The Veg

Thanks Michael, that sounds about right. I'm pretty sure that 1980's BMW motorbike fairings are made of essentially the same stuff as Esprit bodies, and I've repaired some of those with a variety of materials with good result.

You know the wall/floor piece that separates the engine compartment from the boot, and has a box full of relays on the right side...the previous owner of my car cut the box out of the wall, presumably to save having to empty the box to remove the wall, presumably for a transmission repair or replacement that he denies having done (the trans was MUCH cleaner than the engine when I bought the car)...anyway, the box was fixed to the wall/floor piece with a bunch of rough, hand-made aluminium brackets and the wall flexes in the middle and doesn't mate well with the engine cover. I'm at the point where I want to repair this, as a replacement wall/floor piece is unobtainable over here in USA. Any advice on materials to use for the repair? I'd like the repair to be sturdy as well as pretty. Are the resins sold at marine-supply shops compatible with what Lotus used?

I actually devised a better solution. I drilled with a 3/32" bit into the Lucas housings right between the screw-hole-boss and the shallow angle next to it, which was the perfect spot to line up with the wider-spaced holes on the Cobos. I then used #6 x 1-1/4" screws into those freshly-drilled holes. The screws go in nice and straight with the heads flat in their recesses. The result couldn't be better. That and I think the old Lucases look a bit dingey in comparison- not as bright and brilliant. The Cobos are indeed a bit thicker, which puts the front faces closer to the plane of the bumper-face, which means that the lenses don't look so much like they're stuck down a hole. Here's how my car looks now:

A friend of mine just brought me a set of the orange & white Cobos from the UK...and I find that they require modifications to fit. As stated in another thread, the protrusion inside with the scew-hole in it must be shortened by about 1 cm. I also found that the Cobo lens has rounder corners than the Lucas, requiring the ride on the backside to be notched at the corners to fit into the housing's groove properly. This and the previous modification are super-easy with a rotary tool loaded with a cutoff wheel. But the real fitment problem that I'm still scratching my head over is the fact that the screw holes are 1/4" farther apart on the Cobo lens than they are on the Lucas item; they don't even come close to lining up with the screw holes in the housing!

Thanks- I had no idea that there was manual.

Car manual, or?

Have any of you ever had altitude-related problems with an Esprit, particularly with a Bosch-injected car? Last weekend I was driving my car in some nearby mountains and after parking for half an hour it would not start. It cranked and cranked and cranked with no sign of fire. The conditions were thus: it was a cool day, maybe about 50F, and the altitude was about 4800 feet above sea level. The engine temperature was not excessive before parking. I bring up the altitude because after having the car towed home (1050 feet above sea level), it started right up and ran flawlessly. The strike against the altitude theory though is that the car lived above 500 feet for at least 22 years before I bought it, and it has been driven in those mountains before without problem. Thoughts?

Yesterday I was helping a friend diagnose a non-starting '90SE and we plugged in Freescan for the first time. No fault codes showed up and nothing looked obviously amiss, but is there something FS might reveal that we don't know how to recognise, especially in the engine data? For instance, what does the reading for 'crank sensors' mean?

I'm helping a friend repair his SE. A month ago the car started and ran then sat for two weeks, then after those two weeks it would not start. I got involved a week ago and we initially found that there was no fuel pressure, so we renewed the pump and now there's plenty of pressure, and there's spark too- but still no starting. We have of course made sure that the inertia switch is not tripped and that all the fuses are good, and we've swapped the relays around. What are we missing?

Human hubris indeed. We think of the supposed extraterrestrial visitors as 'they,' which sounds rather monolithic. Why should WE be so interesting? Maybe we aren't, and/or the visitors are curious types, but we might just happen to be 'next door,' so to speak, to one or two or a handful of other civilisations that have figured out the physics that we're still eons away from. It's entirely possible that countless other civilisations at a similar point of development to ours but located far across our galaxy or off in other galaxies, might be next door to their own advanced and curious neighbours and may be having this very type of discussion themselves. Or put another way, our wonderings here might hardly be unique in the grand scheme of things.

It was a dry and sunny 24-ish (mid-70's F) here in Atlanta today.

'They all gotta go' is Americanese for 'they've all go to go.' As for siccing...

Found this thread searching for the Essex Team jacket...I've just recently made the acquaintance of a guy who has Andretti's silver jacket like the ones in this pic. Still has Mario's original sweat-stains in the collar too! Oh and yeah, that was indeed Shirley Bassey in that previous pic...

http://xa.yimg.com/k...Fuoriclasse.wmv

Help out a friend...go to http://www.us129photos.com/, scroll down to the picture of the white '85 Esprit (not my car), and give it a vote...Let's beat the ugly orange Pontiac! Also it'll cheer up the owner, who is now stuck in Atlanta awaiting repairs to the ignition system which failed not far from where the pic was taken. BTW the voting is IP address based...if you have mobile devices, you can re-vote as you move around. Also there's a Krypton Green Exige S in there that belongs to another friend...vote for it too please.

After some chatter on the TurboEsprit list, it has been determined that is not for anything on a 4-cyl. Esprit. Maybe the closing dealer sold other cars too and may have been for one of those...at any rate, it needs a new home now.

Have you tried NAPA yet?

I converted my car to something like that...not that exact kit but something similar...H4 & H1 lamps...and the result is AMAZING! So much better than the horrible sealed-beam units.

At the Georgia Triumph Association Britz Blitz: That's fellow TLF'er 'Cookieguy' Adam opening the hatch of his car:

But can the car be TOO stiff? Bicycle manufacturers learned years ago that a certain amount of frame flex can be a good thing.

Luvvit!

I wouldn't rule it out. Just did a quick search on it. It's a Gates 6264MC, which comes up as 888mm. Does that sound about right?

Sounds *A LOT* like USA actually!

Very cool! I went to a model aircraft fly-in back in the '90s that included the model parachutists as you describe, and also a *HUGE* B-29 with about 22" props and a wingspan that had to be around 20 feet. It was brought in on a large trailer and assembled on location, and comprised of a fuselage, a center wing section that included all four nacelles, and two outer wing sections. CRAZY wicked thing to watch in the sky!