Hi. I’ve just purchased a Tudor radiator recovery bottle for my Elan S4 (Stromberg). I’m struggling to identify precisely where it should be located and secured. Can anyone help please (photo’s would be very helpful). Thanks.
Thats great thanks. Just one point; assume you secured the bracket base to the bodywork?
Mine’s to the right of Roger’s, on the other side of the air ducting in the bottom pic. The bracket is fastened to the side wall at floor level just in front of the rad. To the best of my knowledge that’s where it’s always been.
Stuart
My bracket does have holes for both bottom and side fixing but has always been mounted where shown in the pics. The base of the bracket is angled so the bottle is upright when mounted on the sloping body so it looks right. There is not room in my engine bay to fit it where Stuarts is as the air ducting runs too close to the inner wing - I suspect that the air cleaner positioning was a bit variable as well ! Any other variations out there ?
Regards,
Hi, Ive placed it infromt of the airfilter using the holes on the airfilter to fix it in place…
The location on my Sprint is as per Rogers’. Although it’s not as impossibly clean as his…
Regards
Richard
For the S4 I believe Roger’s bottle is correctly positioned. Here is a link to a road test of a Sprint, from 1971, at the bottom of which is a good shot of the engine bay and bottle:
lotuselansprint.com/Document … tMar71.pdf
That test car was one of the factory S4/Sprint versions, so based on the 1970 S4
Tim
I am not going to comment on originality…
However, if you want the airflow form driving to cool the water in the radiator, move the clutter in front of the radiator of the flow of air.
The space on the radiator mounting bracket for example, is not used and can mount the overflow bottle.
Jason Farmer
I despair! It’s a plastic bottle filled with water and can be fixed anywhere. Get out and drive your car!
Fantastic responses as always! which brings me on to whether I need to change the radiator cap. I know there’s other threads relating to this but I thought some fresh thoughts on this might be useful! My cap is fairly basic (i.e. just a single spring mechanism). Do I need to change this for the recovery to operate effectively? (My local supplier is Paul Matty).
I thought the Tudor bottles have been superseded by the Windsor bottles.
The Tudor bottle was superseded by the Stuart bottle.
I’ve collected a few rad caps over the years trying to get the cooling system to work and I’d never realised that there was a two way valve mechanism in the correct one until I read about it here earlier in the year. The car had only ever dumped water into the recovery bottle previously, never sucked it back again.
I replaced the cap with a two way one (one of the junk ones turned out to be the correct one once I knew what I was looking for) and the car’s not used a drop of water this year - about 3000 miles. It still amazes me - it’s never done this before in over 25yrs of ownership.
Easy to get a bit confused with the Windsor bottles, they’re just rebranded German ones. I did come across a report recently that an Australian company had got the manufacturing rights to the really old Plantagenet bottles but unless you’re looking for ex factory originality it’s probably better to stick with the more modern stuff.
My S4 has the bottle in the same position as Roger’s.
My ‘72 sprint is the same as Rogers but again not nearly as spotless & I’ve never had any cooling problems (tho’ NE Scotland isn’t the warmest place on earth!)
While doing a spot of winter maintenance I was reading over the cooling system section (K) in the workshop manual & found page 5 is blank ! All to do with thermostat & radiator removal I think, which isn’t a huge problem, but would someone be kind enough to post a copy of the page please, then I can print it off. Many thanks in advance.
Also, while I’m at it, in the manual (K12) it mentions that the sprint models are fitted with a blanking panel below the rad. (mine doesn’t, tho there are side panels) are other sprints possessed with such a thing & does it help?
Thanks for your help.
Neil
I hope this is what you want, due to size constraints on the forum it may not be big enough to copy,if not pm me your email and I will send full size.
WGAF?
Practising for xmas party
Hi Neil and welcome.
Yep, your Sprint will have originally been fitted with the card blanking panel below the radiator. You might be able to track one down or easily make one up. It does help with cooling, provided of course you still have the panels at the side of the radiator and the sponge on the underside of the bonnet to seal off the top of the radiator too.
Tim
Neil,
PM me with your contact details and I’ll send you a template for the blanking panel.
Regards,
Stuart.