Series 4 Lotus Seven Engine Removal & Clutch Change

Er, why?

Let's start at the beginning...

Take one 1976 Series 4 Lotus Seven (NZ built by Steelbros) and lovingly leave it sitting in a garage undriven for months on end while you live overseas.  Naturally being English everything will deteriorate on it to the point of being undriveable. 

Enter Stickboy and his insane desire to take things apart and fix them.

First of all we don't need this:

So we'd better find some place for it:

And we don't need that:

Which just leaves us with:

We definitely need to do something about this:

...because it ain't working too well.  After a bit of investigation it was found that the problem was the clutch hose being blocked.  So I actually could have done this job without removing the engine... <sigh>

So time for some new parts:

And a bit of a clean up...

Shortly before breaking a seal in half and dropping it into the head, necessitating taking the cam cover off to retrieve it:

Then it was time for it all to go back in again...

...with some neighbourly assistance...

Bake for a week on high, and the result:

Better retrieve that bonnet:

See the timelapse video of the engine removal HERE (DivX .avi format)