At some point the boot area has been repaired - Quite badly hence the work I am doing.
The repairer was quite keen with an angle grinder and has removed large portions of the vertical lip that the boot seal attaches to with the result that the seal doesn’t fit properly.
If anyone knows or has the seal off please could they measure the height of the vertival lip - front, back, left, right.
Haven’t got my car here so I can’t tell you the measurements but I can tell you mine is pretty shallow most of the way around. Probably less than a quarter inch up from the curve.
That said, the new seal appears to be staying on ok, and with the shallow lip it is tending to roll into the curve which in turn allows the lid to close a bit easier.
I have noticed that the boot lid is under a bit of tension when shut onto a new seal so it could be that Lotus or a previous owner have trimmed the lip down to try to compensate a bit?
These measurements are from a 1966 S3 Coupe’ taken in the approximate center of each respective side, from the approximate center of the channel to the top edge of the lip. The lip edge appears unmolested. (BACK is the tailight valence)
May I suggest you ask for the measurement in a different way. It should be from the body’s surface down to the lip. That gap is the important one and more relevant. Best to lay a straight edge all the way across the body and measure from that.
I had/have a similar problem with tension on the boot lid preventing me from being able to lock the boot. Could not figure out what was happening until I came up with a high tech way to see what was happening inside the boot.
I took a poweful flashlight/torch placed it in the boot along with a well positioned video camera. Turned on the camera opened and closed the boot several time. If one keeps moving the camera one should get a very good picture of how the boot/seal and lid all fit together from the inside.
From this I could tell that the boot hinges are slightly misaligned. Now I just need to fix it. If you have the camera it might give you an idea of what is going wrong with your fit.