Lowering the seats on the Elan.

     If you're as tall as me (6'2) the driving posistion on the Elan is just a little too high to comfortably see the dials, you bang your knees on the steering wheel and you get blown to bits with the top down. Lowering the seat is actually pretty easy, and can be done in half an hour or so, assuming you have the right bits. This applies to my 1990 Elan SE, I assume they're all like this, but I can't tell for sure.

     The seats are bolted to the floor through 4 bolts with large spacers under each bolt, rasing the seat by about an inch and a half. You need to slide the seat all the way backwardsto get at the front two. The outer one is bolted through the floor, and was a little tricky to remove as the nut underneath had rusted. the inner one is bolted into a caged nut that you can't get to, just be careful not to knock it out of sight of the hole, for when you come to put everything back together.

     Repeat on the back two by sliding the seat forwards all the way (these two are much easier to get at). You will now have 4 bolts & 2 nuts. You need to buy bolts that are about 1.5inches shorter so that everything fits back properly. The inner and outer bolts are actually different lengths, but the precise length isn't too critical and I bought 4 that were all the same length. Hint: If you don't have another car, you probably want to make the trip to the hardware store before you've removed the entire seat :-).

     Putting the seat directly on the floor doesn't affect the sliding mechanism (which certainly isn't the case if you do this on an Esprit from what I've seen), so you now have a vastly improved (in my opnion) driving position!

Will O'Brien