Engine Compartment, Brake Boosters, Dyno Day

The engine is basically stock. It was rebuilt by Rich Kamp shortly after I acquired the car.

The exhaust manifold has been replaced with headers and the corssover pipes and secondary butterfly valves, shaft, linkage have been removed (still vent the gas tanks into an activated charcoal canister mounted on the firewall.

Sill run Stromberg carburators. However, I replaced the stock (B1G) metering needles with B2AR needles (after passing the smog test - test is no longer required in CA because the car is over 25 years old).

Here is a shot of the engine looking left.

I have removed the brake boosters (they never worked). The bottle which is mounted where the boosters use to be catches coolant from the swirl pot if the car overheats (the overflow was originally piped into the left rear wheel well where is spills onto the road - this is not permitted at the track). The car seldom overheats (only happens when I forget to turn on the radiator fan - thermostat control was removed by PO). I had the radiator boiled out before reassembling the car.

Most Europa owners have removed the brake boosters. Some have replaced the brake master cylinder with the earlier S-1 cylinder which has a smaller bore (less force but more pedal travel). I decided that it wasn't worth the effort. I have a slightly harder pedal (but can still lock the wheels anytime I want to), and since the conversion to rear disk brakes, the force needed has dropped.

Repiping the brakes was a little tricky. Most of the connections use bubble flares instead fo the standard double flare. I tried to make a bubble flare with an American flaring tool. The connectins held for a while, but eventually started leaking. Naturally, I was at a Golden Gate Lotus Club event when the problem was discovered. Managed to make it home without crashing the car. Rich Kamp has an English flaring tool, so he made up some lines with bubble flares for me, and that took care of the problem. I purchased a bubble flare tool from the Frost Co. in Manchester, UK. They have a website with a decent on-line catalogue www.frost.co.uk.

During the winter of 2000, I took the exhaust system off the car and had it ceramic coated at Accessories Plus in Belmont CA. A wide veriety of colors are available, I chose silver. the cost was $185, which included the muffler.

The Golden Gate Lotus Club had a "Dyno Day" event a couple of years ago. Here I am on the dynometer.

Here are the results of the test.