Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[Anpanman]

thought you might enjoy this video.

have been following this build up for a long time now, and have enjoyed seeing the progress and it is cool that is getting close to completion. hopefully you will have lots of videos to post of it in action after that. cheers.

[Esprit]

Right, well another Friday night and given that I can no longer afford a social life thanks to this sodding car, I decided to get a bit of work done on it

Now, I started this evening by re-cleaning up the entire front section of my car. Why? Well, my landlord recently lost his job, and since he's now unemployed he's turned into Captain f*cking D.I.Y! (Underwear on the outside of his trackpants and all) and this week's job has been to repaint all the doors in the house. Now, he's done this on his side of the garage, but as well you know, when you're painting and sanding you make a mess EVERYWHERE. So my car now looks like a cocaine factory exploded all over it. You'd think he'd have had the courtesy to come and tell me he was going to be doing it in the garage but nooooo. Some people! GAH!

Now, over most of the car I don't really care because it's already covered in dust, but the whole front area I've been working on I'd managed to get spotless.... which I had to do AGAIN!

[/rant]

I then got into reinstalling the heater unit, which took about half an hour to get into position. This was followed by complete re-removal of the heater unit owing to dropping a washer down inside the fan blower... F*CK!

Anyway, finally got it back in and sorted, all in place.

And then with the heater trunking installed:

If you compare those photos to the ones posted on November 15th, you'll see it's a HUGE improvement.

So I stood back admiring my work for a little bit..... and then it happened:

That's right! For the first time since about March/April '08, my car now has a front clam! Ok, so it's not bolted on yet (that'll happen Sunday hopefully) but it's on there and that's 90% of it and it looks AWESOME! I've gotten used to seeing the bits of bodywork on the car sitting there under an inch of dust and grime, but the front section, having been covered up for 20 months is still fresh and clean like the day I removed it. I forgot how gooood it looked.

Needless to say, I'm a pretty happy camper! I don't often post pics of myself in this blog, but here's one of me looking rather chuffed with myself:

Oh... and one just a little less reserved!

I'm out all day tomorrow, but will be back on the car Sunday to get the front clam pretty much bolted down. From there I'll clean up and reinstall the front inner arches, front undertray etc. Apart from a bit of modification to the battery wiring and final battery installation, the car is now finished ahead of the doors. RESULT!

[thegreatestben]

Lol you even look english.

[Esprit]

Lol you even look english.

Haha well thanks (I think!)... given that I'm of the British persuasion

[Honda Ass Dragger]

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-Me-Motor ... 926236.htm

Is this the same as yours do you need a spare?

[Esprit]

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Trade-Me-Motors/Car-parts-accessories/Performance/Electronics/auction-255926236.htm

Is this the same as yours do you need a spare?

Cheers for the heads up... mine's the newer K3 unit (that's an older MD3K) but yeah, it's similar

[Esprit]

Right, well I spent Saturday getting completely sunburned out at Waiheke Island. When one of our company directors said he bought a new holiday house on the island, we weren't expecting it to come with its own sodding peninsula! The day was spent drinking, swimming, kayaking and generally laxing out. This was followed by an all-night dance party in the city, which was rather awesome.

All of this resulted in a Sunday where I was probably slightly less productive on the car than might have otherwise been. Still, I got a fair few fiddly jobs done that took a bunch of time.

The front clam is now bolted on and shimmed up. Happy to report the panel gaps are now better than ever... although it's still no Audi! It really did bring home how now the bodywork really lets the rest of the car down. When I started this job, the bodywork was the best bit. I'd have never bothered to improve it.... the rest of the car's now come up that good that something REALLY needs to be done about the paintwork and finishing.

Still, that's not in the scope of this rebuild. Plan is to get it back on the road for the summer, enjoy the hell out of it and when June/July rolls around we'll whip the body off and get it all refinished so the outside is just as new as that which lies underneath. I'll keep it in the factory Titanium colour for sure, but the paint finish will be given the same degree of attention that you've seen throughout this thread.

Late on Sunday and this evening I also got around to cleaning up the front wheel-arch liners and reinstalling them. This was a time-consuming process as they were plastered in tar on the inside, and dirt on the outside. Nothing a bit of elbow-grease couldn't fix.

Here's the right hand wheel arch without the liner installed:

And here's the left hand wheel arch post liner installation:

Tomorrow I shall get the liners finished off (reattaching the fuse box and relay box to the top of the LH liner, and oil lines to the top of the R/H liner). I will also head into Alert Motorsport and get some NORMA clamps for the brake lines so they can be attached to the wishbones the the wheels can go back on. Carr will be back on the ground and looking strangely complete from the front then. I'll then clean up the front undertray and get that screwed back on as that's one less thing I'll have cluttering up the garage. WIN!

[Esprit]

Right well a little midweek update. My new billet alloy, stiffer upper engine mount arrived today along with the new silicone exhaust mounts:

I decided to try this instead of my stock hydrolastic engine mount I've already reconditioned. I've always got the option of swapping back to this one if I feel it's too harsh, but I figured it's worth a go.

The good news is that because I'm talking about engine mounts, it shouldn't be too long before the engine's going back into the chassis

[Esprit]

Right well it's been a weekend of getting little things done so far.

Frustrating news is that Ken's pretty snowed under at the moment so the engine won't be able to go back into the car until the week after Christmas holidays.... so the plan of having the car back in one piece in time for them has gone out the window. Bad news is that this pretty much writes off my chances of getting the car track ready for a bunch of trackdays I'd booked in for January/February. Crap.

The upshot of this is that the wiring etc, which I'd planned to start on once the engine was at home in the car has now been brought forward and I've now started figuring this out.

I've spent a good few hours going through the car and wiring and trying to figure out how I'm going to run cables and looms to get everything wired up. I'm about to pop off into Jaycar to grab an enclosure so I can start laying out the adaptor loom between my VHPD engine loom and the Emerald.

Another job I've tackled today was cleaning up the under trays. I wanted to get the front under tray back on this weekend, so figured I'd clean all of them up at the same time.

I hauled them out of a dark, dirty corner and laid them out on the lawn:

I then spent a few hours cleaning them up. I decided (before wasting too much time) that I'm going to remake my own engine bay under tray as my one's seen better days. It was bent before (when I got the car) and I've straightened it out a bit. It's been hacked about a little to clear the exhaust and one of the NACA ducts has seen better days. Surface corrosion's also pretty widespread from where it's suffered salt splash around the rear wheels.... time for a new one then.... I'll make it a bit tidier and I'll clean up the hacking about that was done to clear the exhaust manifold collector.

I'll order a new NACA duct from Geary this week and I'll get a new panel laser cut and folded and then anodised.

The other two cleaned up fairly well:

Having said that there's still a little corrosion damage on the front as well, and since I'm already getting the engine bay under tray re manufactured, I figured I'd get the front undertray done as well (since when have I taken the easy route eh?).... so I'll head into work tonight, SolidWorks them up and get some drawings done so I can get manufacture under way.... job should be a carrot.

Right... off to do some more electrical type stuffs.... where did I put my soldering iron?

[mixmasterlex]

You're mental.

Good work!

[Esprit]

Right, well not a lot to report really.

Got my bits to start making up the adaptor loom. Will need a few more bits before I can finish it, but this weekend I may have to begin the soldering!

I've modelled and drawn up my undertrays and have sent them out to our suppliers for quoting. Hopefully they don't come back insanely expensive

Other than that, all is going well. Got a couple of new things I'm cooking up for the car on the horizon and we'll see how those pan out

[Ned]

I would like to just make sure that you know that you are insane. Don;t get me wrong, i love what you're doing but wow, thats a LOT of time/money/effort you're putting in!

Well done

[Esprit]

Thanks.... I think

No, I sent a bunch more money across to the UK for more bits today and am thinking about sending a large chunk more across before Christmas for something else that's come up and I got to the point this evening where I said I think I've ACTUALLY got a problem... like an addiction... still.. at least this hopefully has an end point in a few months.. that's the frustrating thing, it's gone on nearly 2 years and at time you just can't see the end.

[Esprit]

Just a brief mid-week update:

Got prices back for the undertrays, going to cost about $320 for the pair I reckon, which should include anodising (that's about 135 quid at the current exchange rate for the Brits). They'll be ready by mid next week and I'll just have to source an anodiser that can do them.

Got some nice new bits on the way from the UK now, should be here in time to put under my Christmas tree. Due to the splurging though I've had to forego a Christmas tree this year and will be fashioning one by gluing together left-over Exige bits

Will be a quiet weekend this weekend and will probably busy myself by re-attaching the roof panel (which is currently just sitting on the car) and will begin constructing my adaptor loom... scary stuff for a colourblind lad like me!

[Esprit]

Today's task was to get the roof reinstalled. Since I re-did the firewall it's just been sitting on the car and the rear window has been in my bedroom.

Now normally, this would be a 30 minute job, but in the finest tradition of this rebuild, I've stretched it out to a whole day

Now, I noticed a while ago that the powdercoat was peeling off the roof catch plates on the rollbar shroud. I wasn't going to bother with doing anything about them, but then figured "why not?".

Now, normally I'd swear more about British weather and salt and all that, but I actually recall the same issue on my old, NZ-new '98 S1 Elise. It possibly wasn't quite so bad on the Elise, but it was there nonetheless. It is slightly perlplexing though how these manage to rust since they're on the inside of the cabin. I remember thinking on the Elise that they got wet from when it rained with the soft-top off, but on the Exige the roof's there to stop that. Either way, the quality of the original powdercoat was shocking since there's no way an interior fitting should rust like this!

Perhaps water gets on them when driving with the window open in the rain? Either way I decided to fix them.

Here's what they looked like on the car:

And what they looked like once I'd drilled out the rivets and removed them:

20 minutes with the wire brush and they're back to bare steel. You can see that there was actually a bit of rust underneath the powdercoat by the pitting on the one on the right.

It was then time to prime them and paint them. I didn't bother POR15ing them like many other bits on the car. It's not an area I'd expect to suffer much weathering so a good quality spray primer and satin-black topcoat was applied:

These were then reattached and hung back on the car with new rivets:

I also took the time to clean up the track where the rear window sits, clean off the rollbar itself (a lot of dust and dirt collects between it and the roof), replace the fasteners on the rear window shroud (with stainless ones) and refurbish all the rubber seals on the roof and rollbar with rubber protectant. this should hopefully extend the life of the seals by a few years, but in any case the rubbers were all in superb condition and looked just fine for now.

Onto wiring tomorrow I reckon, so long as this damn cold virus doesn't keep me in bed.

[Esprit]

Well, Christmas came slightly early!

Courier just arrived and the fine blokes down at Stainless Design have done a great job at making up my new undertrays

Don't let the name confuse you, the undertrays are aluminium!

They've still got to go off and get anodised, which will be done late January most likely if I can't get them in before Chrimbo but so far they look fantastic.

They're basically replicas of the OEM items except the engine undertray is in slightly lighter gauge sheet (1.2mm as opposed to 1.3mm).

See here in direct comparison with the old, more corroded items:

[Esprit]

Right, so an update of a very different nature this week.

A bit of background on this first though. Not long after I moved into this flat, back when I still had the Elise, I noticed that cats were getting into the garage and pissing everywhere. Well when I say everywhere, that's not entirely correct, they would piss all over the front of the car. Now in an Elise this is problematic, since that's where all of the air intakes are, meaning that you clean the piss off the front of the car (before it etches the paint, and it WILL) but the next time you're driving and turn on the fan/heater you get a face-full of warm cat's piss smell.... LOVELY. So then it basically turns into an almost-clam-off job to scrub out the front of the car to remove all traces of it.

Then it happens every few days and you get MEGA pissed off.

Easiest solution was to keep the garage closed and to discourage any cats from getting inside. I talked to my flatmate/landlord about it and they agreed and apart from a few isolated incidents over the past couple of years, it's been not too bad.

BUT, as mentioned in a previous post, my landlord lost his job and has turned into captain DIY, which means while I'm out working for a crust, he's often in and out of the garage sanding doors and window-frames etc and doing other home-handy-man tasks..... and he's not QUITE as religious about closing up the garage when he's not there as I am. Also, he has two cats of his own who he swears don't piss on anything because they're female and he's not nearly forceful enough about keeping them out of the garage as I am.

Long story short, there have been five incidences of cats spraying all over my tools/car/car parts/stuff in the last month alone. It's made all the more annoying by the fact that it's only ever on my side of the garage. Landlord's VFR800 and Civic remain un-urinated.

Repeated attempts to get him to assist me in solving the problem have seemingly fallen on deaf ears so I've now got one eye on the "flatmates wanted" ads to see if I can find a place that's not suffering as such. I'm not giving up though and this weekend I decided to be a bit more proactive about things.

First things first, I decided I needed some evidence to show my landlord that his cats were indeed culpable (or at least partially). So, this weekend I took my track-datalogging laptop, hooked it into my WiFi network and set up a motion-sensitive spy-camera in the garage to catch the little fuckers red-handed. It alerts me on my PC when it detects motion, as well as recording it so I can pop out and scare the buggers off or administer a beating.

Here's the setup, you can see the laptop to the left, the webcam is lower central-right hanging off one of my aborted dummy firewall heat-shields.

So far I've managed to catch one of his cats in the act (proof that will be presented to him) and also caught the other snooping around. It also enabled me to catch one of the neighbourhood cats (a tom I believe) in the garage. I managed to disturb him before he had a chance to do anything, but I gave it the hiding of a lifetime. Little bastard managed to draw some of my blood in return, but suffice to say I managed to give ten times as good as I got. I'm not sure he'll be hanging around my place any more

This has shown me that it's more than just one or two cats. Thanks to all the irresponsible cat owners around here (of which there are many) our place has become the no-mans' land in a feline turf war and it's clear that this problem is going to keep occurring as long as my landlord keeps being a numpty about all of this.

So tonight I'm going to hit him up about it good and proper, it's got to stop. My last bastion of hope is that I've purchased a motion-sensing ultrasonic cat-scarer off EBay. Now I've read some good success stories about these being used to keep cats off gardens so it should hopefully be effective in the garage as well. I know that it's not a dead-cert to keep the little bastards out of my garage, but fingers crossed it helps. Either way it's got to be better than going out to work on the car to find my toolbox, my wheels and spares dripping with cats' piss. Right?

[macabre]

get a dog that loves cats

like so

[My name is Russell]

Now thats a good idea!

[Testament]

I thought that was going to end with now the cats knocked over whatever it is the laptop is sitting on and pissed on that too