Going back some way, like all the way back to the end of 2018(!), the Elan came to live in my garage with the aim being to get it back on the road.
Initially the plan had been to get it back on the road earlier in 2018 to be used as my wedding car, but it quickly became apparent the car was in need of more than a quick going over and some air in the tyres.
It was parked up in 2001, but all that time in a nice dry garage. Still the brake and clutch systems were goosed, it had overheated prior to being parked up so the engine would need checked and there was a bit of a leak present around the diff.
Anyways, more detail on the car and pictures of the modifications and it’s general condition.
First up was giving it a waterless wash (window seals utterly perished, boot seal never really worked in the first place), things looked a fair bit better!
Vacuumed with the soft brush attachment on good old Henry, then quick detailer and multiple micro fibre cloths were used.
Just a light coating of dust!
Massive improvement!
Evidence of a really poor repair on the passenger front corner of the car. This must have happened some time after the car was painted by Vegantune as the colour match is miles off and the cracking and crazing suggests there’s a power of catty underneath.
This gives a good indication of just how much wider the arches are compared to standard. The 3 piece Compomotive split rims in 13×7 do a good job of filled them, 205 section tyres are huge when you consider the size and weight of the vehicle.
Also shows just how bad the door fitment is. Not unique to this car, bit of an Elan special feature.
Pretty sizeable ducktail / spoiler grafted in to the boot lid. Not sure what it’s made up of, but the boot lid is seriously weighty for a fibreglass panel!
The somewhat unique paint looks to be an attempt at Ecurie Ecosse blue. This shot really shows just how fantastically metallic the finish is.
Sadly the paint is in pretty bad condition, aside from the front end repair. The bootlid is actually a different shade of blue to the rest of the car, there’s parts where you can see brush strokes and paint runs on it also. There’s also sections on the front and rear arches where there are bubbles under the paint which suggests moisture has compromised the gel coat.
Also in that picture is the edge of the Webasto sunroof. Very rare to see one fitted to the “baby Elan” rather than the more common fitting to the larger, and much flatter roofed, Plus2.
When trying to figure out just when the car moved back to mine I found this somewhat cringeworthy video I made doing a walk around. We’ll just ignore the bit where I state the wrong model and wrong year, this was just the start of the learning curve!
