BLOG CONTENTS: Summary of work done (or to do)

I think I'm pretty much there with the car now (well as far as I can be- given that its a Lotus!). For anyone interested here is a list of everything I've done plus a couple of tasks still outstanding. All of this and probably a bit more, is described on the blog so search for any terms you are interested in and you should find them. In an ideal world I'd put in hyperlinks... but life is too short...
Glossary.
"New" means new parts fitted
"Replacement" means good used parts fitted
"Reconditioned" means part was professionally refurbished
"Repaired" or "Rebuilt" means I fixed the original.


Engine
Rebuilt motor; polished crank, new main bearings, big end bearings, new cylinder liners and piston rings. New valves and guides with oil seals.
New timing belt and tensioner.
New camshaft oil seals.
Vacuum hosing to heater valve-operated flaps reinstated restoring heater flap direction function.

HT system
New plugs and leads,
New Lucas ignition coil,
New Lucas ignition switch.
New Powerspark distributor and electronic ignition system (original components and wiring in position)
New Omex rev limiter (original Lucas plus wiring left in position)
NB The distributor and amplifier were replaced as I chased a misfire although bI could find no fault with them and swapping them didnt help. The misfire was  caused by the rev limiter so I fitted a new Omex part. All original parts and wiring left in position for re-instatement if required. Original distrbutor has new cap, arm and AB14 lead and kept with car.

Fuel system
Carburettors ultrasonically cleaned and rebuilt with new gaskets and all O rings plus replacement idle mix screws and acceleration pump springs
New fuel pump (SU electronic)
Tank cleaned and painted, new in-tank filter fitted,
New in-line filter and shut-off tap (see flowlock in tasks left to do). Replacement petrol cap with new seal.
Replacement fuel level sender
New throttle cable.
New fuel vent pipe fitted.
New induction air hose.

Transmission
Replacement clutch driven and pressure plates,
New release bearing and spigot bearing,
New master and slave cylinders, Replacement pedal box.

Cooling
Reconditioned water pump
Reconditioned 3 core radiator
Reconditioned expansion tank,
New thermostat and temperature sender and Otter switch..
Reconditioned oil cooler.
New fan belt and hoses

Steering and suspension
Reconditioned power steering rack
New track-rod ends,
New upper suspension arm ball-joints and upper arm bushes.
New 'O' rings in power steering hoses.
New drive belt

Brakes
New master cylinder,
Rebuilt servo and new NR valve
Rebuilt all 4 caliper units.
New braided flexible hoses
New pads all round and new handbrake shoes.

Wheels
New tyres all round
New front wheel bearings and oil seals
Alloys professionally refurbed

Body
Fitted new plywood crash panels,
Replacement door handle and latch lhs.
Jacking points replaced
Replacement GRP front bumper fitted
New rear bobbins and body strengthened to prevent cracking (Professional job by Fibreglass Services, not in blog)
Passenger door handle repaired latch replaced with NOS

Trim
New carpet set (not all fitted, remainder with the car),
Missing under-dash panels replaced.
New boot lip-seal installed.
Waistline trim replaced around front of car and driver's door.
Boot trim panels repaired,
Replaced headlining
Fitted new rear seat belts

Electrical
New battery, clamp and terminals,
New relays
New interior light delay relay switch
New lights-left-on alarm relay system fitted
New Power lite hi-torque geared starter motor
Replacement windscreen washer.
Rebuilt headlamp motors and horn.
Replacement door edge lights.
Logo Ghost puddle light
New fuse box cover.
New Otter switch
Otter switch fan bypass and "fan-on" indicator light added
Replace interior lights, instrument lights, door edge lights, fog lights, reversing lights and sidelights with led bulbs.
Repair heater back illumination
Swap radio for OEM replacement with working cassette and install correct connections
Replace instrument lights LED
Repaired horn compressor

Accessories
Replacement original Lotus  jack.
Replacement original Lotus toolkit

To do
Fit flowlock

Waistline trim- revisited

Any faithful readers out there will remember that when I got this car the waistline trim was missing on the driver's door. It was also damaged around the nose of the car- a feature that wasn't improved by the garage crashing into it with their recovery truck! Although I did replace the door trim- this wasn't a match and combined with the fact that the nose was damaged, meant that this is a problem that would always have needed to be revisited. Its also true that at the moment I have three different types of waist trim on my car and I'd like to unify the style.

I therefore eventually bit the bullet and bought a complete "car's-worth" from SJSportscars. The rear of the car is OK and provided that the new stuff matches then I won't need to touch that. I also bought a new tube of adhesive.

Anyway Steve supplies a handy guide to refitting the trim- reproduced in full below

Hints & tips... taken from SJSportscars website....


"Instructions for waistline fitting. Remove the old trim. This should be simply a matter of pulling. Be a little careful, sometimes it is possible some repaired sections might come away with the trim. Paint can also come off, if it was done poorly last time. Clean off the remains of any old adhesive. In the case of the door sections, make sure the carrier strips are secure and in one piece. These are often held to the doors with small self tapping screws which can go rusty creating a lump in the trim. You should consider replacing these with the currently recommended countersunk pop-rivets, SJ075W0011. Sand the vertical face of the body lip with course sand paper. The new trim is made soft and workable with a heat-gun. It will melt or burn, if you get it too hot. Put a section on the car and then gently shape and push on to the lip. Secure with lots of strips of masking tape. Do not pull these too tight, they can cause dents in the finished trim. You need to use a lot of the strips of tape. Do not stretch the trim as you apply it. Over the years that it will last, it will shrink, it will also shrink a little as it cools, so do not stretch it now. On the Esprit S1 & 2 the front wing section needs to be trimmed in thickness so it sits flatter against the body as it goes under the front bumper. Do not attempt to join any section of trim, it will not work! When you have the complete car covered, and the ends trimmed, slightly too long, leave the car overnight to cool. Gently take the trim off and you will find it will stay in the correct shape. With a small piece of left-over trim, gauge how much of the Polyurethane adhesive SJ075B0007 to put into the groove of the trim. This will vary as the size and depth of the lip does change. You need enough to touch the flat face of the body which you sanded earlier but not so much as it comes out. Apply adhesive in the groove of each section of trim and attach to the car. Check as you go, that the glue is making contact to the flat face of the body as planned. Hold each piece in place on the car with lots of tape as before. When you are happy, leave over-night to set. Remove all the tape and trim the ends at the required angle. Theses are around 30 degrees, except for the front of the doors, which need around 60 degrees. Fill the open holes in the ends with more adhesive and smooth off. Steve Roberts"


The first step is to remove the old trim- nothing much seemed to be holding this on and it came off easily.

This left a few lumpy bits of old cement but remarkably little. I smoothed the edges and chipped of any old lumps with a paint scraper

Using a paint scraper to remove old adhesive from the flat edge of the ridge.

Cleaning the join up to the the wheel arch which still needs doing so you can see before and after.

Wheel arch still not cleaned. It seems that dirt has been working its way in behind the trim strip and this all needs to be removed.

I need to rub down the  edge of the join to help the new cement key but I will do that before sticking the new trim on.

The new strip is pretty stiff and wants to stay twisted in a coil. I used a hot air gun to make the strip more pliable and eased it into place on the waistline whilst its still warm- its pretty awkward and you have to be careful that it does clip under the ridge as well as over or the profile will be distorted. I left a 4 inch overhang at each door end as I expect the trim to shrink a little so its not a good idea to cut it to the right length at this stage.

Heating the trim- it doesn't need much to become soft and obviously avoid heating the car! However it does cool quickly so you might like to try putting the strips of masking tape in place before easing the trim on so you can hold them quickly.

I held the trim on with masking tape as I went- its a little easier if you stick the top of the tape on the car before you heat the trim. Then you can fold the tape down and secure the strip as you clip the trim onto the ridge. Take special care at all corners

Make sure it stays on the corners...

 Trim secured around the nose

I left the trim to cool overnight and hopefully adopt its new shape.

I hadn't meant to leave the trim for longer than overnight... But SWMBO decreed that the long-deferred bathroom renovation could wait no longer. Although the bathroom is of course indoors I had to waste the last three decent car-working weeks of the year doing this...

Luckily a sunny day in November meant I could get back to it. The tape hadn't held the sections from wheel arch to door and the excess length I had left there meant that these had twisted and reset themselves in a warped position... I had to reheat these and ease them back into position, trimming them so that they could lie flat against the door.

In order to finish the body prep and glue the trim strip I was going to have to remove it from the car again. I was concerned that when I started to stick it back down I must start in the right place or the wheel arches wont match with the shaping in the trim. I stuck a piece of masking tape to the trim and made a pen mark on the tape and the body ridge so I could align the strip again.

tape and body alignment markings. I made these on both sides and started on the driver-side. When I reached the end I was only a mm or so out.

I let the newly-set sections cool and then removed the trim section from the front of the car... Steve is quite right, it did retain its shape.

Trim shaped around wheel arches..

... and front of body

I could then sand the body ridge removing old adhesive and giving a key to the top for the glue to grab.

Sanding the top of the ridge- I also sanded the sides where there was any residual glue using 180 grit. Take care not to mark the body itself!

The internal width of the trim section is 7mm and the depth 9mm. The ridge on the car is 7mm high and projects 6mm from the body. This means that when the trim is pressed into position there should be a 3x7mm cavity that needs to be filled with adhesive. A 5mm round bead has about the same cross-sectional area and so should fill the space completely. I  decided to be a little more generous and cut the cartridge tube to give a 6mm diameter opening. I glued a small length of trim and clipped it into position- smoothing it down with a roller. I went on neatly and seemed to grab quite well. When I pulled it off the glue had coated the top of the ridge as intended.

Rolling my test strip into place.

Test strip removed, good coating to top of body ridge.

I was now happy that a 6mm bead should do the job so I set about gluing the pre-set trim strip.
I had intended to glue it all and then fix it on all in one go. However I decided against that because I hadn't realised how slow pumping out a 6mm bead would be. The glue is viscous and takes its time. Sadly this sticking process is time-limited because the bead will start to skin over at a rate dependent on temp and humidity. I'm working in November and I expect humidity will be high! I decided to fit the trim in 3 sections, driver side, front and passenger side, fastening each section in place before gluing the next.

The viscosity of the glue also meant that my goal of an even 6mm bead inside the strip was hard to achieve, in all honesty it was more like 6mm beads on a string.

Hard to see but my attempts at an even 6mm bead were more like beads on a string.

I applied extra adhesive around the front corners and the trim bends for the wheel arches. I used new masking tape to hold it in place- you will need a lot. Use the wide stuff and get decent quality, not the stuff that rips all the time as you will need a lot of it. I used 1.5" frog tape. You will find your own way I'm sure, but I found that it worked well if you tore off a strip of tape and stuck it to the outside edge of the trim. Then push through the tape so the trim is squashed against the body and stretch the tape above and below, sticking it to the body to hold it in place. Finally I went all round with the wallpaper roller to identify any sections that were lifting up from the body and applied more tape in those places to try and hold it down as the adhesive sets.

Setting is temperature dependent and as its struggling to reach double figures today despite the sunshine I will leave it for a few days to set properly.

The method calls for all the free ends of the molding to be cut at 30 degrees except "the front of the doors" which is cut at 60 degrees. I'm interpreting this as meaning that the trim on the door is cut to 60 degrees, but I have seen cars where the trim in front of the door (ie the rear of the front wing) has been cut to 60 deg and the door to 30. 

I cut the trim at the rear of the front wing to 30 degrees using a set square to gauge the angle

Trim cut off

Infill the cut end with PU adhesive and rlatten with a moistened finger. Note I haven't done the door trim yet!

 I think the new waistline and new bumper  improve the look greatly. I still need to clean up a little and replace the trim on the door, but this is a nice straightforward piece with no bends or curves so I will get on with that at my leisure.

New bumper, reg plate and waistline trim... Look greatly improved... feeling chuffed!

New trim on front wing side, new paintwork above.

Toolkit?

IF ANYONE OUT THERE HAS AN ORIGINAL EXCEL TOOL ROLL WITH ITS COMPLEMENT OF TOOLS PLEASE EMAIL ME WITH PICS OR A LIST OF CONTENTS... INFORMATION HARD TO FIND!


I have been trying to obtain or reconstruct the original toolkit from the early Excels- i.e. the one that came in a roll. Recently one came up on Ebay and although I won it, sadly I don't think its original. To be fair to the seller all he really said was that this had come  from an Excel and the tools were "believed" to be original- well, bits probably are but overall I think not. I'd be grateful if anyone with an early car and original toolkit could confirm my suspicions. The parts manual (page 60.01A) confirms tools of this general description, although sizes and brands aren't given- possibly because Lotus simply supplied what they could get cheaply or readily at the time.


I know that Lotus used King Dick tools whenever possible and of the three spanners in this set 2 are King Dick-13/17 and 10/13mm. The 10/8mm is however a Gordon so I think a substitute.

2 screwdrivers are included, both by Spiralux. One is flat ended 100x5mm (shaft lengthxblade width)  and the other is a crosshead supadrive 100mm shaft numbered 2PT3632. I don't know this make but again it doesn't sound like a Lotus original and their handles differ in shape from those illustrated in the parts list.

 There is a pair of pliers (6.5") with blue dip-coated handles. They do look like those in the parts manual, but they are unbranded which seems odd.

Finally there is a plug socket (Gedore 13/16") with a short 1/4 inch drive extension bar  (total length 7cm), and a 20cm  T bar handle. These could be original as they resemble those illustrated although 

the extension piece shown looks longer than the one I have; probably around 15cms using the T bar as a guide.

Finally the parts list shows one extra component,  a socket. Presumably 1/4 inch drive but the size isn't clear- does anyone know what size this socket was and what it was intended to fit? Also of course was it included in the roll-up kit?

I was sent this picture of the later (boxed) toolkit

These are clearly the tools illustrated in the parts manual- even down to the shape of the screw driver handles and the length of the extension bar and the extra socket. All are Heyco branded and were clearly supplied as a boxed set by that company who specialise in this for a number of auto manufacturers inc BMW. This would seem to be a departure from past policy where Lotus assembled the tool kits from individual components bought separately. I can see that this was an up-market move bringing the cars into line with other manufacturers. However it does mean that the tools illustrated in the parts manual may be no guide at all to those  included in the earlier roll-up style kit!

 This is a very slimmed down kit from an 88 Excel SE and below

... a rollup kit from an 82 turbo Esprit. Closer in time to my own 84 kit but obviously different. The blue dip handled pliers are reminiscent of my own although these are branded King Dick.

Kit from Elite or Eclat is very similar to the kit I have includes the following :

8  x 10  open-ended spanner  stamped SLM608   - KING DICK - ENGLAND

10 x 13 open-ended spanner  stamped SLM6103 - KING DICK - ENGLAND

13 x 17 open-ended spanner  stamped SLM6137 - KING DICK - ENGLAND

Screwdriver, Posidrive No.2 (blue handle)

Pliers (blue handle)

'T' bar, sliding

Extension, 5", 3/8" drive

Spark Plug Socket, 13/16"

Socket 17mm

Socket 19mm

Photo below from net here. .. not my own.

Again this doesn't match the kit shown in the parts manual for the Elite and Eclat. In particular this showed a skeleton screwdriver and also included a King Dick adjustable girder spanner. Obviously over time tools get used/lost/broken and are replaced, so originality seems very hard to prove. This one feels right though. The owner lists two free sockets but only shows one and doesnt give the brand unfortunately. Again this includes an extn bar longer than my own. They say size isnt everything but in this case I think it may be!!!