Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[BobbyBreeze]

Oh, pre-1990, good to know thanks. What if you brought one in and did an engine swap to a late model Japanese engine?

[Esprit]

Oh, pre-1990, good to know thanks. What if you brought one in and did an engine swap to a late model Japanese engine?

No loophole there as the car as it was type-approved doesn't meet emissions regs. The only way through it is to get an SIV exemption, which allows exemption on emissions and frontal impact regs.

It's the same for every car, hence why you can bring in a 1989 R32 GTR as a classic, but need SIV exemption if you want to bring in a post '90 GTR.

[Esprit]

Well more bling to throw on the pile

I mentioned a few posts back about remaking the old steel trumpet backplate on which the powdercoating was shot. I've made up a new one in the same thickness aluminium at half the weight and had it anodised blue (just to look similar to the OEM item) and here's the finished product:

It should do the trick nicely

I've also finally gotten around to getting the new undertrays I made up all anodised, so these now look pristine and ready to bolt onto the car when the time comes

Still waiting on the gearbox, which shouldn't be far away now, can't wait!! It's like Christmas is coming!!

[xsspeed]

Anodising looks decent, where'd you get that done?

rough prices?

[Esprit]

Anodising looks decent, where'd you get that done?

rough prices?

Those three pieces (note two of them are quite large) were $150. This was done at Alert Anodising in East Tamaki.

Most of my anodising I get done at Anodising Industries in Onehunga as we do a lot of stuff through them at work, but they only do smaller component stuff and didn't have the capacity to do the large bits, hence my need to use Alert on this job. Alert were fairly pricey, but they've done an absolutely top-notch job that I can't fault, so I'm happy.

[xsspeed]

May check out anodising industries as thats quite local for me, I am looking to get some bike (pushy&bmx) components anodised - will be small enough for them I imagine.

What sort of prep do you need to do for your parts before handing them over?

[Esprit]

Anodising industries are very good in my experience.

If the parts are new alloy then you don't need to do anything. If they're old bits, then just making sure it's clean and smooth is the best. A good scrub up with some fine scotch-brite is probably the best. Bear in mind anodising won't fill in like paint, so any pits or gouges in the metal will still be evident post anodising.

Here's an example of something new I've had anodised:

And something old:

I've never had anything done by them in colours before, only natural anodising (like my undertrays), black anodising like these parts and hard-anodising (which is generally a mid-dark grey). They'll be able to tell you if they do colours etc though.

[Esprit]

More good news! The Quaife 6-speed box is now landed in New Zealand and in my friend's garage down in Napier. Must give my public thanks to Paul Aston for handling the freight for me since he's saved me a bob or two, and a lot of hassle. Cheers mate

I'm away all next week for work and on holiday the week after that; I'm spending a week with my father participating in a week-long (non-competitive) classic car rally in his E-Type Jaguar on the sunny East Coast. After that I'll be bringing the new gearbox back to Auckland with me and we'll clean it up and get it ready to go onto the engine.... and then FINALLY I can make plans to get the engine hung back in the chassis. It came out in May 2008 and it'll be going back in in April 2010.... 23 months with no heart!

[FLAWLES]

good things take time!

and this is a very good thing

[Esprit]

Right, well another weekend in the garage doing little bits and pieces. Progress consists of having got the fuel filter bracket all cleaned up and remounted, which took a bit of work to get perfect. New fuel filter is in and lines have been run back to the engine bay:

The other job was to refit the fuel filler hoses. This was to be a simple task as I was to refit the filler simply as I removed it. However, I noticed upon inspection that the powdercoat on the filler neck had begun to suffer and there was a bit of rust underneath in places... nothing bad, but enough to be annoying to me!

So, out came the wire brush and got it all scrubbed clean of old powdercoat and any rust:

Couple of coats of the magical POR15 black and the job was a good'un!:

I wasn't able to get the filler refitted as the POR15 hadn't cured enough. I'll get this refitted when I'm back from the classic rally... with my new gearbox coming home with me! Rock on!

[Ned]

Brilliant as always.

[Esprit]

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with Q!

That's right, I finally picked up my Quaife 6-speed box today and it's now sitting safely in my folks' garage. It'll return to Auckland with me next week after the NZ Classic Car rally and get cleaned up in prep for going on the car.

This is a VERY big chunk of awesome right here. It's going to make a real difference to how quick the car is in the real world when done and despite the not insignificant expense, it's a move I'm glad I made. All the advantages of a roadable gearbox as well as the right ratios for serious trackwork. Quaife ATB LSD included for good measure too.

The only penalty is about 2kg extra mass over the stock box... which is okay as I've already cut plenty of weight out elsewhere during this rebuild to make up the shortfall.

Beholdeth!

And one of my trusty steed for the next week lurking in the background!

Also the associated oil pump and cooler gubbins for the box:

We're rapidly closing now on the day where I can FINALLY reunite the engine with the car!

[Raizer]

Was good to meat you man!

[Esprit]

You too man... and love that photo!

[Raizer]

I just wish I hadn't packed light and had my longer lens with me, I had so much trouble trying to get action shots, I think I only have ones of your E and that black XJ6 with the gold stripe.

Oh and here is a pic you might not like as much

Hey you wouldn't happen to have any of the results from the rally you could PM me?

[Esprit]

Well just a little side-update from me. No progress this last week because I've been on the NZ Classic Car rally. So I thought I'd just pop up a little taster of what went down.

My father signed up for this about 6 months ago as it sounded like a good way to waste a week, and since we enjoy doing car stuff together, he invited me along for the ride. This rally was held up in Gisborne, on the East Coast, about 2-3 hours drive north of where my folks live.

This was a non-competitive rally, just really a gathering together of classic car enthusiasts to enjoy driving and sharing classic car ownership together.

We got up there on the Saturday and met up with the other 180 or so entrants. There were about 90 cars involved in all, most of which had two rally participants on board. The disappointing thing was that of the attendees, my father was definitely one of the younger ones... meaning that I was a good 20-30 years junior to most of the rally participants. Given that my father and I are generally about using our cars in the way they were intended, we feared we might have been fish out of water.

We were, for the large part, right.... with much of the rally being a little more pedestrian than we'd have liked. We still we had plenty of fun tearing all around the Gisborne/East Cape region though. Thankfully most of the other participants didn't seem to mind the two tearaways in the British racing green E-Type tearing past them at a high rate of leptons while they were enjoying the roads at a far more leisurely pace.

Much of the week was taken up with mapped runs around the local area. Most of these were 100-150km scenic runs.

Wednesday however was a little more free, so dad and I decided to take the road from Gisborne to Opotiki and right up around the East Cape back to Gisborne... about 300 miles of promising looking tarmac..... WOW.

The road to Opotiki cut through the most amazing gorge, managing to be both scenic and entertaining all at once. With very little traffic this road proved to be motoring nirvana for us. Hammering through there marginally above the legal limit, carrying some lovely neutral drifts from corner to corner, the cliffs reverberating an aural concoction of tyre-squeal and the snarl of a tuned XK engine stalking through the rev-range was just bliss.

The roads around the cape were a little rougher, through some VERY remote countryside and jagged, unforgiving coastline. This was also a lot of fun, enjoying the remoteness at pace.

Here's a couple of photos we snapped at our lunch stop in Te Araroa... my father enjoying a bag of crisps as the filthy Jag enjoyed a well-earned break from the spanking it had endured.

The Friday held the rally Concours competition. There were about 20 or so entrants, and we put the E-Type in just to make up the numbers. We spent a good few hours washing the crud off her from the previous days' motoring and had her looking pretty swish.

Of course we didn't stand a hope in hell of winning the concours... as lovely as the car is, it can't hold a candle to some of the cars it was up against... many of whom were purpose-built show-classics that spend more time on a trailer than turning wheels of their own.

Here she is parked up next to the eventual silver medallist, a '38 Packard Super 8 (which in my opinion, should have won... this thing was un-naturally magnificent).

The rally wound up on Saturday with a public display at the Gisborne showgrounds, which also included a gymkhana competition. Dad and I decided to enter the Jag in for a bit of fun. Many people were aghast to see a car as straight and gleaming as ours take to the grassed arena and I'm sure they expected to see it being driven in appropriately delicate fashion. Boy were they wrong!

Dad and I had great fun tearing it up, throwing the old girl around sideways, kicking up great clouds of dust. For those who've never seen an E-Type Jag drifting, I'm pleased to present the following photo; yours truly at the wheel (credit to Shiloh for the pic!).

The upshot of all this was that I managed to win the gymkhana competition outright... quite the achievement given that many of the competition were much more suited to the task (smaller, shorter, mid-engined or FWD).

Of course this ruined all of the hours of cleaning and polishing we'd done on the previous days!

So, after this we headed home, having spent a fantastic week of father/son time just enjoying the old girl and the scenery at our own pace.

I've just got back to Auckland, the Quaife gearbox returning to Auckland with me, about to get a good clean up this Easter weekend prior to getting mated up to the engine. After a lovely break the show must go on!

[Esprit]

I just wish I hadn't packed light and had my longer lens with me, I had so much trouble trying to get action shots, I think I only have ones of your E and that black XJ6 with the gold stripe.

Oh and here is a pic you might not like as much

Hey you wouldn't happen to have any of the results from the rally you could PM me?

Haha yeah, I cocked that test up good and proper

As for the results, I don't have them listed, but here are the ones I remember off-hand:

Concours Competition winner: Powder Blue '58 Studebaker

Concours Runner Up: Red Packard Super 8

Gymkhana Winner: Two monkeys in an E-Type

Overall Rally winner (combined points total from all the fun-events throughout the week): XJ6 Jaguar (forget the colour, but it was the only Jaguar, non-Daimler, XJ6 there I recall)

Peoples' Choice winner: Dark Blue Alvis TA21

[Esprit]

Well, I've spent more time working on the GTi6 than I'd have liked this weekend but still got a full day on the Lotus today.

I started off by finally getting the refurbished fuel filler/vent system all refitted. This takes a little bit of jigging about to get it just right, but it's on now. Finally the fuel filler cap's not cluttering up my workbench.... I think it's been 2 years since it was last attached to anything... I've been paranoid about it falling on the ground and getting damaged as it's just the sort of idiotic thing I'd do. It's safe now though

The next job I allocated myself was to get the NACA ducts pulled off the old engine bay undertray and attached to the new one. One of the two was to be replaced since it was beginning to break up due to the exhaust heat. It was probably serviceable and still intact on the underside, but it'd only have deteriorated further:

I had a new NACA duct from EliseParts. When fitting this up, it was apparent that the new NACA duct wasn't an Elise/Exige specific part. I'm guessing it's a generic replacement part that's about the right size/shape to act as a suitable substitute on the Elise/Exige. From the top especially, they're quite a different shape.

Now, were I replacing both of them, this'd not have been too much of a worry to me. However, given that I was reusing the good OEM one as well as using the EliseParts replacement, the OCD-feind in me decided this just wouldn't do. Out came the dremel and the hacksaw blade and I managed to get the EliseParts duct looking a reasonable facsimile of the OEM item. A close-up look will verify that it's different, but at first glance the imposter passes muster.

Then, I had to simply mark out the holes on my new undertray, carefully drill them and rivet the ducts on. Here you can see them riveted in position on the new undertray from above and below. The OEM, reused one is shown on the right when viewed from above:

The other job of the day was to go hunting about for material with which I can begin to make up my replacement manifold heat shield. I bought a unit of this material from Repco, made by ACL as I'd had it recommended to me by several people in the know. This is the approximate equivalent of Nimbus/Cirrus in the UK, being a thin outer skin of aluminised steel, sandwiching a ceramic thermal barrier.

Here you can see it with my old, well-knackered (it really is falling to bits all of its own accord) manifold heat shield:

Tonight, I'll be sitting in front of SolidWorks I think, modelling it up so I can generate a lay-flat pattern for the new shield. I'll then be able to profile-cut a pattern and I should be able to make some simple form tools to bend it up into a pretty close approximation of the OEM shield. With the ceramic-coated manifold and this heat shield in place, It should help to keep engine bay temps down a bit. Especially as I'll also be opening up the Fog/Reverse-light vents some more when the rear clam goes back on.

I'll have enough material left to make some auxiliary heat shields as well for those little bits and pieces that could do with it once the engine's back in situ.

Gearbox will go into KW tomorrow so that he can connect it up with the engine!

Tally Ho!

[Esprit]

Well, been away visiting my heavily pregnant sister down in Morrinsville today so no material progress on the car sadly. However, I did swing by and see Wayne at Cartune in Hamilton while I was down there and picked up SEXIGE's new brain. Shiny new Link G4 Xtreme Thanks for the hookup dude!

Had a good chat with Wayne about how best to go about managing things and he's given me a couple of ideas to chew over.... will get my own brain working on them in the very near future.

When it came down to it, the Link can just do some very funky stuff and that won me over. I reckon we'll be able to get the old VHPD running pretty sweetly with the Link calling the shots

[Snoozin]

Nice!!!

You will not regret heading that way for the ECU!