Major organ transplant begins

[Sabbot]

Having spent most of the winter debating options for increasing the output in the bluecow (a corruption of redbull that the kids came up with...) Caterham the the decision was made when a 1970 Elan come up for sale complete with a rebuilt BDA.

It took a few weeks to get the Elan back from Canada and then sort through all the bits, but the transplant is getting closer.

Given that the Elan needs completely reassembled I'm going to lift the body off and use the rolling chassis it as an engine cradle to get the BDA running and checked before the swap.

Some pictures attached (if your wife ever asks - yes you can fit three cars in a two car garage, just as long as two of them are old "lotuses")

[yellowss7]

Oooh! Get er done!!! That will certainly boost your status on the track. Look out Duratec boys.

[Croc]

oooohhh! A BDA! :drool: Now the cunning plan becomes clear. What is the spec on it?

[Sabbot]

BDA specs - It's a "1700", originally prepared by Dave Bean engineering. If the seller and the dyno sheets are to be believed it's good for ~170bhp but that was at >7000rpm All the internals are new but pretty much stock so I'll probably set the rev limiter to 6500rpm. Even with the lower max it should be a little bit of step up from the current 1700 supersprint.

 

Chances of the transplant taking place in time for NJMP outing in June? - about 70%, but that sort of depends on the weekday job not flowing into the weekends too much. A few measurements over the weekend suggested that if I don’t want to cut the body work (which I don’t) the engine / trans has to go back 0.5” to fit the carbs in the correct body orifice and the engine mounts have to drop 0.75” to clear the body with the slightly taller engine….

 

The current job waiting to be finished is to fabricate two by 2 bolt forward mounts for the roll bar (currently only retained by the less than confidence inspiring single 7/16" bolt per side), add the second diagonal and add the mounts for a forward facing petty bar. The correct size DOM tube turned up last week so I don’t have too much of an excuse not to finish the job.

 

Chances of the elan being reassembled for my wife to use this summer - probably somewhere south of 50%. Although given that this will be my 3rd elan and 2nd ground up build this is probably a less complex task than the fabrication required to install the BDA into the Caterham.

[blubarisax]

Would it go faster if we all came over to watch you work? We would love to have you at the track in June!