CCK Historic

I took my 1970 Lotus Elan Sprint to CCK upon recommendation from a friend. I had recently reinstalled my Twincam after having to replace the clutch release bearing and the engine was running very poorly. The Twin Weber 40s had never been set up right since purchasing the car two years before. They smelled of unburnt fuel, the idle was too high and the car difficult to start when cold and impossible to start when hot.

Before they ran the car on the rolling road, they noticed and oil leak from the cam cover, and air leak from one of the exhaust manifold gaskets and a fuel leak from one of the carburettors. These were all fixed first then the first run was performed. The car made around 75bhp at the wheels. After replacing a float valve and installing new jets and cleaning out the Webers, further runs were done until it made 91bhp, which on their dynometer equates to 130bhp at the flywheel, so I was very pleased with that result.

The car now drives beautifully, starts on the first turn of the key (something I never thought possible of a 42 year old Lotus!) idles correctly and is a joy to use, even in traffic where it was a nightmare before. The power delivery is linear and much stronger than before, I have to be gentler with the throttle now to not spin up the wheels.

The guys at CCK are very friendly and helpful and what they don't know about classic cars isn't worth knowing. Their pricing was also very reasonable and the final bill was worth it just to see the museum! The drive home was by far my most enjoyable so far. I can't recommend CCK Historic highly enough.