quote:

Originally posted by gbs:
In the 1970s I was picking up Lotus Elans really cheap due to the owners not being able to afford to keep them running. Not that they had significantly more problems than other cars but when they did parts were expensive and hard to get and there were only a couple of shops in Dallas that consistently worked on them.

I bought 3 running Elans with leaking water pumps. The water pump was a cartridge design sandwiched between the timing chain covers. The water pump was designed to be removed easily after removing the front cover but the water pump O rings leaked and corroded the pump body. With the corrosion the engine/transmission had to be removed so the front covers/jack shaft could be removed as a unit and disassembled on the bench. Thus a two hour job became a twenty hour job. Since I did the repair {And an improvement that eliminated the problem in the future.} myself I did no fret over the hours and made some good money on the resales after tidying up the problems. Unfortunately I find this sort of thing common on low production exotics. Thus the catastrophic cost of maintenance if you cannot do the work your self.