Lotus Elan S4 - Splitting the Body & Chassis

Lifting the Vegantune modified body off the Spyder chassis of our 1970 Lotus Elan S4.
Massive thank you to LotusElan.net for being an awesome source of information. The checklist I was working to can be found on their forum here:
lotuselan.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=34110
Some slight differences I found with our car;
- I didn’t need to remove the shift lever, just pushed it in to gear which allowed it to pass through the hole in the body
- I didn’t drain the differential (probably didn’t really need to drain the engine & gearbox oil but did anyway)
- I didn’t need to remove the rubber bing for access to the prop shaft U-joint, but this car doesn’t appear to have said joint, it has been converted to running a 5sp ZF gearbox though
- with the Stromberg carbs I needed to remove all the carburettor studs from the manifold as they would have fouled the steering column otherwise
- don’t forget about the reverse switch wiring
- disconnect the heater control valve = disconnect the valve from the head, not disconnect the cable & hose from the valve
More frequent updates and pictures, day to day goings on etc of the build can be found on our Facebook page:
Vegantune-Elan-111422880574167/
Thanks as always to the good people on the LotusElan.net website & forum, the best source of Elan info I have found online:
lotuselan.net
Also the members of the Classic Lotus Elan & Plus 2 Owners group on Facebook:
groups/Lotus.Elan/?ref=share

[@Sentosaman]

Always a great moment when these chassis and body separate first time from factory. This is the time when you can future proof the chassis for decades to come. 🙏🏻

[@jimestall413]

You took a lot of care and patience which paid off. Good luck with your journey.

[@witofthestaircase1]

That’s useful. Thanks for taking the trouble

[@trevorsears655]

Thanks, this is going to be very useful for me when I get around to taking the body off my Spyder chassis Elan

[@frankhoward7645]

11:09. Can't see them from this angle, but if the heads on the pivot bolts connecting the front of the lower wishbones are facing the front of the car, in the future you'll be unable to remove them without cutting them, cutting a hole in the glassfibre, or removing the body. Good time to make sure the bolt heads are facing the rear of the car. Excellent video. Thanks for taking the time to make it and share it with us.

[@richardcooper9417]

Be careful when putting the body down onto the floor. I stove in the fuel tank mounting bolt, and got a bad petrol leak.

[@munky2k]

Yeah, I pulled the tank before splitting the body off, mostly to reduce weight hanging out the back in the shell. 2 out of the 3 mounting threads on ours sheared due to corrosion. Aluminium tank with aluminium threads, steel nuts, years/decades of road spray - glorious combination!