The Dreaded Water Pump

Ahh, Lotus cars, dontcha just love 'em ?

You'd think that after rescuing Lotty from a dark garage, spending a fortune on shiny bits, a nice new MoT and 5 gallons of the best petrol that Tesco sell, she'd be chuffed to bits, wouldn't you ?

Well, not quite. Once the novelty of driving around the Lincolnshire lanes had worn off, Lotty decided to throw another hissy fit.

Or rather throw rusty looking water around the engine bay and make very painful noises at the same time, just in case I wasn't getting the message.

Yep, the dreaded Lotus waterpump had pumped it's last.

Faced with the "head and sump off" deal I did think about fitting one of the modified front covers with cartridge pumps, but only for ten minutes.

Then the cynic in me came along with "well, this is the first time in 35+yrs that you've had to change the pump on the Elan, so is it really that big of a problem ?"

And the simple answer is that it's not.

A long job for sure but only nuts and bolts, we're not talking rocket science so let's just buy the proper kit and overhaul it.

Which is exactly what happened over one cold, winter week in January 2010.

I set the impellor at a tight clearance and re-assembled it using plenty of Halford's best gasket goo on the well known leak points.

And so far, 6 years later at the time of writing, it's held up well. For sure it doesn't do a lot of miles but so far Lotty has kept her oil inside rather than outside the engine, which is almost unknown of in my ownership.

One other surprising discovery has been the normal running temperatures. Ever since replacing the pump Lotty has consistantly run on the cool side, probably 5C lower on the dial than she used to do.