I was living near the end of a road by the beach in Scituate in a winter rental in February 1978 and had just returned with some parts after visiting Ed Loveday?s shop called Pitstop in Avon. My Elan had sucked in a trumpet nut a couple days earlier and imbedded in number 4 piston. The head and sump were off and in the ground level garage (white door visible in the photo below halfway down on the far left).
(Before) the photo below shows the beach a few months before the storm known locally as “the blizzard of 78” a 3 day Noreaster that dumped 35 inches of snow with constant winds over 70 mph for 24 hours and gusts just over 100mph
The house I was in was still standing (east and west walls washed away with my Elan still in there). It is just out of view on the far left, My roommate and I watched the 6 houses directly on the beach get washed away except for the second story of one of them.
I found this satelite photo on the internet, one of the Blizzard of 1978 sites had it. Its of tuesday February 7th at 4:01 pm, this is more or less the near the end of the storm and you can see the rough formed eye. This is just hard to understand, this is effectively a catagory 1 Huricane in 20 degree fahrenheit air and high 30’s water temperature. The storm hung around and dumped snow for 36 hours. One of the reports I have read states the the track headed north and “looped east” before heading north again. Its real hard for storms to backup to the east once the are moving but this one did.
More photos at these sites.
hullnantasket.homestead.com/blizzardpix.html
hullnantasket.homestead.com/bliz … nhull.html
This put an end to my Elan ownership for close to 10 years until I had finished building another home for myself and had the time and money to restart the rebuild of 26/4597. The original body was repaired but accident, fire, and flood damage had taken a heavy toll on the shell and try as I did it was just not going to do the job. I bought a S4 wreck and rebuilt it as a nice cruising Elan.
It was great driver but it just didn?t have the thrill of the lighter S2 that I remembered. In 1994 I found another S2 that was in pretty good condition with the Cylinder head in the boot. The owner and I couldn?t agree on the price, he wanted $8000 and I want to pay $3000. Three months went by and his price was down to $5000 so I counter offered $4000 and we agreed at $4500 so at lunch time one day at work I drove from Marlboro, Ma. To Watertown and loaded it into the back of my pickup. When I got it home from work I unloaded onto the back porch where it sat for a while until I cleared some space in my shop in Greenbush
This photo show the Spring of 1969 Massachusetts inspection sticker, with an October 1965 delivery it wasent on the streets of Cambridge long before engine problems layed it up for the next 28 years.
Looking at the above photo you have to wonder why I would use it for the basis of my dream hot rod Elan. It was just a project that I had been wanting to do for years and the time was right, the bills were paid and I had the time and the space. I had just started working a 4-day week and the person I was sharing the shop with had just moved out so things were coming together fast. I called Spyder and ordered a chassis and had a frind of mine, Kenny Duclos building up a 1700cc tall deck Twin Cam. Kenny told me that he and friend were getting an order together from Tony Thompson and asked if I wanted anything so I said how about alloy bellhousing, gear case, tailshaft and diff nose. I had already ordered the parts for the differential, quaife torsen, new 3.9 ring and pinion, heavy duty CV from Dave Bean, heavy duty axles and hubs from RD Enterprises (more of Tony Thompson?s parts). There wasn’t much I didn’t replace.
I finally got the body down to my shop where there was plenty of room.
(I found these photos today (7-21-2008) and they show how nice the body was when I bought it.
Hear are a bunch of photos that I took at the time
The Elan body flipped over to remove the paint and fiberglass some areas
The body with the first coat of prime sanded and second coat applied
The body leaving my shop and ready to go next door for painting
All the parts setup and ready for the base coat, it takes up a lot of space
Base coat applied to the body
The body back in my shop
With the body done it was time to spend some time in my garage getting the Spyder chassis built up. with most of the sub assemblies pre built it didn’t take all that long to get things done.
The body now sitting on the chassis for the first time,
In late August of 1997 I finally had the Elan ready for its first drive. With a couple gallons of gas, the first drive was to the landfill in Cohasset Heights where they had a weigh bridge scale and drove onto it. The gentleman in the shack gave me the printout. 1260 pounds with spare and hardtop but the bonnet was left at home, so call it 1280 lbs. I never did add up the bills, but I would guess it was upwards of $25k. All in all it was worth the time of a little over a year and 11 years later it?s still a hoot to drive.
Gary