series 3? 2.2 exhaust manifold - red top?

[crashrepairman]

anyone know where i can buy an exhaust manifold from? the engine has red cam covers, what does this mean, the previous owner said it was a late engine, im taking the engine out to do manifold, cam belt and clean and tidy engine and bay.

[Bazza 2174]

Red cam covers on an S3 mean that its a later 1986/7 (High Compression) engine worth an extra 5 bhp on the Turbo cars (to 215 bhp) and I think 10 bhp on noramally aspirated cars (to 170bhp).

The bad news is is that to the best of my knowledge you can't buy replacement manifolds from Lotus at the present time but if you look at threads here you'll see that Lotus Esprit Forum with tremendous work from Cliff is in the process of getting Lotus to do a one off run of them.

SJ Sportscars do a stainless mainfold but that is apparently quite expensive and non standard of course.