Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[Esprit]

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!

[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

[Esprit]

More progress this week. Got the stripper sorted for the tank so will tackle that this coming weekend. In the meantime I've got my toelinks back from the electroplaters and I've also got my subframe back from the galvanisers.... so shiiiiny

Before:

After:

Going to have to get the sikaflex sorted for the rear longerons next week and also some rivets for the rear heat shield/subframe assembly.... should keep me busy.

Not long now before I can begin the long assembly process!

[Esprit]

Today's progress thus far! Couple hours of elbow grease and working with the X-Strip has left me with a nice bare, shiny fuel tank

Next step as I'll begin shortly will be to wash-down then acid-etch/Zinc Phosphate (MetalPrep) the tank then cover with a couple of coats of black POR15. POR15 should be much more robust than the OEM paint, which seemed about as resistant to petrol/chemicals as... well... something that's not very resistant to petrol or chemicals.

[Esprit]

Right, well it took long enough through having to do 4 coats on the damned tank (2 coats, but done in two parts so I could get the whole tank coated as I had nothing to hang it from). Took AGES waiting the requisite 2.5 hours between coats so it's taken pretty much all day, but it's bloody done now and will never need to be done again

The top still looks manky in this pic as it's still wet and showing brush marks but it should level out pretty good. The finish isn't perfect, but again it's more than good enough for the fuel tank that'll never be seen and it won't suffer the same fate as the original paint and it'll never rust

[Esprit]

Right well today's update centres around the engine. Finally got it all pulled down today to see whether I needed to add new pistons to the shopping list. I already really knew the answer to be honest, but I figured that I would double check since the engine needed to come to bits anyway.

The pictures show that new Omega forgies will DEFINITELY be going on the shopping list as these ones have certainly seen better days.

Pistons on bench

Number one Piston (thrust side)

The background of the engine was that it had done 25,000 miles, many of these on track and was using a fair bit of oil. A bit of a rattle had also developed that we'd traced to a resonating heatshield bracket. Although I could have just dropped the engine back into the car and pressed on with it, I made the call a couple of months back to go ahead and rebuild it top-to-bottom since I had a hunch I'd regret it if I didn't.

When I saw the state of the bottom end today though, I'm now 100% glad that I decided to rebuild it when I did.... I reckon this is about as close to death as an engine can come without actually throwing itself to bits!

#4 Big end bearing starting to show signs of wear:

#1 Big end!!! :o ... I don't think I've ever seen ANYTHING look this sick apart from on engines that have already flown to bits!

Thankfully though (and amazingly) the big end crank journal looks fine and in perfect condition so despite the awful state of the big end, the crank looks like it's in perfect nick to fight another day.

So now I'm able to complete my engine rebuild shopping list and get an order underway. On one hand I'm disheartened to be spending all this money on the car when I'd not budgeted to do it... on the other hand I'm thankful that I decided to strip it down when I did as things would have got REALLY messy if I'd chanced my luck doing another trackday on the engine.

Sadly now this means that over the next few months that progress will be slowing and the bills will be getting LARGE. This has gone from an over winter refurbishment to what amounts to a full nut-and-bolt rebuild of the entire car. Much more than I'd ever planned, but I'm hoping that's when it's all done, the car and its performance should reflect the time, effort and money put in by myself and others.

Stay tuned...

[Esprit]

PROGRESS!!!! ... ok well no, not really... but I felt I should update y'all to let you know where I'm at with things

As I've mentioned before, the VHPD is going to be rebuilt. After weighing up several options, I've decided to go "the whole hog" and build the engine with a decent budget doing everything right, rather than just slapping it back together as a standard VHPD. Everything's been pulled apart and inspected and I'm hopefully going to soon pack up the complete cylinder head, crankshaft, flywheel, clutch cover, pulleys and oil pump to send back to the UK.

The plan is to order new rods and pistons in the UK and have them meet my bottom-end components at Vibration Free so that I can follow what Steve Butts/Skeggsy have done with their Ks and do the full on high-tolerance balance and tungsten crankshaft insertion. While this is going on, my head will go on to DVAPower and get the magic DVA tough with porting and will be rebuilt with all new fresh bits and pieces and all the good bits to make the head able to make more use of a freer bottom end. I'm currently just trying to find out when Dave's got some free time to do the job but other than that it's all go!

The other hold up has been (as some of you might have seen from my other thread on SELOC) that I discovered some corrosion in the lower rear firewall. This was discovered as a small 4mm diameter hole in the bulkhead when I was reinstalling the fuel tank. Subsequent stripping of the firewall heatshield has shown that moisture has gotten in behind this and has caused an identical crevice corrosion problem as to what occurs with the OEM rubber floor mats.

The images I below show the state of the engine bay with the corrosion being clear in the fourth picture. There's a few other small pits on other locations along the firewall.

I have been in contact with Lotus over this issue and they have been very helpful to date. They are interested in learning more about this as they've not been aware of this area being a problem on the chassis before. My chassis is under the 8 year corrosion guarantee and they are currently formulating a fix and are going to send me a repair kit (and new engine bay heat shield) free of charge once they determine the best cause of action to affect a repair and prevent any further corrosion spread.

If any of you are contemplating a strip down and rebuild at any stage in the future, or doing an engine-out job, it would certainly be a worthwhile exercise to strip back the firewall to see if there's any corrosion damage lurking underneath.

Alternatively you can simply drop out the fuel tank and look at the bulkhead from this side to see if there are any holes that have gone through, although this may not show any corrosion that's still in its infancy. I'm certainly very lucky that I bothered to check as I've caught this at a reasonably early stage and can now hopefully arrive at a permanent fix so it'll never need doing again.

All this has put a large pause on proceedings and what was initially meant to be an over-winter refresh (as the thread title suggests) is now turning into something altogether rather more comprehensive. I'm hoping to have the car back together in the NZ Autumn in time for the last of the nice weather before I have to put my toys away again for winter '09.

Rest assured, when she's all done, it's going to be SIGNIFICANTLY better than it was before.

Jobs coming up in the next couple of weeks will be to finish cleaning up the engine bay and to re-hang the rear subframe. Once this is done, I'll then install bushes and balljoints in all the wishbones and set about hanging them back on the car. I'm hoping to get the car rolling again by early/mid December as this'll give me a chance to clean up the garage a bit and also to wheel the car in/out so I can work on it in the sun when the weather's nice as the garage is a little dingy, even in daylight.

f**k me, I don't do things by halves do I?

[Esprit]

Well a little bit more progress today.... aside from the engine dramas that is, but I got my wishbones preassembled today including the suspension bushes and ball joints.

Fingers crossed, I'll be hanging these off the car sometime in the next week or two as I work towards getting the car back on its wheels and rolling so that it's a little more easy to work on.

Tomorrow's job is the rear subframe detailing.

But for now, wishbones...

[Esprit]

The last week or two has been painfully slow going... I've been slowly cleaning up the chassis corners so that the suspension can be bolted back on. Getting rid of 8 years worth of grime and accumulated crap that had sunk into the anodising has proven tricky.... the only way to clean it is by rubbing down with a solvent first to remove most of the stuck-on stuff then going over and cleaning the resultant with Autosol.

This has to be done by hand as you don't want to machine buff it and go through the anodising....just rubbing down by hand with the Autosol is quite safe on the anodising (so long as you don't go nuts) and it cleans it up well, albeit slowly. I've done the front corners and also the front underchassis (see pic showing in-progress cleaning). I've also done one of the rear corners and also much of the engine bay. Another 5-6 hours elbow grease and this will be done. I'll also do the full underfloor as well but this will wait until after the car is back on its wheels again as I've more pressing matters. I'll also give the undertrays and fuel tank shear panel the same treatment to get it looking presentable before this whole shabang is finished.

I've also started making up my fastener list. Done the front and some of the rear suspension for starters, will complete this this week as I want to order fasteners shortly. Still to go are all the clam fixing fasteners and other miscellaneous ones from around the car. The list probably won't be 100% complete on its first iteration as I'm bound to miss a few, but it'll get there in the end.

Other big news is that I've also now finalised the engine spec and now plans are actually underway to get it rebuilt. Rough spec as follows:

New Stock Rover crankshaft custom tungsten inserted by Vibration Free

New Steel H-Beam rods from Arrow Precision

New Omega Pistons / rings (machined by DVAPower for larger valves)

Bottom end will be balanced as an assembly with my existing flywheel/clutch cover and pulleys

VHPD head will be sent to DVAPower to receive his porting magic. Head will then be rebuilt with:

Larger valves

Dual valve springs

Colisbro guides

Piper 1444 Cams

Piper Vernier cam pulleys

Engine will then be rebuilt here in NZ with all new consumables (seals, gaskets, fasteners, liners etc). Whole setup will be run from a new Emerald ECU which will be mapped locally.

Ideally the goal is to build a reliable road/trackday engine that spits out enough power to keep a Honda-powered car at least semi-honest on track. Theoretically, anything up to about 240bhp should be possible in this spec but in the interest of longevity I will be trying to tune it to produce some solid torque without raising the VHPD redline... down the track I can investigate if I want to up the RPM envelope to chase more power. I'm hoping for about 220bhp in a semi-reliable package... something that should be possible.

So yeah, that's it in a nutshell... things should start moving in the next couple of weeks, engine bits being ordered this week and I'll be freighting off my stuff to the UK shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, I've a chassis to finish cleaning up and fasteners to order and still a VERY long list of things to do before the engine comes back together sometime late February..... can't say I don't keep myself busy!

[Esprit]

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]

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!

[Esprit]

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!)

[Esprit]

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

[Esprit]

Christmas has come early! Special delivery from the UK

[Esprit]

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!

[Esprit]

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

[Esprit]

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.

[Esprit]

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!

[Esprit]

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.

[Esprit]

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.