Esprit

Another night and more chipping away at the Exige. Right front suspension is now hung on the car so all four corners are now hanging off the tub. Some calculations and measurements are now necessary and I'll have to jack and torque the wishbones up at the correct angles and that's that done! In typical fashion though, it's all finished BAR ONE NUT! I realised that one of my steering balljoints didn't have the nyloc nut on it that it should have. Now either it didn't come with one or I've pulled it off at some point (for god knows what reason) and put it somewhere. Bugger is that it's a fine-pitch one so I'm going to have the devil's own job to find a replacement. Does anyone have any idea where I might find a M10x1.25 nyloc nut? Will have to have a ring-around the fastener suppliers tomorrow I guess. No huge hurry for it I guess but I'd like to get it signed off Given that everything's gone so smoothly so far, I should be thankful that this is the first truly missing bit that I've had thus far

MORE BLING! Got a batch of stuff back from the powdercoaters today. Here's a random assortment. The silvery stuff is ceramic coating (for heat shielding/retention purposes) and the black stuff is all done in satin black Came up nice.... although I think I may need to hack apart my exhaust flexi and weld in a new flexi section (and re-coat) as it looks a bit fragile in one place... had hoped to make it go again, but I guess it'll need to be replaced... ho hum

Right, not quite as much progress as I'd hoped this weekend due to the garage being a bit of a mess and also because I spent a lot of the weekend tinkering with my new toy, a Peugeot 306 GTi6. This will take the daily driving / Lotus parts-hauling duties from now on I DID however get the left front corner hung on the car. This took a bit of mucking around as anyone who's done it before will attest to. Getting the castor shims in just right was a little bit tricky, but I managed it in the end, the anti-roll bar mounting particularly proving to be a pain in my asshole. But a few hours work yielded a VERY fine-looking front left corner and it's turned out looking even better than I thought it ever would! I'll do the FR corner another night as that's currently buried in a very packed corner of the garage and I should clear some space first. One of the bits in the way is the fuel tank, which can now go back in so that might be a job one night after work this week as I can't think of any good reason not to get that done. Pick my powdercoating up tomorrow, although in typical fashion, I found one bit that I left out of the consignment that I'll have to get done this week... such is life On with the pics! (ignore the random crowbar... it was just there to brace against while I was torquing up the plinths and anti-roll bar drop-links)

Another cheeky hour or two out in the garage tonight... now have the right rear looking suspiciously like the left rear! Note toelink boots missing from this side as they're currently in transit. These will be added later. Also snapped this pic to show that after about 11 months, my engine bay is now officially no longer empty! It contains driveshafts! (and an old, dirty tee-shirt) Of course these will be removed prior to the engine going in, but will sit there until then to hold the hubs together while it's being wheeled around. Next job is to measure up the wheels and tyres to get some idea of what the wishbone angles will be at ride height. This weekend when my powdercoating is back, I'll be able to torque the wishbones in place. Then I can move on to the front as I'll have my missing balljoint by then to press in. Then attention will shift to cleaning up the brakes so that they can be bolted on and then the old LSS shocks will then go back on as a placeholder until Randy can get me some nice shiny Nitrons sorted *hint hint Chris* This will allow me to put some air in the tyres and then drop it down off the axle stands and she'll be a roller! God that is going to be a momentous day! will give me a chance to clean the garage out! One thing I've noticed (happily) is that my hands are staying a LOT cleaner bolting all this together as they were when it was coming apart!

Well here 'tis, the first update in AGES... the last month and a half I've barely even LOOKED at the car. I've been working insane hours then spent best part of 3 weeks in the states with work, so only now back to it. It's taking a while to get back into things. Spent early this week chasing up e-mails etc and paying for engine bits (ouch!). Good news s that everythig's finished over there now and will be shipped back here in a couple of weeks, should be ready to start engine reassembly in a month! Spent saturday pressing my front hubs back together and torquing them up. All went pretty smoothly in the end, which was nice. Spent this evening in the garage and while I've not made any great progress, tonight I FINALLY got my first suspension corner hung on the car! I've got the driveshaft torqued in and the upright bolted on. I've yet to torque in the wishbones or toelinks as I've got to get the toelink heatshields powdercoated first (in heat reflective ceramic). Going to get my powdercoating done this week so hopefully if I get a good run at it next weekend, I'll have the bulk of the suspension hung on the chassis! I'm stoked because it'll then start to look like a disassembled car rather than a bathtub on axle-stands. But for now, a couple of photos of gratuitous rear suspension porn

I'm half thinking of rebuilding the front then entering it in a minitrucking show before the rear clam goes back on Rivets are just there for impact stress relief and for holding the join while the adhesive goes off. The strength of the join comes from the bond area. The whole chassis is held together this way, although with a slightly more high-tech glue and rivets than the ones that are used in the rear subframe

Well I've got it sorted... FINALLY!!! SEXIGE now has fully structural rear subframe, longerons and boot floor, all shiny, as new and ready to take many years of abuse Thanks to James and Scott at RivTec in Otahuhu, if I'd known about you guys I don't think I'd have had half the issues I did getting the riveting bit sorted. The longerons and boot floor are now all riveted down with 1/4" Stainless rivets (through the subframe) and bonded with Sikaflex221, all properly primed and prepped. With this job finally behind me I can get on with getting the rollbar backstays bolted down and the suspension hung. But for now, pretty pictures of this week's progress.... I HAVE A BOOT AND SEXIGE FINALLY STARTS TO BECOME A CAR AGAIN!

Well it's been a frustrating week (yes, another one!). I made preparations to hire a suitably-sized rivet gun and the required compressor this weekend, all sure that I'd have this infernal rear subframe job FINALLY finished this weekend come hell or high water, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Predicatably, all mother of cock-ups has resulted in it still being unfinished. This morning I started in the garage, full of hope. Tested the rivet gun on a spare rivet and it worked perfectly, FINALLY I was going to finish the job. I loaded the sikaflex in the caulking gun and applied a bead as described in the Lotus Service Notes, I hooked on the longeron and then installed the boot floor and then shot in three rivets.... easy, job done! But... then I noticed the boot floor was still free to move about a little. Inspecting the rivets (that I'd sized from the Lotus Parts catalogue) were too long to grip and were loose in the holes as a consequence. So now I had sikaflex going off, with an improperly clamped joint! I had some shorter rivets I bought as a backup (but only had four instead of the six required for the job), so I tested them when I installed the left-hand Longeron. I again applied the requisite bead of sikaflex and shot three rivets through and voilà! Perfection! Now, I had to then drill out the too-long rivets on the otherside and find a way to temporarily clamp the longeron so the glue would bond correctly. Now these rivets are stainless (read, HARD) and since they were loose in the holes they just spun... GAH! However, after much swearing, I dug out the trusty Dremel and with a small cutting disc attached, I managed to gradually mangulate (yes that is a word dammit!) the head enough so that I could punch it through. This took at least an hour to do all three rivets as it took GREAT care to cut the rivets without touching the boot floor.... today I had hands like a neurosurgeon! With the rivets finally removed, I was able to temporarily install some M6 machine screws to clamp the joint sufficiently to allow the bonded joint to form properly. Now I need to waste MORE time (and money) tracking down further supply of the shorter rivets during a lunch break this week as well as popping back next Friday to re-hire the pneumatic rivet gun (at a cost of about $100 (that's about 35 quid to you Brits) and compressor to bang in the final two rivets to complete the job! F*$#ing annoying! This rear subframe re-galving has turned out to be one of the worst bits of the whole job so far. It wasn't really a necessary (the subframe was in fair shape, but I decided to do it because it was easy and accessible only in the current state of disassembly. The job was budgeted at about $150 (50 quid) all up, but I think the costs add up to the following: Acid-Stripping $50 Galvanising $40 Sikaflex and Primers $130 Rivets $35 Rivet Gun ($65x2 = $130) Compressor ($35x2 = $70) Petrol and running around to various places (2 tanks in all, @$70 per tank = $140) = $595 total which is about 200 quid. This assumes I WILL actually finish the job next weekend (bear in mind I've not reattached the heat shield yet) and bills my time out at $0... so not really the cheap and easy job I've hoped for. Still, I'm sure that when the car's finished, it'll be something I won't have regretted doing and the extra bling of a nice shiny, new-looking subframe will allow me to sleep well at night.... I hope. Still, chin up eh?

Well time marches on and progress of late has been slow. Still working insane hours and been suffering a bit of ill health lately (damned viruses), which have kept me outta the garage. Have been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work though getting fasteners sorted (I've now got a full compliment of all the right ones I need to finish the rolling chassis) and also sourcing the glue / primers to bond the rear longerons back on again. I WAS going to bond the Longerons back on this afternoon but I didn't have a rivet gun large enough for the 1/4 stainless rivets that clamp the longerons down. I borrowed my boss's industrial lazy-tong rivet gun and duly broke that (oops, sorry boss) so I didn't manage to get it done today. Off to Hirepool first thing in the morning though to hire a compressor and a 1/4" pneumatic rivet gun so that'll deal to the bastards. Got everything mocked up though and it all fits together! (I shouldn't sound so surprised). Fingers crossed by the end of play tomorrow I should have the rear end structure including the boot floor all bonded in place and finally sorted, the rollbar backstays bolted and torqued and all of the wishbones (bar one, which needs a new balljoint after I accidentally buggered one of the threads.... (don't ask) hung on the chassis and torqued on. All of the shock mounts should also be hung on the chassis as well as the front ARB.... tomorrow will be a busy day! On the engine front, the wonderful Mr DVA had just about finished my head. It's now fully ported with Colisbro Bronze valve guides, new stem seals, larger Paul Ivey valves, dual valve springs with stock VHPD solid lifters. Everything's all ready to bolt together although I decided to have the camshafts (Piper ARK1444s) and vernier pulleys balanced as a precautionary measure... I know balancing cams is complete overkill, but given how much I'm spending on balancing the bottom end, the paltry sum to balance the cams too seemed like a complete no-brainer. Crankshaft has been drilled and now tungsten inserted by Mr Steve Smith at Vibration Free and is just awaiting balancing with the lower assembly (Crank, Flywheel, Clutch Cover, Crank Pulley, Cam Drive Sprocket, plus rods and pistons). Once this is done, my head will be built up, and then I'll be getting everything back to NZ along with a full engine rebuild kit (including new liners, uprated oil-rail etc) so that i can begin engine reassembly. Still a long ways to go, but as we enter autumn here, I'm not too worried about deadlines so long as it's ready for springtime In another couple of weeks it'll have been a year since I started what was going to be "just a suspension refresh"..... my how these things get out of hand!

Frustratingly little progress of late. Work has been INSANE and to be honest, after working from 8 in the morning until midnight, I don't much feel like popping out to the garage for a couple of hours. When I DO get a day off it's been spent mainly in bed catching up on sleep! Still, I've been working away at getting together more bits I'm missing. Another consignment of fasteners has arrived from Lotus courtesy of the fine lads at Bell & Colvill. Geary at Eliseparts is also sending me the remainder of my fastener set which was missed in the last shipment. I've also been trying to get together the necessary adhesives and primers to bond on the rear longerons. After much searching I managed to find all the components locally. I had hoped to be bonding them on this weekend and completing the boot floor but thanks to the global recession and cost-cutting, most fastener places here aren't open Saturday mornings now... which is a MAJOR piss-off as it means MORE time during the week I have to spend f*cking around getting stuff. Anyway, this weekend I got all the plinths bolted onto the balljoints as well as a bunch of custom fasteners turned up in the lathe... these were just a bunch of non-standard length bolts I needed that I've shortened down from longer ones. Another job, which took a lot longer than expected was to clean up the rear longerons. Getting all the old glue off and getting them cleaned up was a mission and a half. Much elbow grease later though they're as good as new and ready to bond on as soon as I get my missing rivets. Hopefully more progress by next weekend.

And on tonight's episode of "PIMP MY WISHBONES" Got the first rear ones hung tonight and they look even sexier on the car than they did sat on the floor! I can't fully hang them or go much further as it seems I'm missing a bunch of the bolts I need to do it so can't go much further now sadly. I'm sure I'll find plenty to keep me busy while I get them though.

Well a VERY VERY VERY big day today, not in so much that I got a lot done, but more in what today represents... a very very special part of any rebuild. Today was the day when my car hit the turning point. To this point it's all been dismantling/cleaning/prepping/refurbishing, but today I finally started on the long-overdue REASSEMBLY! I've been saying for months now that "next week or two I should be able to start bolting things back together" but it never quite happened, I always found something else to pull apart or work on, but I'm at the stage now where it really is time for some stuff to be reunited again. First a couple of pics of the mess so far... really not a lot of difference from the pics I first took last may really, although a LOT of work has gone on since: Still not really looking much at all like a car, but what's there now is clean as a whistle, fully fettled and ready to start becoming a car again. Today I finished cleaning up the chassis around the engine bay and then began a couple of hours sorting through all my new fasteners. I've got the bulk of them now but am still missing a few so it's not quite all smooth sailing. First job was to re-mount the rear lower wishbone mounts, which had the honour of being the first thing to go back onto the chassis.. and here they are in all their refurbished glory: Then, a slightly more substantial part to go back on was the shiny, re-galvanised rear subframe. Bolted up a treat after I'd spent a bit of time cleaning and re-tapping some holes that were a bit blocked up with extra zinc! Still a long way to go to become a car but she looks better than she did this morning! Tomorrow I hope to get a few more fasteners (hoping my supplier is open on a Saturday morning!) and I will mount the rear wishbones. I will also mount the front lower wishbones, but I can't mount the upper ones as my new castor shims (I'm having some stainless ones laser cut along with my new camber shims) aren't ready until early next week. We're on our way.... FINALLY!

Righto, Well I've been busy lately so I've had precious little time to cavort around doing car stuff sadly. Busy as fook at work, but fingers crossed I'll be able to steal an hour or two here and there to do stuff. I've decided that after all this work, bolting my rusty old Koni LSS shocks and springs back on the car just won't do, so I'll be making the call to Hofmann's before too long to order some of the Randy-tuned Nitrons for it. I'll be taking Chris's advice as to spring rates etc just as soon as I've given some thought to ride-heights and usage. But here's a pretty picture of them anyway: I've been doing a bit of work on the ergonomics side of things for the oil pressure/temperature gauge install. As I've said before I'm installing it in the blanked-off radio slot in the dash. I don't intend to ever run a radio on this car so it seems a logical place to put it. It's not in line-of-sight really, but that matters little as I've got the audible warning circuit (as detailed earlier in this thread) as well as some blindingly bright LEDs to back it up. This is the blanking plate moulding as removed from the dashboard sitting on my desk. I then used a couple of measurements as to the radio location from the driver's head (thanks to SELOC's Alex/"dt95aac" and Danny/"Chopperver1") to figure out some viewing angles and reaches so that I could do a lay-out of the new "Gaugepod" blanking plate replacement. I decided to quickly draft it up to make sure I could get a decent shape when I came to cut the buck from plywood and so that I could play around getting it looking right first before I cut wood and began moulding any glassfibre. A couple hours on SolidWorks later and bingo, one raw moulding ready to go! Of course in typical fashion, I then got carried away and wanted to check how everything would look so a couple more hours on the SolidWorks and I produced a couple of "artists impressions" (click photos for MEGASIZED pics) so that I could see what it'd roughly look like all finished up and upholstered in the OEM alcantara: The gauge and warning LEDs are positioned to the far left (worse for line-of-sight) because I wanted to use the right hand side of the moulding to mount the buttons. This is because when harnessed in, I won't be able to reach beyond about halfway along the panel and I want the controls within reach when on track. I'll use these to generate some 2D templates for cutting the plywood and then there'll be a lot of hand-shaping to get the buck looking right before it's ready to take a mould. Watch this space over the next few weeks. Oh... and one more thing, flicking through a copy of "Top Gear" magazine while on the bog today and the buttons I chose to programme the gauge and silence the alarm are exactly the same as the ones used on the cockpit/steering wheel of the Le Mans-winning Audi R10 racer... how f*cking sad am I to notice that?!?! I think I need help.

Another small but significant step today... my alcantara for the dashboard gauge pod arrived today. I can now start doing the work to mould this piece up secure in the knowledge I can upholster it when done and get it looking nice In the ziplok bag is also a couple of fresh snubber washers for my front suspension

Not a WHOOOLE lot has gone on of late, I've been busy organising stuff. Late last week I bought my nice shiny new Arrow rods and these are about to be shipped for balancing... works of art they are (pic stolen from mikelr because I've obviously not got them with me! ) I've just tonight finished crating up my clutch cover, flywheel and pulleys to go to Vibration Free for balancing with my crank, as well as mycylinder head to get some nice DVAPower loving God speed my little mechanical componenty friends!

Christmas has come early! Special delivery from the UK

Here's a pic showing the finished circuit on benchtest. The two LEDs are both illuminated. One is white and the other red but they are so bright they overexpose the camera here so they both look white. You can also see the buzzer. I may opt for a louder unit but will trial this one in the car and see how I get on, it's an easy retrofit. The circuit borard will be trimmed of its excess and then mounted on the back of the gauge mounting plinth. It'll then be wired into the switches/LEDs. Also here's my flywheel/clutch cover/front pulleys ready to set flight to the UK for balancing at Vibration Free. Flywheel's been ground and I've also machined off the redundant front pulley boss off the alternator pulley/harmonic balancer. The elastomeric balancer will be retained. I've given the pulley a coat of black POR15 to make it look not quite so crap once it's bolted back on the engine

Well, another update: Not a whoole lot of progress of late as I've actually been rather sick this last week or two. I've had a stomach bug that this week turned into a killer virus from 'nam meaning I couldn't eat or drink much and you could have fried eggs on my forehead with the fevers I've been getting. Still, the show must go on and I'm happy to report some very minor progress. After a LOT of faffing about, I've finally completed my oil temp/press warning circuit. I've no pictures as of yet but the circuit board is now looking a lot more messy but basically the same. It's taken me MUCH more work than I'd originally anticipated (doesn't it always?!?!)... not helped by manufacturers putting misprints in their datasheets causing me to have to do stuff three times, only to find they STILL don't work before questioning the datasheets and finding that they're wrong. Good news is that I managed to get to the bottom of it in the end and after about 4 trips back to Jaycar to get bits and pieces to modify the circuit, I'm happy to report it works EXACTLY as I'd laid out in last week's update! I'm very proud/happy with this since I'm a complete and utter novice when it comes to electronics (at least I can claim to be a spirited amateur on the mechanical side of things!) and just through using my head and doing some study, I've built a pretty comprehensive little digital logic circuit to control everything... it's pretty simple in the global scheme of things but for something like this it's actually got a fair bit of smarts to it I've also picked up my nicely ground flywheel ready to pack up and ship off to the UK with my pulleys, clutch cover, head etc. This now looks really pretty and will mean that when the new clutch is put in prior to the engine going back in, it'll have the best possible surface to bed into meaning the slippage issues I had with my last clutch shouldn't re-emerge, even if it is dealing with another 30-40bhp than it was before. Good times. This week I'm just crating my stuff up to send back to the UK and will be taking a break for a week or two over Christmas down-country so there won't be much action. I am going to take some work away with me though and am going to set to work making up the wooden "plug" for making the fibreglass mould for my dashboard gauge-pod. This should keep me busy and allow me to start glassing early in January. I'll also contact the Lotus Trim Shop and see if they can't track me down some of the original Blue alcantara so that when the time comes, I can upholster the gauge pod and make it look just like it came from the factory! Onwards and upwards (hopefully with less viral infestations!)

Hahaha nice! My warnings are a little more subtle, but then again I'm thinking about the weight too! I'll also be doing without the condiment dispenser on the pax-side dashboard that that car has... my passenger can organise their own ketchup/mayo/mustard thankyou very much!

Well another week, another update! Decided this week to press on with a few other things and I've ordered a new oil pressure/temperature gauge. I've gone for the SPADesign dual temperature/pressure gauge as it seemed to be the pick of the bunch for quality and functionality in a single gauge. Part of me wanted to stick with an analogue gauge, but the SPA I was able to get external triggering and two-gauges-in-one functionality, so it won out. She'll be like this one but with a white face to match the STACK dash cluster: I will be mounting the gauge where the radio usually goes (I don't run a radio in the Exige) and I shall be making up a glassfibre replacement for the OEM blanking plate (in blue alcantara). Once this is made up I'll be upholstering it in the original alcantara so hopefully it'll all look like a factory-fitment when it's done. This is where it all gets a bit crazy though. I was reading through the gauge specs and looking at the external warning triggering and I got to thinking about how I could best use this in the car. I sat down and made a plan of what I ideally wanted and how I wanted it to work. I wanted something that I could rely on on track (or on the road) to draw my attention as we all know gauges are only useful when you notice them! I decided on the following: - Super-bright LED lights for both oil overtemperature and oil underpressure (Red for overtemp, White for underpress) - Loud audible warning for both (constant-on for underpressure, 0.5s on, 4.5s off for overtemp) - Audible warning to be latching (as in it'll stay on even if the oil pressure/temperature only briefly gets out-of-range) - Audible warning to be silencable (much like a "snooze" button on a clock radio) - All external warnings to be switchable (as in a toggle-switch overrride for all the external gubbins leaving only the gauge functioning) - A little bit of intelligence built into the audible warning (so that the alarm doesn't go off as soon as you switch the key on before cranking the car as this would get annoying!) I then set about thinking about how to achieve all this and I thought back to my old varsity days and computer science papers and started to draw up a logic circuit using logic-gates. A couple of late evenings head-scratching got me a circuit that I was pretty happy with. A bit of binary mathematics showed that it should take care of every case I wanted to achieve so I then set about laying out an electrical diagram. This took another evening to get right, so the next day I went into Jaycar (electrical retailer over here in NZ) and bought up a bunch of circuit componentry. I spent all afternoon with the soldering iron this evening and the circuit is now about 80% complete. I've tested subsections of this and so far, everything checks out well... impressive for a colour-blind, complete novice when it comes to electronics! Couple of photos that show the circuit in progress and also the back-of-a-napkin sketches I used to figure out what the hell I was doing! My soldering skills still leave a little to be desired though Another evening I should have it done and tested.... it'll then be shelved for a bit while I make up the mounting panel (will begin in January). I just wanted to get the circuitry out of the way so that I knew it could be done (or more that I could do it, I'm sure anyone with half a brain when it comes to electronics could do it easier and far more elegantly than I've done). I've got all the push-buttons, LEDs and switches too and I forked out for high quality ones. I figured it'd be on-show, front-and-centre so I'd best try to make it look and feel as quality as I could get it! And now for something a bit more special (but still very much relevant to the subject of the thread). Last night some friends and I all met up around my friend Ian's place for a BBQ and poker evening. Ian's always a great host and it's always fantastic to catch up with friends (most of them petrolheads!) in that environment, especially when I seem to spend all of my time either at work, in the gym or working on the car! Anyway, during the evening I was called into the lounge whereupon I was sprung with what can only be described as one of the most fantastic surprises I've ever had in my life. My friend Graham ("Kiwi XTR2" as some of you may know him from other forums) had organised for Kylie (another petrolhead friend of ours) to paint a picture of SEXIGE. Kylie is a highly accomplished landscape artist (one of her many talents as she's pretty handy behind the wheel of her Esprit Sport350 too!) and has recently turned her hand to airbrushing. Graham had set it all up (so I understand) and between the two of them they'd seen it through to what can only be described as an utterly amazing conclusion. I suspected nothing and they sprung me good and proper... I was totally speechless and very, VERY humbled. It seems that Graham had grown tired of all my moaning about how long this project was taking and about how it had ballooned out of all sensible proportion... all I can say is what a fantastic way to shut me up! The picture is about a metre across by about 700mm high so it's a big-un! I'll be hanging it after Christmas as a reminder and an inspiration as to what I'm toiling towards. Apologies for the photo quality as I've not had a chance to photograph it in good light yet but it gives an idea. The detail Kylie has reproduced is stunning and it captures the attitude of the car brilliantly. Compare with the original photo in the first post in the thread and you'll agree she's made a wonderful, wonderful job of it. Right, I'll stop rambling on now as that's enough for one night I think. But I'll just finish off by saying that quite apart from the tangible pleasures that Lotus ownership brings, the friends I've made over the last 3.5 years of ownership (both Lotus owners and otherwise, through trackdays with owners of many different marques) is WELL worth the price of admission on its own. I live and breathe these little glued-together cars from Norfolk and many of my friends share this passion with their own cars (whatever the badge) and it's my experience that surrounding yourself with these kinds of people truly enriches one's life. So to all of you who I've met; either online here or in person, whether we've known each other for years or we've spoken just once, to each and every one of you I thank you from the bottom of my heart for making me a very happy person... I'm one lucky sonofabitch! And to Graham and Kylie, again I thank you... I shall never forget this!

Progress on the Chassis... The fastener list is coming along and will be placing an order this week. I've been working this weekend on the firewall. Lotus have specified me a fix which involves bonding on a reinforcement plate with epoxy over the worst of the corrosion as well as treating with ACF50 before reapplying the heat shield. They have ascertained that in my case there is no loss of structural integrity (in the scheme of things the corrosion damage is very very minor) but they are rather alarmed at the corrosion in this area as they've not seen it before, mainly due to the fact that very few cars have actually had their heat-shields removed for a look-see. Certainly if you're ever pulling the engine out of your Elise/Exige, I'd be stripping the heat-shield off for a good check-over as it could potentially end up in a VERY bad state if left unchecked. Given the lack of structural damage and my desire to completely stop/prevent corrosion in this area I've basically done the same fix I did on my floorpans. I could go ahead with the Lotus fix, but I think my fix will be more comprehensive at solving the issue in my case. I've scrubbed the firewall and wire-brushed / ground (with a dremel) out all of the corrosion/pitting from the firewall. The one through-hole I've drilled out with a 10mm drill (to remove all the active corrosion) and will be filling the hole with a blanking grommet. Given that the fuel lines exit just above this as well as another large blanking grommet (unused penetration) then this should look tidy when done. I then went through the full three-step POR15 treatment (in silver) to clean, etch and coat/seal the firewall. The result has come out absolutely fantastic and I'm very pleased with it. As with the floorpans you can still see the pitting evident beneath the POR15 but I decided not to try filling these as I wanted the the POR to be in direct contact with the metal, providing the best corrosion protection. With filling there's always a risk that moisture can get trapped between the metal and the filler, allowing crevice corrosion to continue beneath the coating. Either way it looks ace and it'll be hidden anyway once the new heat-shield is affixed in place. Firewall masked up with pitting and corrosion-affected areas scrubbed free from corrosion: Completed firewall: As you can see, the POR15 finish looks very aluminium-like anyway, so I'm very very happy with the repair. Next job will be to get the fuel lines and fuel tank back in hopefully later this week.... stay tuned

Esprit was flatplane crank yeah... it's basically two Lotus 910 Twincams on a common crankcase, very cool engine that. Cool Wayne... I'll have to do my reseach on ECU choice... until now I'd just assumed Emerald because it was the default choice, but if I can see a convincing argument to go otherwise then that's where I'll go

Oh, and speaking of ECU bodges, nothing could be more Bodge than the Factory ECU I'm running.... it's a re-wire of the Lotus ECU for the Esprit V8 Twinturbo.... plug it into the diagnostic machine and it tells you that you've got a serious misfire in cylinder number 8... quite a feat for a 4 cylinder car!

PM sent Blowing the K series isn't anything new although really I'll be looking at about 230-240 brake N/A... realistically getting the same amount S/C is realistic but the block doesn't tend to be stiff enough to take the cylinder pressures of forced induction that well... it works, but given that I'm pushing the reliability envelope as it is, I'm not wanting to take the risk/research of adding a blower. Add to that that a blower will add weight and weight is the enemy... I'll keep it N/A. there is a company in the UK called Turbo Technics that does off the shelf K-kits.... pricey and questionable reliability though... mind you "questionable reliability" and "Rover K" go together like sauce on chips

I'll ask him for ya when his meeting finishes GPS alarm??!!?! Think of the weight!!!!! Nah I'll just leave the factory alarm, seems to work okay... actually that's a thought, I know the Emerald unit interfaces with the factory immobiliser... wonder if the Storm would do that.? But yeah, given that most people can't even figure out how to open the doors on the thing until you show them and the car's locked up like fort knox most of the time, security isn't the world's biggest worry, especially since it's usually up on axle stands!