Some Lotus Elan parts are harder to find than others. But we are lucky to have several Lotus parts suppliers that supply parts without crazy mark ups. They also will not hesitate to have parts made. Ray at RD Enterprises, Dave at Dave Bean Engineering, or Jay at JAE will often look for opportunities to have parts made that are no longer easily available. If enough people ask for a specific part, they find a small shop that can make a couple dozen parts at a reasonable price. Recently RD had some plastic knobs for early Elans fabricated. I also know that JAE is the world supplier of original styled rubber carpets for early Elans and Dave Bean has always been willing to put his money up front to make obsolete parts including cam bearings and other needed items when no one else has them. Even Famous Frank Filicchichia has had a bunch of Elan vinyl interior pieces made up. He tells an interesting story about his first encounter with a major manufacturer. Frank wanted some door arm rest pieces made. The owner looked at him and asked how many he wanted. Frank thought about it for a bit and decided he would take a great leap of faith and said that he could probably use 100. The owner looked at him with a straight face and said “We can do 100,000 no problem”. It took a lot of the Famous Frank schmoozing to get just 100 pieces made.
Back around the first of December I was nearing completion on my latest Elan restoration project. I went up into my garage attic and pulled down the cardboard tube which I thought had the last pair of chrome U-channel strips that go across the top of the interior door panels. The fuzzy weather strips that rub against the side windows clip to these strips. So anyway I pull out the strips and “offered” them up to the door panels which I had just fabricated from fiberglass and new vinyl. To my dismay, I found that these strips were 3 inches too short. (I’ve heard that line before.) I checked them over again and again with the same results. I checked for other tubes upstairs and scratched my head a lot, concluding that somehow someone had sent me these strips that were just no good.
So I started calling our regular suppliers but RD, DB or JAE did not have them. I hit a couple internet sites in England but could not tell if they had them or not. I went to call them in the morning and found that I did not have international dialing on my phone. I recalled AT&T wanting 4 bucks a month for access. Something I figured I may not ever need so I had declined the fees. Now the only way to make the calls to England was to pucker up and hope the operator assisted calls would not be too expensive. I got my answer a month later on my phone bill. Two - three minute calls to England cost me $28.76 – ouch!
Anyways, neither Mick Miller nor Paul Matty had them either. It seems like my only choice was to send an email to Charles at the Type 26 Register in England. The original owner/operator of the Type 26 Register had passed away and Charles had taken over on a very part time basis. Many emails sent in the past had gone unanswered so I was not optimistic when I sent my request for the U-channels that were right in front of me on the website. I wish I could reach out and grab them or at least drop them into a shopping cart like on so many other web sites. Oh well, time to wait.
While I was waiting, I did some research into having the u-channels made. I hit several local Chicagoland manufacturers and got the same answer: “Yes we can make them but minimum run is 2000 feet.” I do not possess the Famous Frank schmoozing skills so I was out of luck.
I hit the internet for something close that might work. I found a very promising stainless steel strip that was used for boat windows. It was the right size and even came with the fuzzy strip already built into it. They only came in 96” lengths but I was pretty sure they might work and very sure that I could cut them down to size. I ordered up a length from an ebay store for $150 including expedited shipping. Five days later I got a form email saying that my parts would be delayed 10 days. I got on the phone and called the place and was put on hold. The message that was playing while I was on hold stated that for “Faster” service, I should send them an email - WTH? So I sent them an email and the faster service response came only 3 days later stating that the manufacturer said they would have them in 10 days. I could either wait or cancel the order. I decided to wait.
Somewhere in there I got a very nice email from Charles at the Type 26 Register stating that he was out of the strips but would have a batch made up sometime after Christmas. More waiting but what else could I do? At least I had two paths to getting my parts.
At the 10 day mark I sent an email to the marine weather strip supplier. At the 15 day mark I received a response that the manufacturer needed another 10 days. This went on until near the end January when I got an email from Charles stating that he had the parts. I requested an email invoice, got it and paid it via Paypal right away and was happy that the right parts were on the way. After lunch I was going to go and cancel the long awaited parts from the marine supplier. On my way downstairs I noticed that UPS had left a big cardboard shipping tube outside my door. Wow, the marine weather strip was here. I took the tube out to the garage and noticed that the tube was rather light. Upon reaching the garage I found out that the tube was rather empty. WTH2? It appeared that someone had played spear chucker with the tube at UPS. One end of the tube had been taped closed apparently after impaling some UPS agent with the 96” stainless steel strip. At least there were no blood stains on the tube. To my surprise, after only one email I received a full refund from the ebay marine strip supplier.
Several weeks later I got the correct strips from Charles. Unfortunately they were just in plain ugly steel, not chrome plated. I went out to the garage and trimmed them to the right size and the next morning went to visit my chrome plating guy. He called me a few days later to inform me the strips were done but two of them had burn marks. He described where the flaws were and of course they were in a spot where it would show. So I had to wait – again.
A week later a package arrived. And the package had all the correct parts in it. And the parts were bright and shiny. And the parts fit perfectly. And so after 12 weeks from the time I noticed that I needed them, I finally got them. Plus a spare set for my next project Elan which I have already started on. Hopefully I will put these spares in a place where I can find them a year from now…..
