Adam, it what this forum is all about, and seeing Ian?s response it looks like there?s more to the BRM story that just the green S3 cars. Ian?apologies, I didn?t see your response in early Jan as my PC was playing up for a while.
So, apart from the Polychromatic Green / Orange Blaze S3 cars, Mike Spence carried on modifying S4s to the same BRM specification, but not necessarily with the same colour scheme. What an interesting car you have! Do you have any photos you could post up?
I?ve copied your response into this topic so that anybody looking for ?BRM? in the future will find it in one place?.
[i][b]?My car has an interesting history and I have only recently established some of the missing information when I wrote to the Lotus factory and received an informative reply. My car is 45/8779 and it left the factory in February 1969 and was delivered direct to Mike Spence Ltd with two separate invoices, one for the engine L18172B and another for the rest of the car.
It was registered for the road a few weeks later with engine number 3020 E 6015 which had been substantially modified to BRM specification. It has a fully gas flowed big valve head, Cosworth CPL2 cams, enlarged chokes to 34mm in the 40DCOE31 Webers, 4-2-1 fabricated exhaust and fully polished and balanced crank, pistons and conrods etc. It carries the BRM plaque on the front of the camcover and a discrete BRM logo on the nose of the car.
In all other respects I think the car is substantially S4 SE specification with the 3.55 diff etc. so no garish dayglow orange paintwork on it as per some of the other BRM modified cars of the era. I guess the original owner wanted a wolf in sheeps clothing, although a bright yellow car with silver grey trim is hardly inconspicuous.
I bought the car in 1973 with about 25000 miles on it and I used it for a few years as my daily driver. In 1976 I took it off the road at 73700 miles to rebuild the gearbox as it had begun to mis-behave, it was an easy fix as it just needed new bearings. At the same time I stripped the engine and honed the bores, added new rings and valve guides, new bearing shells, timing chain etc. to reduce the oil consumption as it was beginning to affect the spark plug selection, I had to run Champion N9Y in it to avoid plug fouling.
Other events in my life then conspired to prevent me ever getting it back on the road and the car has been in warm dry storage ever since, with intermittent work being done on it over the years as time and bursts of energy have dictated. My interests wandered towards old motorcycles which I still have a passion for and I have restored some over the years. So, I have owned the car now for some 35 years and I recently decided that for its 40th birthday year it really ought to be put back on the road and used again. I commenced by stripping down the rear suspension and diff etc. right back to the chassis which is where my recent discussions on the forum have started. I remember replacing the original rear shock absorbers in 1975 after one of them lost performance, the bad shock turned a sweet handling car into a tail swapping monster but the replacement Armstrongs totally transformed the handling back to how it should be, they still seem to be in good condition with strong damping when operated by hand. I vaguely remember now that back in 1975 that there was a “rubber thing” on the top of the rear suspension damper rods, but they are not there now, so I assume that as a spotty youth I had decided that they were not needed, or perhaps too damaged to be re-used, so were discarded. Now I have got the bit between my teeth I want to maintain the momentum and see the job through, the car has a certain patina now as it matures so I am not planning on changing that too much as I prefer originality where possible.?[/b][/i]
Mark
