spent The minutiae of the mechanical lows have largely faded into oblivion, ten days in the Lancia/Alfa Romeo garage in Alassio having a front prop probably through selective amnesia, and had I not made a point of shaft U/J replaced by mechanics who had only heard of Elites racing at retaining pretty well all paperwork connected with the car, they would Monza, never having seen one in the flesh. They declared the job would have remained so. But trawling through it revealed invoices for all take just two days including getting the bits – impossible I told them manner of work of which I have little recollection. For example, Sprinting at Brands Hatch suspecting what prop shaft removal entailed. Their faces were a picture Remove and skim head, renew diff oil seals……£55 after putting the car on the lift to show me how wrong I was. New crankshaft, conrods, pistons, jackshaft, weld crankcase etc. At the outset we had crossed the Channel from Lympne on a Silver £1925 (following a blow up after 6 months, just outside Chequered Flag’s City Airways Bristol Freighter. Their staff insisted on taking the keys guarantee and more than I paid for the car!) and loading the car themselves, despite my protests. I was sniffily New camshaft bearings and exhaust valve, examine conrods and informed that they dealt with hundreds of cars without damage (to their planes I assume they meant) and mine would be no different. There pistons £14 followed a long and unexplained wait in the “Departure Lounge” until a Certainly there were other engine related problems on a fairly regular loudspeaker announcement requested the presence of 6 SML’s driver. basis, broken dynamo brackets, flooding SU carbs, leaking head gasket/ Page 12 Lotus & Clubman Notes July 2011 6 SML and Morgan somewhere in Alps dropped liners, air drawn into the slave cylinder. I was told “What do you expect from an engine one day frozen solid and the next boiling its head off in traffic? It was designed for racing, flat out or nothing.” Just the reassuring words I needed. More public of the lows were three total and unheralded brake failures on the road, one of which resulted in shooting the North Circular Road through red lights, fortunately without hitting anything. A couple followed unsuspected fluid loss from the rear calipers, the first of which occurred near Farnham. I drove the car, very carefully, to Mike Hawthorn’s garage. There I was redirected to another nearby where resided one Brit Pearce who looked after Lotus(es?) belonging to a well known driver – Innes Ireland springs to mind, though I could be mistaken. The third failure followed the top master cylinder attachment bolts pulling through the fibreglass, which was easily reinforced. The leakages were solved for good, thanks to a de Havilland Tech School friend whose father Joe Wright was Managing Director of Dunlop’s racing division, as I recall. A visit Outside the Design Office building at De Havillands. Why someone took to their Silverstone caravan during a meeting elicited a handful this in the car park I have no idea but I know the car caused a bit of a stir of high temperature caliper seals with their compliments. when I first turned up for work in it, so perhaps that's why. Whoever it was he must have given me a print. The most dramatic low was when 6 SML was comprehensively T-boned on the driver’s side by an Alfa Romeo that had jumped red lights. Such was the impact he ended up Lotus & Clubman Notes July 2011 Page 13 on Shepherds Bush Green while I was spun through 270º having become measure both the bell and tail shaft housings were alloy. Somehow I an uncomfortably snug fit between the door and the transmission tunnel. acquired from the factory a lines drawing of the Elite body shell, while The repairs by Lotus at Panshanger, being up the A1 from de Havillands, Ford provided an installation drawing for the engine. Checks suggested no enabled me to keep general tabs on them but even so, progress was show-stoppers (i.e. no surgery to the body shell, so the installation would slow. I saw them repair a corner on Les Leston’s DAD10 in under a day be easily reversible) so I went ahead, but it was clear from the outset following a practice off at Brands, revealing a hitherto unsuspected ability that five particular issues needed addressing, to do something quickly. • Repositioning of the Ford filter bowl to clear the steering column, Eventually I collected the car and that evening visited a basement flat • The gear lever would be in the wrong place, in London. Afterwards there was a distinct smell of gas and on reaching • The existing engine mounting points could not be used, street level I found 6 SML guarded by a policeman with sand sprinkled around, the “repaired” scuttle tank happily leaking its contents into the • Relocation of the radiator’s inlet.