Zhastaph

Worth whiping the sensor out and cleaning it under a tap, mine was all jammed up with what can best be described as lime-scaley sort of stuff

I had to replace both gearbox mounts on mine as the metal sleave had completely torn itself out of it's rubber mount. It looked ok to the eye, but was reasonaly obvious if you prized/lifted the gearbox up whilst looking at. I was suffering from quite bad clutch at the time also, though I cant recall well enough now which I had decided probably came first {ie the judder or the torn mount}

One of my top ball joints was knackered at 20 something thousand miles, the suspension is loaded in such a way that it's easy enough to disconnnect from the hub and get a better feel for it's condition - they should be so tight that you can 'sort of' move it about with your hand.

Because of the amount jammed under the plenum and around the fuel rail I've seen the low tension wire to the coil packs get chaffed and grounded. A bit of insight: The Esprit uses wasted spark with each half of each coil pack feeding 2 cylinders, to all intense purposes when a spark is generated it starts at the ground of a spark plug, jumps the gap to the centre electrode to generate a spark, flies up the HT lead, through the coil pack, down the partner cylinder's HT lead jumping that gap to generate the second spark. So pretty much always if you lose a spark at a cylinder you will actually lose it at 2. Any one of the following will cause you to lose the spark in a cylinder; Spark plug, HT lead, Coil pack, Condition of the grounding between the coil back and the engine, LT cable to the coil pack or ECU The 2 things most likely to be effected by heat are the HT lead and the coil pack, as any cracks in these tend to expand with temperature and get worse, though it's also possible that a dry join on one of the coil pack tranny's in the ECU is likely to give similar results.

The steam will be irrelevant unless you've got a loose radiator hose or something, and then she'd obviously be losing water ... The white residue and popping is possibly relevant and may be an indication that the left hand side cat has disintergrated, I think mine had destroyed 2 oem cats {same side} before it had done 20odd thousand miles, as Gunter says it's a bit young for that but certainly not impossible. With a blocked cat the car feels awful the more throttle you apply, with very light throttle it can almost feel fine but the harder you press the more strangled and less power you seem to get. It's easy to test for; start the car, rev it to about 2/3,000 rpm, then stick your hand against each pipe - if it's a blocked cat there's a very noticeable difference in the air flow.

Hi Che, Your photo isn't completely clear, but the central splines on the 2 discs are meant to be different. The plate with the spline that potrudes out the most should be against the flywheel with the potruding part of the spline pointing towards the box - if you imagine that the input shaft is only 'so' long and that this plate is at the very end of the shaft and so the spline needs to be deeper in than the other plate. The other plate is mounted facing in the same direction, but in between the 2 pressure plates. But I have to say that; given that the release fork only releases the pressure on the spring, rather than directly moving the clutch plates, I'm not completely sure how fitting them wrong can result in a busted release fork. Also, you do realise that that's a paddle clutch? I'm not sure what they're like on an Esprit, but on most other cars they can be anywhere between stupidly fierce to plain undriveable. Edited to add: I've gone through some of my old photos from one of the many times it had been apart, I'm going to go completely against what everyone else is saying and say; flywheel | B A | centre plate | D C | Pressure Plate

You'd think so wouldn't you ..... but when it comes to changing leads on the v8 nothing could be farther from the truth! I'd certainly echo the responses of those above, coil packs and leads would be chief suspect especially if either are the original fit. A misfire is generally felt as quite a noticeable sudden shudder through the vehicle whilst accelerating whereas; blocked cats, misfueling etc tends to be felt more like a resitance, as if someone is applying the brakes.

Like Mark says it could be your release fork, you only need to lift upwards to release it and it will sort of flap about a bit when it's not engaged. How much is box stuck to the block? Does it sort of lift a way a bit, enough so that there's a small gap between the box and the engine? The first time I had to remove my box it was because the clutch was sortof seized, in fact the clutch plates had actually twisted themselves round on the spline of the input shaft - which also meant that the shaft couldn't be pulled out of the clutch plate. In order to remove the box I ended up dismantling the clutch assy in situ through the hole where the clutch fork sits.

Have you/dealer checked the torque on the hub nut - it is meant to be a monster 200 ft/lb - also the nsr has an annoying habit of coming undone becuase it is a standard clockwise thread and the only thing securing the nut is a bit of nylok. When you changed the bearing did you change it all, including the pita to get off outermost race on the hub?

Technically, but i think you'll find that too subjective to get a difinitave idea. Sure, if it's the worst case and it's full on seized I think it'll be pretty clear but anything in between will be hard to judge. I thought the 350 had an LSD as well? But yeah, unless you've had an LSD fitted you will have a standard open diff in which case turn one wheel will go straight through the box, when in gear with the clutch depressed should be relatively free, only marginally worse than when in neutral. I think how an LSD will act is dependant on the type, in my Beamer it's like trying to hand turn the wheel with the handbrake still on.

Technically, but i think you'll find that too subjective to get a difinitave idea. Sure, if it's the worst case and it's full on seized I think it'll be pretty clear but anything in between will be hard to judge.

If the clutch is full on seized then this will still affect your ability to change gear with the engine off - sounds crazy but you could try lifting one of the rear wheels of the gorund to allow some slack in the system and see what it's like then, perhaps with someone gently rotating it. There needs to be some play in the box for the dog teeth to rotate and engage into position, if the engine/clutch is gripping the input shaft and the rear wheels gripping the output shaft then there's no room for it to manauver into place. If the car stopped letting you put it in reverse 5 years ago, but would allow it with the engine off then I would suggest that the clutch has been dragging since that time. The reverse doesn't have a synchro like the other gears {although irc there is brake in the box to stop the shaft from as you engage reverse} if your clutch is dragging it's the reverse gear that is immediately noticeable. People seem to put up with poor gear selection on the Esprit because we're conditioned to think that way, but the reality is that the gear shift is not really any worse than any other conventional car. For a Gunter style experiment, you could remove the slave cylinder from the bell housing. Then remove the cover that the slave mounts to {3 bolts} this will allow you to access the release fork and with a torch see your 2 clutch plates. Now the crazy bit, if you took a scissor jack and placed it between the fork and crossmember that runs above the box. By winding the jack up you will be able to manually disengage the clutch, be v.careful because you could go too far - look at the plunger in the slave and gestimate how much travel you have. And don't be tempted to press the cluth pedal with the slave out, it needs the release fork to push back in and is easily damaged if you do that! In theory you should find with the clutch disengaged and the car in neautral that the you can relatively easily rotate the cluctch plates. They're both joined together on the input shaft that goes into the box, when in neutral there's little stopping them from rotating other than some bearing and a very small amount of friction with the clutch/preasure plates.

My fuel guage used to show empty long before my fuel light would come on, I used to use the light to tell me when she needed filling and the guage as a rough idea how much was in there.

It's a very clever bot trying to draw Google's attention to www.lo{XX}qu.com based on the 2 hyperlinks and the location of the pictures - scourge of the planet imo

I had a missfire when warm up once due to a dodgy solder joint on one of the big trannys in the ECU.