Suffering my first breakdown after two years of ownership.
This breakdown is closely related to overheating and coolant system woes.
The current setup of my car is making use of an aftermarket switch toggle that will set the fan running speed to maximum speed. With this, the temperature is not supposed to move to the three-quarter mark.
The largest piece of piping in the system had burst and left an opening in the system, causing all fluids to flow out. By intuition, I had checked and discovered there was no coolant in the tank and had tried to top it up temporarily with distilled water.
This was enough to limp the car another hundred metres or so in a congested carpark before the temperature increased into unsafe levels; I admitted defeat and parked it on the side.
The trouble with sourcing these is that unlike simpler powertrains, the cooling system on the Elan is several pipes as it is for one a turbocharged powertrain.
What is present on the car is a Samco set, and they are not readily available for immediate purchase online. I will be looking if there is local hose manufacturers or OEM sets if available while I preorder another full set of Samco hoses.
As these pipes are likely nearly 15 years old, they are well within the time range to replace them as they may not be as strong to handle the internal pressures of the cooling system, which could have been what happened here.
This was all within the start of the month. Samco sets were few and far between in terms of immediate availability by shops and owners, so I had to preorder one from another website.
In the meantime, I ordered a OEM piece that can be bought from SJSportscars alongside necessary clips. This piece largely were not an issue to install by my workshop as I had heard, and the Lotus by this metric is now drivable again.
~Efini
Gallery:
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