USAndretti42

Who did you pay to do the bad work? Should you be naming names if they are Lotus specialists?

That's the sort of thing that puts the "Great" in Great Britain. Despite authority's best attempts to take all the pleasure out of anything to do with cars or driving and bunch of bods gets together and has a load of fun without upsetting anyone. Trouble is over here that the place is so big that you have to travel miles and miles to get to a anything like this unless you are luky to live in the right area at the right time.

Some very nice photos. How many spectators thought the Delorean was a Lotus and the Lotus were Deloreans? And are all the Esprit owners who were there members of the forum?

Welcome to the forum. Let us know how it compares to the Exige.

Errr, do we think Lucy is still reading this?

How close to finishing the restoration do you think you are, Troy? You must be looking forward to going for a drive or will your car be trapped in the garage to avoid salt and bad weather?

Nice to see you've stopped the self-abuse. Perhaps the stories about the shed aren't true after all.

Where's Wayne when you need him? He pointed out in another topice a while back that there is a range of switches operating at different temperatures distinguished by a paint mark on them. And, of course, the temperature gauge may not be 100% accurate.

Bloody hell, Cliff. Like Simon, I am catching up on the posts and have jsut come across this and reading it from the start when you have seen the news is scary. Glad to hear that you are still in one piece. Hope it doesn't take long to get back to normal in your town. We have only earthquakes to deal with here and Katrina seems to have done more damage than the worst earthquale California has had. Terrible.

Which goverments insisted on the development of hybrids?

All fascinating stuff (yawn). Now what's the deal on having front license plates in the States?

Saw that car at the Jaguar factory many moons ago. Was disappointed to find it had a standard XJ6 engine in it. It was the body mock-up for the group 2 racers in the 70's.

Then I'm as ignorant as pudding. I thought varable valve timing originally came into the market so an old engne design, from Alfa Romeo, could meet emissions laws while still giving decent performance. Then Honda used it to give reletively decent torque and big specific power and BMW did the same. Then BMW took things a step further to use the valves as the throttles for improved economy. Having said all that, the turbo Esprits have enought torque and enough power to not really need VVT. As turbo engines have low copression ratios emissions should not be too bad so why add the complication?

I used to own an MR2 Spyder and I liked it. Nice, direct steering, decent performance and economy and I like how it looks. What liked most was how it felt so light. It went back to the principle of the original MR2 while the mark 2 was heavy and had a reputation for bad on-limit handling.

The last thing my car needs is something furry in the boot. I found mice had taken up residence the other week!. Took out the back panel to remove the rear light surround to add extra fittings to cure the droop the sun had given it and the little beggars had been making a nest from a towel and attacking the wiring. Cleaned up and applied mousetraps along the rear wall and caught 3 over the next few days and more in the garage generally.

Personally, I hate the Z3. The styling is crap, trying to be like an old-fashioned roadster bt failing miserably. The handling and performance are nothing special being based on the old saloon platform and under-powered. A Z4 is much better. But it's your money not mine so enjoy and please come back when you have seen the light.

Ecky thump! I have visitors over for a week and when I get back to looking at the forum, war has broken out. I struggle to keep up with this forum let alone browse others so I have no particular beef about other forums. I do sometimes see questions posted without any answers and, in that case, it makes sense to post the same question on another forum but, if you get an answer, then I don't really see much point in it and I can understand how Wayne, who is one of the most helpful members in the technical section and has the ability to find a picture to suit any topic in the chat section, would get annoyed if he answerede a question on this forum only to see it posted on another. (What a long sentence.) Please don't leave, Wayne as we need your help all the time has history has shown. The rest of us should be able to take criticis without getting all arsey. Just reply saying why you do what you do.

It could be piston rings. I had an Elan in my youth and, on full-throttle, it made a ticking sound and pumped smoke out of the breather. When I took off the head, I found that one of the rings had broken and worked its way up into the combustion chamber. The ticking sound was it being bashed against the head by the piston and its loss caused combustion gas to get in the sump and out the breather. I don't know if 4 mm on the dipstick is good or bad on a turbo but, if the oil level got too low, the bearings could be damaged. When you got the blue smoke, did it continue the whole time you had your foot on the gas (because you are drawing oil into the combustion chamber all the time) or did it go away (because the oil got in there at low throttle and burnt off when you floored it)? Alternatively, the high tickover could have been something inside the carb venturi stopping the throttle closing and then finding its way into the engine damaging the spark plug and leaving behind bits of aluminium. It doesn't sound like a burnt vavle as that should not affect the oil pressure. I agree the best start is a compression check and drain off some oil to check for silverfish but not so much that you cannot move the car.

What about, "I put so much into it because I get so much out of it."

Hi Robert. Welcome to the forum. As you have already seen, we are a serious, focussed lot.

I don't know if the S3 is the same as the S2 but my S2 has a recess in the trunk floor. A shallow U-shaped plate runs along the top of the battery on the side opposite the terminals. Roda, about a quarter inch or so in diameter with an inch or so of thread at each end go through this plate, one at each end, down into to the battery recess and out through the bottom of it where it is secured with nuts. Wing nuts screw down the rods to secure the plate up against the battery.

Usually, when an engine spits back out of the airbox, it's running lean which would also reduce power. Have you tried cleaning all the caburetter jets? My boss when I firsts started at Jaguar used to say how, when he worked at MIRA, they could not get a Marcos (or TVR, I can't remember now) to respond to all jet changes to improve its emisions over the test cycle. Turns out it was running on the idle jets the whole cycle. Perhaps the Turbo is still on the idle jets and it's on some intermediate jet at 70 mph. What happens if you pump the throttle as this squirts extra fuel into the engine?

No. It wasn't an Esprit. It was a Mini Cooper parked on the street outside the house while I was inside. BUT thinking ahead, if the car did have a loo in it, then you could spend more time driving and less time stopping. A commode would work. Just cut a hole through the seat and floor and gain the advantage of making the car lighter. Of course you couldn't use it in your garage or the car park at work. The Drive-thru might get upset as well. You wouldn't be able to use paper for fear of being done for littering. And "stuff" might get sucked up into the engine bay making working on the car unpleasant. I think I'll leave things as they are.

Lotus or Lucas?

It's a bit like the Porsche 911. The basic shape was OK then it kept getting bulges and spoilers and got ugly. The local garage I wrote about used to have a Marcos Mantis in the showroom just before it switched to Fiat. That wasn't a pretty car.