The Lotus Grand Tourers

Thanks Dave. I hope to get a good day in the shop on Sunday and will check all the recommendations. Wish you and the other guys were close by. I bet you could spot a lot of things it needs if you could come over and see it in person. If you are ever in Fort Worth, TX........

Please remind me whether Fort Knox is a prison or where there are stories about USA Gold reserves.
I am now not sure whether I can get a visitors Visa, living in Spain (joke).
Any other Lotus queries, spares locating, post on this Forum, there is a wealth of knowledge.

Dave the Cog.

I didn't get to do much with the Lotus today because a repair on my truck took longer than expected (Lotus is a toy, truck has work to do). I did check the pulley alignment with a straight edge and they appear to be perfectly aligned. And I ordered some A907E6090H inlet trumpets to replace the sketchy modified aftermarket ones that came with the car. Maybe more news next weekend.

Finally got back to this. Here is photo of the back of my alternator and the sticker on the side (which is mostly unreadable). But perhaps someone could recognize if its a correct replacement or original from December 1986.





And below shows the airbox that Lotusbits sent me on the left along with the butchered one on the right.



I'm pretty sure I gave Archie my vin number so that he could look up and confirm the correct part but who knows if records are even correct.

And I received a set of the dellorto inlet trumpets from https://west-cam.com/product/a907e6090h-inlet-trumpet/ (apparently getting their last set since it now shows out of stock).

The alternator looks the correct one to me. Certainly looks the same as my late MY89.
The air box looks to have different breathers to mine. Do you have a picture of it turned through 90 Deg so we can see the profile of the front in plan?

Your airbox has a slightly different breather arrangement to mine on the rear section. Also the angle on the surface that meets the carbs looks wrong. On my 89SE the rear mating surface runs pretty much parallel to the surface where the air filter sits. I think (and I may be wrong) that it is the steep angle at the back of the airbox that is causing you issues with the alternator, because it 'tips' the airbox down into the engine bay.

In addition, the airbox you have does not match the diagrams in the parts manual for the Excel SE. Whilst not 100% accurate on all matters I would have expected it to detail a different airbox if one were used on US cars (for example).

Duncs

PS: I posted some images of my airbox, and alternator arrangement earlier in the thread if you missed them.

I confirm the alternator on my 85 LC is the same. The replaced one has one more terminal which is not used on the Excel.

There are two types of Air-box, the LC is simple and does not have an airvalve housing, as on most HC as yours seems to be (it has AC).
The air valve is not really necessary, it enables hot starts as it draws out fuel vapour left in the airbox on engine switch-off, in hot climates, which can foul the sparkplugs on restart.
Actually not difficult to change from old box (bodged one) if it has remained there.

Dave the cog

It is an SE. The bodged airbox does not have any place to connect the purge pump if that is what you are referring to. Here in Texas during the summers, I do sometimes have difficulty with a hot restart and so I had Lotusbits send me a purge pump that I was going to install at the same time (that may be a topic for another thread). The wiring seems to be there for the purge pump, but the car did not have one when I got it.