The Mk 1 Installation
The first installation used solid brake line to the caliper because after all, I won’t be moving it for years, will I ?
Well, you can guess how long that brainwave lasted, almost 24 hours until the next day.
Revisiting the next day and light dawned that changing brake pads might be a nuisance but an even bigger snag was effectively bleeding the brakes.
I was struggling to get all the air out for some reason and so decided to unbolt and manipulate the caliper. Which is all well and good until you find a solid brake line which isn't meant to twist around.
The Mk 1 Installation
The Mk2 Installation
The Mk 2 Installation
So it was back to the drawing board and a search through the parts cupboard to see what we've got.
Hence the Mk 2 installation with a short flexible hose which allows the caliper to swing for pad replacement and also to be manipulated when bleeding if desired.
This sounds a nuisance and I'm sure this would never pass in a modern design, but I think I'm stuck with it as one of the problems in using parts originally intended for other applications.
In practice it's no big deal and very simple to swing the caliper to either replace pads or even bleed the brakes, which I now do as a matter of course.
The next photo shows the assembly from underneath the car when I was sorting out the handbrake.
I include it so you can see that by modifying the handbrake outer cable stop it does give you a very smooth cable run with the outer casing clipped neatly to the chassis.
Even without the additional return spring that I fitted the handbrake released smoothly, the extra spring is just for the times when no doubt it will get encrusted with dirt and grime.
What the MoT man sees
This conversion threw up one unexpected snag, that of clearance to the original 13” wheels.
The Final (?) Installation
I was already intending to move to the 15” wheels shown here so it wasn’t a big deal as there’s plenty of clearance, but with the original 13” Cosmic alloys, it wouldn’t fit.
The Cosmics are 13x5J and have an internal rib which causes the problem. The only way round this would be to fit spacers to the hubs, not something I like doing.
I don't know if the OEM Lotus alloys have the same section casting so this may not be an issue with other wheels, or even 13x5.5 Cosmic rims if they have a greater offset.
Steel wheels will probably be ok (the Elan uses a larger rear disc with 13x4.5" steel rims and no clearance issues)