Esprit

Frustratingly little to show for work of late.

Subframe has been acid-dipped and is currently in being galvanised, should be done mid-week giving me something to do next weekend (could next weekend be the weekend I ACTUALLY start bolting stuff back on the car?!?!?)

More destruction this weekend, I decided to drop the fuel tank out as they can sometimes rust out on top (they're hung up inside the chassis behind the driver, so the top is completely blocked off unless removed). I'll take this opportunity to replace all of the hoseclamps etc as well as these were all just mild steel ones happily fizzing away to themselves.

Upon pulling the tank out, it was clear that mine was in good nick and it's also clear to see why they rust out on top. It appears that any petrol that seeps from the filler hose joint sits on top of the tank... the odd seep here and there turns the paint coating to goop over a year or two, blistering it and leaving the steel exposed. Mine's not really started rusting yet, but would have if I'd left it. (Although this probably wouldn't have become a problem for several years yet, it's nice to nip it in the bud)

I was just going to touch the areas affected up, but rather a lot of the paint has been turned to soft crap, so it's best to start again. My options are to strip it (with a paint stripper) back to bare steel and re-paint with POR15 or just drop the tank off to a powdercoaters and get them to powdercoat the outside of the tank. I'm about 50/50 at the moment as to what to do as each method has their pros and cons:

- Powdercoating will look nicer but might be less resilient than POR (impervious to petrol/oil) and I'm not sure of how the powdercoat baking will affect the hylomar seal around the pump mounting boss

-POR will arguably provide better protection with no risk to damaging what's there or risk, but will take me a lot more time/prep and won't give quite as good a finish.

Given that it's not really a cosmetic item and will still look pretty good in POR, the only thing that's putting me off is the thought of ANOTHER weekend wearing sodding rubber gloves painting shit black with POR15.... getting a bit sick of doing that now. This is definitely the period of a rebuild that's worst... when boredom and a lack of VISIBLE progress despite hours in the garage start to take their toll. Thankfully I've been here before and know that these moments eventually pass

Another weekend and more progress!

Spent yesterday POR15 clearcoating the remainder of the suspension bits I wanted to coat, namely the steering arms, and balljoint plinths. They came out nice and tasty-looking, just like the wishbones. Can't wait to get them on the car and see how bling they look I also coated the front crossmember (oil cooler mount) as well as this had previously corroded quite badly and does seem to catch the worst of the road-spray so just making sure that it's as well protected as can be.

Yesterday, I also took the time to scrub the swaybar back to bare metal in preparation for painting today. This couldn't be blasted with the rest of them as it's heat-treated, high tensile tube. Blasting would have stress-relieved it and it would have lost much of its spring.

Today I tackled a pig of a job I've been putting off for a while. As part of the engine bay tidy-up, I'd also planned to repaint the rollbar backstays. These were painted/powdercoated black from new but in areas the coating was flaking and surface rust was starting to show. On the S1 these cannot be removed from the car to blast and paint so must be done in situ. This makes the job (particularly the rubbing back part) difficult and time consuming. So today I spent best part of 6 hours rubbing them back until they both looked nice and clean like this:

Then it's just been a matter of giving them a coat or two of POR15 black so they look nice and new again. They'll stay looking this good for years to come now

At the same time I also painted up the swaybar that I'd scrubbed up yesterday.

Tasks for the coming week include getting the subframe in for galvanising and getting my bulk-lot of powdercoating in.

I'm also going to be making another trip to the electroplaters. I'd initially planned to leave my toelinks as they were because they looked okay.... but now in the face of how good the wishbones have turned out, they'll end up looking god-awful by comparison, so it's off to be brightened up they go!

Well very little progress this weekend due to me basically being flat on my back in bed with this god forsaken flu.

Anyway, one small thing achieved however, I got the rear subframe stripped down and ready for galvanising.

Here's how it came off the car:

Now the heat shield comes off nice and easy, drill out a few rivets. Then the boot floor and longeron reinforcements have a good few rivets that need drilling. The tricky part was getting the longerons off. The glue holding mine down didn't want to give up too easy, but after an hour or two of swearing at it, heating it and nipping away at it with a gasket scrper-come-chisel and a hacksaw blade, I finally got them both split off. Minimal damage was done to the longerons in the process (according to Lotus you pretty much have to destroy them to get them off) and these will be tidied up as good as new before going back on the car.

Meanwhile, the subframe now looks like this:

Now just need to find someone who can give it a nice shiny new hot-dip galv finish for me so it's nice and shiny then I can set about reassembling it on the car. Huzzah!

22 Aug '08

Well thanks to Mark's (M111 on SELOC) advice and also some tips from Phil (Junks), I've decided to bite the bullet and give the rear subframe a birthday too and get it re-galved.

Took it off tonight and over the weekend I'll work at separating the longerons and subframe from eachother without messing anything up.

I've also a few more things to go over with the POR15 coat so this should keep me busy this weekend. Hopefully if I can get the subframe isolated, I'll be able to get the galv turned around within the working week, along with the bulk of the powdercoating/ceramicoating.

Meanwhile... my poor, forlorn looking car gets even shorter!

19 Aug '08

MORE EYE CANDIES!

Wishbones are all finished now and ready to accept their new bushes and balljoints (will do this in a few weeks when the car's ready to accept them). Also got the rear driveshafts/CV joints all repacked with nice new grease and fitted with new boots and fully reassembled. Took a bit of faffing around to get them right, but they're together now and ready to go back on the car!

So... on with the pretty shiny pics.... are these not the sexiest wishbones you ever did see?

Workshop was too cold for the paint to cure, so they came upstairs to sit under the heat pump for a couple hours

17 Aug '08

Right well another weekend and more progress

Got the CVs, rear uprights and driveshafts painted. Decided to do CVs black too because the paint prep for the POR15 tarnished the metal quite badly and the CVs would have looked arse in clear. They've come out all very shiny and black, as you'd hope. They'll never rust again. Just need to get some more grease tomorrow then the driveshaft assemblies can go back together again!

Also got my wishbones all finally coated in POR15 Clearcoat (because it's a sandblasted finish it doesn't need the pre-paint) and they're looking better than I'd hoped. Nice and glossy and new-looking with the gold passivate below looking like some expensive trick pearlescent paint job. The way I've done it they should still look like this in 20 years time. Stoked!

mek disolves it

but takes your brain with it

In my experience, there's very few things that MEK won't dissolve

Coating up my wishbones and uprights today, will post pics/update in the build thread tomorrow when they're coated and dry enough to handle

in semi unrelatedness, i painted my trailer with brush and por15, it says to put it on quite thick comparedto most paints, and like you say, it drys mean, barely left any brush marks on trailer except where i obviously put it on too thin.

and yea, buy cheap brushes and dont even bother trying to clean them, just biff it out and use the next one. lol this comes from the experience of me trying to clean one with black paint, then realising the meths/turps everything else wasnt diluting it, and i was using my bare hands

i had black/blackish hands for about 2 weeks

Yeah it's evil sh*t on your hands... I've still got silver fingernails now

It cleans up all right in general purpose thinners although you have to make sure the brush is thoroughly rinsed after and then dried before it's useable again. But yeah, best to buy cheap brushes and chuck-em

you just been brushing that por15 on? looks like its comes you pretty good from the photos? any brush marks etc irl?

The shock mounts have just had it brushed on... with a cheap brush... using POR15 that's been opened too many times and used in too cold conditions (so it's thick like treacle)... no brush marks in the gloss but a few small ones in the metallic flake in the silver... certainly good enough for suspension components and stuff.. the paint actually levels really well if you use it according to instructions and don't gob it on too thick in one coat.

12 Aug '08

Not much progress this weekend... the POR15 clear kit I needed to do a bunch of the components didn't arrive so I was a bit hamstrung. Spent much of the weekend in bed with a migraine though and working on my daily driver so not as much Lotus time as I'd like.

Still, got the upper shock mounts all finished now. The plating place botched up and gold-passivated these too (I was after them bright-zinc plated to better match the OEM hot-dip galv finish) so I figured I'd overcoat them with the left-over POR15 I had from the floor as it'd look slightly better than having them in the gold passivate.

They came out quite good considering it was very cold and the paint was really too thick to do without leaving brush marks... once they were tough-dry, I brought them into my room to sit by the heater.... I can barely move in my room now for car-parts! The hazards of flatting and doing up an old car eh?

Behold shock mount shininess:

its a interesting subject

5000 series allooys are considered marine alloys and can be submersed in salt water with almost no adverce effects

your right they are extremely resistant to corosion

yet put a matt on them and they fuck out...i dunno if id go with lotus's reasoning

Yeah well 5000 series alloys also anodise extremely well, which is one of the pluses with them. The issue would have happened with most alloys really, the problem was that water could get beneath them and stagnate. Due to the sealed nature there, you got crevice corrosion which loves those conditions.... it was less the moisture and more the trapped nature of stagnant moisture that leads to the crevice corrosion. It's a very interesting and unique method of corrosion really, one that Lotus obviously didn't think through.

Ironically, where the mats were adhered to the floors never corroded, so if they'd adhered the whole mat down rather than just a strip around the edges, the problem would have never existed! It's an odd one for sure.

The problem most people have had with POR15 is on polished metal parts and poor adhesion (like your motorcycle example above). POR15 likes seasoned material, and hence my floopans were prepped with both mechanical abrasion and an acid etch (as you recommended, and as specified by PPC themselves).

Bear in mind that I mechanically removed all visible signs of remaining corrosion in the pits as well as applying the coating so it should be fine. In the end it comes down to the fact that the 5000 series alloy used in the floorpans isn't particularly prone to intergranular corrosion. The only fault here is that of Lotus who cocked up and failed to recognise their original floor covering and their method of attachment wasn't suitable for what they had planned. The matierial was originally protected by an anodised layer, which wasn't resistant to this particular type of environmental attack.. which was a stupid error on their part.

In any case, we'll see in a few years time. For now, the POR15 seems to have adhered to the metal VERY well (ain't no way it's coming off) and it's non-porous so it should keep all moisture and oxygen away from the metal, meaning that existing corrosion should have no reason to go any further so long as the coating adhesion isn't compromised.

Exfoliation corrosion is typically only prevalent in high strength aluminium alloys and the floors in the Lotus don't fall into that category. They're just a standard 5000 series alloy and aren't structural, they're pretty much just there to stop you doing a flintstones impression

Crevice corrosion is also a galvanic reaction and usually needs some dissimilar metal or moisture contact to initiate and propagate it.... I don't have any dissimilar metals in galvanic contact with the floor (it's isolated by the glue that's used to bond the floors in) and moisture contact has been banished by the POR15 (stagnant moisture trapped in a low-oxygen environment was what caused the existing crevice corrosion in the first place).

Thanks for the tip though, always nice to have someone else cast a critical eye over the work

I don't have anyone in mind - just curious as to who you trusted wherever you live (I assume Auckland).

I would start talking with guys like Lyn Rogers and Roger(?) from Lotus Cars in Waiuku I guess

Lynn Rogers is in line to do my porting work I think. Was going to get Ken at Lotus NZ to do it but he's never built a VHPD-K bottom end before and given there's only 3 of these engines in NZ I'm doubting anyone has. Roger at LCNZ doesn't do any of the mechanical stuff, that's all contracted to Allports these days who have pretty much zero experience with the Rover K-engined cars.

Hence why I'm doing it myself... there's a wealth of info out there on the net through some of the UK clubs I'm involved with (like SELOC).. and I'll probably end up buying all my parts through someone like Dave Andrews (DVAPower) or QED on the condition I get some free helpline advice on how it should all go together

Engine building ain't brain surgery, it just needs care and attention, something I'm more likely to lavish on it than someone who's trying to turn it around for a profit.

Who have you selected for the engine work?

Was thinking about doing it myself (well the assembly / set-up work anyway) Don't think there'll be any machining necessary other than perhaps a little porting on the head and perhaps some reaming of the new colisbro valve guides when they're in.

Why? you have someone in mind?

wicked, extensive rebuild don't think i could go through with it as there was nothing wrong to start with? or going to competitive track car?

Was already a competitive track car Could keep a GT3 at bay if driven well .... I'm just a perfic... perfek... parfec..... fussy bastard.

06 Aug '08

Today's update:

Well it's been a mixed day today... taken the decision to bite the bullet and rebuild the engine. I was hoping to avoid this and I could have just slapped it back in the car, but the prevalent oil-consumption would only get worse and the performance would begin to drop off before too long so given it's out and partially stripped I'm going to jump in boots and all and do it. It's outside my budget for the job and it means the car probably won't be finished until the end of the year at the earliest but it's the right thing to do. A little disheartened to be honest

On the plus side, I got the plating back today... all of the sandblasting as seen in a photo a few posts back now looks lovely and plated. Here's a bit of a teaser:

Most of the exposed parts will be overcoated with a POR15 epoxy clearcoat for further protection before they're ready to bolt back on the car... should look a million bucks! Hoping to get the car back on its wheels by early September to allow me to wheel the car around and give me space to work on the engine in there.

*sigh*

04 Aug '08

Second coat on now... coverage is much better, colour is actually quite a good match and much more uniform on second coat... pitting pretty much filled in. The gloss level will dull slightly once the paint dries, but other than that should stay looking as good as it does in the pics. The job, as they say, is an orange coloured root vegetable

04 Aug '08

First coat on

Certainly not a perfect finish, but pretty good. second coat should fill most of the pitting and be a little more uniform... as I said, I can do a topcoat at a later stage if I desire... at least for now this'll prevent any corrosion from getting worse... and it don't half look better than before

03 Aug '08

More progress.... some background first:

Now, With the Series 1 and early Series 2 Elises (and S1 Exiges) Lotus had a bit of a nightmare with the floorpans, they made rather an elemntary cock-up and designed in a rather silly fault.

The Elise chassis is anodised aluminium sections glued together and as such doesn't corrode really at all. This is useful as because it's glued, you can't just cut off and weld in repair sections like you can with a conventional welded steel unibody car.

Now, the car originally came with rubber mats bonded to the footwells... which was all well and good. But invariably, moisture got underneath and used to "sweat". Ordinarily that's not a problem, but given that the mats are rubber and don't breathe, you get a low-oxygen environment , and the stagnant moisture causes crevice corrosion to attack the anodising and then the base metal beneath. This was first discovered by owners in about 2002-2003 when some noticed the mats beginning to go lumpy as the piles of aluminium oxide (white powder). Upon pulling them up it looked like the floor of a cocaine factory. When the powder was scrubbed away, the aluminium was left heavily pitted, discoloured, pinholed and even cirrided completely through.

Now Lotus realised the fcuk up and issued a recall whereby the rubber mats were removed, the floors cleaned up and breathable synthetic mattiing installed. If the corrosion wasn't serious, then the floors were cleaned then coated with ACF50 (a protectant for aluminium). In more serious cases, the floors were cleaned and a new aluminium sheet was bonded in over the top of the old one hence double-skinning the floor. The floorpan is not structural, it's purely a cosmetic issue and obviously the sort of thing you want to stop before it gets too bad.

NOW.

My car had the floor corrosion/recall done in 2004. My corrosion wasn't too bad by way of pitting with the worst pits being only about 20-30% of the way through the metal. The anodising was knackered though and had blackened badly, hence looking very ugly (see pics). Instead of doing the "B" fix (new panel bonded in) they did the small "A" fix. It really should have had the new floor bonded in but I'm rather glad they didn't as to my mind, while it's COSMETICALLY the best thing to do, it recreates the same issue the rubber mats caused in the first place (a sandwich where moisture can get to).

My floorpans as they were can be seen below.... ugly:

Anyway, I decided that I would clean mine up and would give them some kind of coating (Like Danoul from SELOC has ). I decided on POR15 as I've used this on floorpans of other cars that had corroded and the resultant finish was tough as nails and a complete seal over the metal. This is a special anti-corrosive epoxy paint that dries by sucking moisture out of the air and from the base metal below (it can only be painted on bare metal). It then forms an impermeable seal where Oxygen and moisture cannot get to (it's not porous like conventional paints). Especially given that now POR15 is available in Silver, I thought I'd give it a shot. If I'm not happy with the colour when done, I'll simply be able to over-coat it with a colour-matched conventional paint whilst keeping the POR15 coat in place to protect the metal.

Anyway... the floorpans were meticulously cleaned and prepped this weekend in order to receive the paint. They're already looking a lot better, and the pitting isn't as bad as I'd feared:

They're now ready for the POR15 which I'll apply later tonight or tomorrow. POR15 works as a filler/primer too so the pitting should be easily filled by the paint. Any pitting evident after coating will be filled on top of the basecoat so that there's no chance of moisture being trapped below the filler.

More pics once there's some paint on!

Except you aren't supposed to run them tight. They are designed to run with less tension than a standard belt and rely on the teeth to prevent slip.

Callum

But you don't get tha noize with them loose au!

Basically the noise you can hear is the pressure pulse of the air being squeezed out of the pulley tooth hollow as the belt tooth engages in it.

Don't really see the point of putting on belts just for noise, but each to their own

And I though I was anal.............

Awesome!

What can I say?! It satisfies my closet OCD

But yes, British/European roads can do this, will turn a new car into a rustbucket in but a few years.

No just British roads, and being based in Scotland makes for longer, harder winters than most of the UK. I don't know of any other European country that uses salt - mainly because mainland temperatures get way below the effective freezing point of water+salt ( -5 degrees tops ). That and they're not that stupid.

I've owned 3 year old escorts in the UK with more rust than my 1973 kiwi new version has now.

Fair enough.... although as you know, once it's been on salt, it just sits on the suspension etc and then pretty much every time it gets wet, the salt/water eats further into the metal. Nasty, nasty stuff. Anyway, it's all a distant memory now, everything's all sandblasted and shiny (see update from this evening in the thread) so no more rustiness for me to contend with

27 Jul '08

Well more progress this weekend!

Got the second CV joint/driveshaft all split down, cleaned out and scrubbed up. Looks pretty much the same as the first, not perfect, but more than good enough, and a SHED load better than before.

I've also finished polishing up my front extruded alloy suspension uprights and they look uber bling now. I've just buffed them up by hand with a rag and Autosol, so they're not perfect, but they're not designed to look bling, I just wanted them polished so they'll resist corrosion a little better in future. I'm going to look into anodising them too, will take them in to Anodising Industries during the week and have a chat to them... so we'll see.

But anyway beholdeth bling:

Compare those to the DIRY one in the pic taken from a few weeks ago and you'll see it's a small improvement

Also snapped some photos of all my sandblasting stuff. All of the wishbones, steering arms, balljoint mounts, engine mounts, forged steel rear uprights and miscellaneous bits and bobs have spent this weekend in the hot water cupboard. Because they're now bare steel, I've been trying to keep them from getting moisty and rusting until I can get them into the platers tomorrow

Compare them to the earlier photos above of the suspension wishbones on the floor and you'll see it's a million times better. Can't wait to see them all plated up and looking shiny gold and/or powdercoated

Beholdeth more bling!

So yeah, productive weekend