Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[Dell'orto]

Hahaha, a bagged Exige ute would be aws. Do it.

I'm not too surprised at the condition of the axles etc, salt is brutal stuff. Beach spray doesnt get half as concentrated as a truck dumping salt on the road

[Esprit]

Hahaha, a bagged Exige ute would be aws. Do it.

I'm not too surprised at the condition of the axles etc, salt is brutal stuff. Beach spray doesnt get half as concentrated as a truck dumping salt on the road

True that! The rust you've seen is about 2 winters' use (2003 and 2004) where the original owner did some big assed roadtrips down to Europe to have winter plays over the alps passes and around circuits like Spa, Zandvoort and the Nordschleife. As I said, many of the Exige specialist parts were straight from the "motorsport elise" parts bin and as such were bare steel, no rust proofing at all (I guess they thought why would you bother rust-proofing a race car?).

But yes, British/European roads can do this, will turn a new car into a rustbucket in but a few years. Even living next to the beach in NZ would be much less harsh on a car. Hence my ethos with this rebuild is to get it right, give it some kind of care/protection and it should stay looking as good as new for the next 20 years or more It's only really a dry-weather toy for me, only sees the rain when I'm away touring/trackdaying and get caught in it so it should lead a pampered existence from here on in

[fishtailfred]

ROFL @ the Super Cheap SupaTools under the very un-cheap car

[Esprit]

ROFL @ the Super Cheap SupaTools under the very un-cheap car

Heh, got those tools as a 21st present and have abused them regularly for the interim 7 years, ain't broken one yet

Mind you, I've got only the basic tools as I moved around a lot up until a few years ago and tools can be a bitch to move around... I work as an engineer so I've got a fully stocked toolroom at my disposal should I need something beefier. Cheap tools FTW My motto is the less money you spend on 'em, the more money you have to spend on unreliable, horribly impractical British 4-wheeled moneypits

[sholdowa]

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.

[Esprit]

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

[Esprit]

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

[Unclejake]

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

Awesome!

[Esprit]

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

Awesome!

What can I say?! It satisfies my closet OCD

[Esprit]

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!

[Esprit]

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

[Esprit]

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

[Esprit]

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*

[Requiemk]

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?

[Esprit]

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.

[Esprit]

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:

[Esprit]

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!

[Esprit]

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?

[Esprit]

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!

[Esprit]

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!