"IT'S GOT 180 BHP AND IT'LL DO 37 MPG, PLUS YOU'VE GOT THE GREAT CLASSIC LOOKS OF A SPORTS CAR WITH RELIABILITY..."

Moving forward, there's a bespoke propshaft which hooks up to a Ford MT75 gearbox. Here the standard and rather sloppy Ford remote lever has been binned: " The problem we have with gearboxes is that Lotus originally used the bullet box which is shorter than the Type 9,
so if we used the Type 9 it would put the gearlever one foot further back on the transmission tunnel. Instead, we use the MT&% and take all the remote away - which has got loads of rubber in it and makes the gearchange very wishy - washy - and now we've got a feel which is similar to the original bullet box. It's slightly notchy but it's very positive." says Andy. Also running inside the backbone chassis, are the fuel lines which take unleaded up to the 2-litre Zetec in the nose.

The Zetec can be tuned to more or less whatever you want from 160 bhp to 220 bhp, but the car we're looking at has more or less stock 2-litre, apart from a set of Jenvey throttle bodies and Emerald ECU which are both standard Spyder fare.

If Andy has his way, he buys the Zetecs straight from Ford because they're only slightly dearer than second-hand engines. The Mondeo sump is then changed for an Escort one because it has the oil pan at the front which clears the front anti-roll bar and stops oil surge problems. Stangely enough, the water pump is changed from the 2-litr to the 1.8-litre part because the 2-litre unit pumps water around anticlockwise and it would try and pull hot water out of the top of the radiator and pump it out of the bottom... Luckily, the 1.8's bolts straight on and it works the other way round.

When it comes to suspension, some would think that things have been left alone - after all, how could anyone possibly improve on Chunky's ingenious design? Well, sorry Mr purist but there is room for improvement at the back. Here the Elan +2 utilised the Chapmen strut design - think of a double wishbone set-up without the top wishbone (instead the driveshafts bore the load of the missing top link) or a MacPherson strut at the rear - this wasn't a success because of the stress on the driveshafts and it tendted to lock up under side loads too.Spyder has used its own double-wishbone system front and rear with Spax dampers and its own springs. Front brakes are MK11 RS Turbo discs to get the right amount of offset (25mm) with standard big - pistoned Sierra callipers attached to Spyder's own uprights insread of
the old Herald/Vitesse vertical link. Other components include a standard Triumph top ball-joint, a Spyder hub carrier and bottom ball-joints. That's the theory, so what about the practice?  Andy says the first thing to do is to find a proper poorly donor car because by the time you've sold all the unwanted bits - the engine, gearbox, diff and some of the rear suspension - he can get a car owing the customer less than £1500 and certain parts like the rear screen and front quarterlights are hard to source anyway.  Right, back to the car in the workshop and its owner Stephen Brannan: "When I Heard about the Zetec conversion I liked every aspect of it - the fact that you can actually jump in a Lotus Elan, drive it every day and have the same good performances and economy.  It's got 180 bhp and it'll do around 37 mpg, but you've got the great classic looks of a sports car and reliability - so you don't have spend ages under the bonnet. 

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rc Dec2003