Lotus Europa S1: Bloody Knuckles and Broken Dreams, Part 2

 

The Lotus is disassembled! These pictures were taking during a couple of weekend, I didn’t upload them yet, so here they are. I have to thank Ansfried and Jeroen for helping me take the engine and glass out, something I wouldn’t have managed by myself. Also thanks to Geoffrey for lending me his engine crane!

The only thing that needs doing is extracting the chassis from in the body shell, but that’s the first job on the list when I restart work after my exam period.

 

Because I didn’t have to sit in the cabin any more to take apart the dash, I took out the seat cushions. They will need a lot of work to get them right. I might use these as a template and make replacements myself.

 

My workshop is getting full at a high rate, time to take everything apart and put it in boxes.

 

The complete steering rack and steering box were out of the car after some persuasion with a hammer and a drift.

 

Here are some pictures of the engine parts of the 821 engine, I quickly reassembled the engine in my workshop to minimize the chance to lose anything.

 

Next job was removing the pedal assembly. After getting the pedals out I discovered they were once cut and re welded to re space the pedals (a common problem with a Europa if you have big feet).

 

The front luggage compartment is completely empty except for the braking system. I will remove this once the chassis is out of the car.

 

One rear suspension unit out!

 

And the result: an empty rear wheel well.

 

One of the hardest parts of removing the rear suspension units was removing the rear roll pins in the driveshafts.

 

The rear of the car seems to be floating without any suspension attached.

 

Two rear suspension units in the van on their way home!

 

Jeroen helped me to take out the front and rear glass. When they are removed you get a feeling of how fragile the body is around the windscreen pillars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It took us a while, but we got the engine out of the car and into the van! After taking a good look I found out the engine is a 697-01 unit (standard renault 16) in stead of the original 697-04. This one has no high compression pistons, no bigger valves and no high-lift camshaft. It is not a problem because I will replace most of these components anyway, but it would be nice to have a correct engine. I have a lead on another S2 engine, so I might buy another one (that would be engine #3..). This seller also has a lot of spare S2 parts that might come in handy so I’ll contact him and see if I can spare the expense.

 

Trying to remove the windscreen wipers and the heater assembly. The wipers came right out, the heater assembly was stubborn, I’ll take it out when the chassis is removed, that way access is much easier.

 

I removed the insulation in the engine compartment and also removed the mice nest that was in the back of the car. Luckily I did not encounter any mice, I suspect that they where in there some time ago.

 

This is the last photograph I took before I cleaned up my mess and took all my tools home. The Europa is standing there, feeling sorry for herself, but once my exams are done you can find me working on the car!

 

Thank you for reading!

 

Serge