Due to an overenthusiastic PO the body of my S2 was bolted down on the two rear chassis flange bolts - without spacers. This resulted in an ugly big nearside door gap (rear top / at door handle). It also causes the door lock to rest only about 1mm in the catch plate.
And… the body to upright bolt sits too low in the threaded plate.
Question: when I take out the body to upright bolt and release the two chassis bolts, the body will come up a few mm and so no thread for the upright bolt to match with bobbin. Can I run the car with this bolt omitted or will the upright be overstressed? Its just for normal driving… 
(I don’t want to take the body off and weld up the thread
not this year… )
Anna
Anna, If I am understanding you correctly and you are referring to the body fixings at the top of the rear turrets?
The easiest thing would be to re-drill the bobbins in the body to a larger clearance size so that you can tap out the chassis threads to the next size bigger (presumably 7/16 AF) This could all be done with the body in situ
You would need washers on the body bolts, but once tightened they would be fine.
Hi Anna
There should be a aluminum spacer 1/8 inch thick 1 inch wide and 6 inches long under the body and above the chassis for the two rear most chassis to body bolts that you can see inside the boot, the boot ground is attached to one of them. If releasing the tention solves your door gap issue I would not drive the Elan without the 2 7/16 unf bolts that secure the body to the rear uprights, the body contributes a fair amount to the chassis stiffness at those points. On the Coupe and S3 the body changes nessessitated a steel top hat shaped piece of steel that went between both towers. If you do not want to pull the body I would elongate the bobbins with a die grinder and the appropreate cutter so that you can put the bolts back in and tight them accordingly. I might not want to enlarge the 7/16 hole a full 1/8 of an inch in height to form a slot but I have had to play games before with swapping chassis from one Elan to another to get the bolts back in. The bobbins are fairly large and properly oriented so that a little metal removal will not hurt much.
Gary
I added the photos on 6-24-08, they show the spacer I was refering to in place. Its tough to see but its there if you look hard enough.
…the Gary Anderson Archive - I think the?biggest collection of original Elan parts in the world…
Thats what I was afraid of. So I’ll shim the nearside door lock and go the chassis separation way next winter. Don’t like to torture bobbins.
Anna 
I too have always had the same problem with a large gap at the top of the RH door. The body is currently off for chassis replacement and there were no spacers fitted on the rear mounts when I removed it. This post comes just in time to stop me making the same mistake when I come to drill/tap the new chassis. Now I study the manual a bit more closely (read the instructions when all else fails!) it does show two spacer plates between the body and chassis - presumably 2 x 1/16" thick??
I think if the cars body recovers and the gap is back to normal, I would measure the gap at the rear bottom chassis points and make a suitable spacer. If no complete recovery - maybe pushing the body up with one hand and fitting thin washers or sheet metal “shims” might help to find the needed packing and then a single spacer can be made. There might be even a diffent height right/left side.
Anna
Anna,
I agree with most comments posted on your problem, but would also add that there is quite a lot of flexibility in an Elan body when separated from the chassis. Resting on railway sleepers on the sills it is quite possible to deflect the rear and front of the car by as much as 1/8" (3mm). Just try removing the boot bolts and seeing if moving the boot section up by 3mm will enable you to insert the packing washers easily, that may make the difference you are looking for. If you have to put to much strain into the body then be careful as you could induce stress cracks into the rear wing which is the last thing you will want.
Nice to hear from you again. See my posting on the 1/4 million miles +2.
Gordon
Hi Anna
Its been a couple of months since you first posted the question and I came across two of the chassis spacers. I took a couple of photos of it in place
on my S2 Elan and posted them a couple weeks back. So here are two more pictures along with a exhaust side motor mount spacer
( 1.125 L x .75 D with a 5/16 inch hole) and a windscreen wiper knob (for size dimension) and a scale along the bottom. The spacer is 5.75 L x 1.0 with a thickness is 1/8 of an inch.
Hope this helps.
Gary