S4s rolling restoration project

[Sparky]

Thanks for the flashback!  I recall doing exactly the same, first time I fitted tanks.

[tomcattom]

Tailgate release cable has now been replaced. What a game that was to remove from and refit the cable to the lever in the cabin! I didnt have any reason to suspect there was a problem with it before I started, but I think it was a worthwhile preventative job. The operation of the release is transformed as a result, its much smoother than it was before but I'm not sure how much of it is down to the new cable and how much is due to the lever not being properly secured to the bulkhead beforeI started by this now reinstated nut 🙄

 

I've also drilled out and tapped the two lower fixing holes for the seatbelt reel covers. The parts list shows those rubbish plastic push fit clips being used but I didn't find them very effective. Hopefully the M6 bolts I've replaced them with will be more successful.

 

Both engine mount legs have been refitted and the engine secured to its mounts again. I'm not overly happy with the quality of the paint I've used. Despite following the instructions to the letter and baking the parts in the oven the paint chipped really easily while I was installing the engine mount legs I'm not going to do anything about it now, but maybe next time they're out I'll try a different finish.

 

Right hand side tank is now also fully secured in by its top board and the wiring all routed where it should go, as far as I can remember.

[snowrx]

I'm sure you got back to this-

[tomcattom]

6 hours ago, snowrx said:

I'm sure you got back to this-

Good spot but it's been left like that intentionally for now 🙂 The inlet plenum support bracket needs to be bolted onto there too but I need to put the plenum back together before I can do that. That's the next job on the to-do list.

[tomcattom]

A little cosmetic update arrived in the post today.

Should match the seat/piping colour of my car nicely

[Chillidoggy]

You tart!

 

[tomcattom]

Just you wait @Chillidoggy, everyone will be changing their seat belts soon  

The colour match of the yellow is about as close as you could get

 

I've also finished reassembling the inlet plenum too. Only took a couple of hours to scrape the remains of the old gasket off first though.

Special photo just for you @snowrx, bolt all torqued up correctly now the plenum support bracket is in place.

[snowrx]

Thanks, I'll be able to sleep tonight. My right side came loose on me, I'm sure it was tight when I put it on.....

[MrDangerUS]

@tomcattom,

Could you tell me please who sold you these brand new engine mounts you have shown in your Jan 30 post on page 11?  I thought that there is a specific left and right part, but at the first glance, they look exactly identical, no discernible difference.

[tomcattom]

I got the engine mounts, bolts and buffer washers as a kit from PNM, although interestingly when I went to find them on their site just now they don't appear to be listed anymore.

As I understand it the two mounts are identical visually aside from the pink/blue coloured markings which denotes the mount's shore hardness. The left one being stiffer than the right.

My old mounts were so badly deteriorated that they came out in pieces so I couldn't do a visual comparison before fitting the replacements, so I have to take it on trust that I have been supplied the correct parts and I've had no reason to suspect otherwise since they've been fitted.

[tomcattom]

Due to the Christmas overload the postal service has been a bit overwhelmed around here and its caused a delay in a couple of parcels of bits I need for the Esprit, so while I've been waiting I've done a couple of minor restoration jobs.

Both filler necks were showing signs of corrosion around the part exposed to the elements. I don't want to wait for the longer than normal turnaround right now to get them plated, so I've cleaned off the worst of the rust and given them a couple of coats of satin black chassis paint in the affected areas.

Before

After

 

The foil on the inside face of the LH engine bay side panel was just flaking off in my hand, so I peeled it all off, wire brushed it to remove the worst of the glue residue and then applied some 0.3mm Thermal Velocity material stuff like I used on the underside of the frunk floor and the boot floor.

The before doesn't look too bad...

After

I do have enough material to do the other side too, but given the fun and games I had applying to stuff to this one, I'm considering not doing that one right now; its in nowhere near as rough condition as this one was.

With some time off for Christmas I'm hoping to crack on with getting the car back on the road, in between childcare duties of course

[tomcattom]

Everything I had been waiting for in the post in the run up the Christmas did eventually arrive by Christmas eve, so I set about refitting the filler neck hoses this afternoon with the new lengths of hose I bought for the job. The old hoses were very stiff, probably through age and I though new hoses would be easier to manipulate and be sure it was suitable for modern fuels.

I had to get some slightly thicker marine grade fuel hose to get the correct sizes, "2 and 1" respectively, for the fuel filler neck and large breather/vent hose that runs parallel to it. Fresh hose clips were also fitted.

 

I also finished off the crossover pipes underneath, but this required a minor modification. The spigots for the the cross over pipes on the Axminster tanks are shorter than OE to make the tanks easier to install, which they certainly are. The only problem with this I found was that the hose clamp on the tank end can't be fitted after the grommets are installed; there simply isn't enough pipe poking through the grommet with the shorter spigots for the clamp to grab onto

This is the arrangement as it looked before I removed the tanks, note the hose clamp on the left, outboard of the grommet.

 

Before I could fit the pipe I need to enlarge the hole in the large rubber grommet. The pipe isn't perfectly centred on either side (with either the OE or Axminster tanks), not sure if its my car or a standard thing. So first job was to make a paper template to align the enlarged hole correctly. After a couple of iterations with paper I was ready to cut the grommets.

 

And here is the grommet all refitted.

 

Here is a view of the hose clamp now situated inboard of the grommet, rather than outboard as it was before.

[Jacques]

Well done jobs and also the fuel tube between the tanks.

Kind regards,

Jacques

[tomcattom]

Right hand side of the engine bay is pretty much all reassembled and the fuel system is all sealed again. Not really anything notworthy to show for that.

One thing I've started tackling today is the power steering pipework which has turned out to be a right mess. The HP pipe in particular is the main problem. At the moment the pipe from the pump down to the under-chassis pipe is currently exiting under the chassis (red circled below, shown disconnected) when it should exit the side of the chassis (in the general direction of the green arrow)

 

This afternoon I replaced the pipe connected to the pump because with the engine sidewall out the access is as good as it will ever be, short of removing the engine. Here you can see how badly the old pipework has been buggered up by whoever was last in there before me.

 

The new pipe is all now reinstalled and routed correctly out of the side of the chassis. Next task is to connect the pump feed pipe and refit the engine sidewall and then I'll remove and replace the PS pipes that run the length of the chassis and I *should* be ready to try and run it again

[Jacques]

All these jobs are amazing. So many Esprits ran around for years and years with little or no real attention and maintennance. And this very genuine intereest in maintaining and correcting all former errors and neglect, is most pleasing to see and read about. I am sure, that in this (perhaps) last decade of freely driving high octane sportscars, will see most if not all Lotus Esprits restored to their former glory and performance, some standard, some ever so oem+, but all to a high standard, including this particular car.

Let's all then go drive and enjoy our sportscars while it's possible.

Kind regards,

Jacques

[tomcattom]

Left side engine bay sidewall is all finished and re-installed now. I had to replace the air duct flange because the original plastic one had warped and split in several places. I ended up getting a new 63mm spun alloy inlet flange from Revotec which required some new holes to be drilled for the pop rivets.

 

I also fitted some new thermal insulation to the power steering pump feed pipe. The old knackered engine mounts had evidently caused the engine to slump in the bay to such an extent that it appears the exhaust camshaft sprocket has come into contact with it and shredded it into two pieces. The tube isn't listed as a separate part from Lotus so I ended up using a length of 1.25" DEI Cool Tube to replace it. It has a fractionally bigger diameter than original, but its the closest I could find.

 

I also removed the under chassis power steering pipes in relatively short order. I had expected the unions to put up a fight given the state of them but they actually undid pretty willingly.

Here are the new and old pipes side by side to illustrate the problem with the high pressure pipe

 

New pipes all connected up with new stainless P-clips, stainless screws and rawl nuts. New o-rings were also fitted to both ends of the HP pipe.

 

All fitted to the car and now all routed correctly at the rear of the chassis at last

[tomcattom]

Being back at work this week has limited the time to work on the car, but what time I have spent has been pretty frustrating.

I got the electrics all hooked up again and decided to test the low fuel warning light before I put fuel in the car to find it had stopped working again. I took the level sensor out of the tank again and found that the downstop had got bent while trying to get it through the slightly tighter opening in the Axminster tank. After sorting that out all worked again and I took the opportunity to verify the the gauge worked too.

Then this afternoon I tried to set up the throttle after installing the new cable a few days earlier. I spent ages getting the slack out of the cable with the abutments at both ends adjusted to the maximum of their travel and then I couldn't get enough pedal travel to reach more than about 75% throttle. After much head scratching I removed the new cable and compared it with the old one and it turned out the outer sheath on the new cable was much shorter than before.

After measuring it and consulting the parts list it appeared I'd been supplied a LHD cable. I took it up with the supplier who was adamant the cables are only an inch different so it shouldn't make any difference, but the parts list suggests the difference is more like five inches. Anyway cable is going back to the supplier for a redund and I've got a genuine one coming from Lotus next week, so hopefully that will be a better fit. Lesson learnt, I should have compared the cables before installation 🙄.

On a positive note, I've put 15ltrs of fuel in the tanks and so far no petrol smells in the garage 😃.

[tomcattom]

New genuine Lotus throttle cable turned up in the post today and upon measuring it, it's as per the parts list and identical to the cable I removed

 

I took me a little while this evening to get the idle position set because I had to undo all the adjustments I made to the throttle pedal up and down stops when unknowingly trying to get the shorter LHD cable to fit, but with a bit of patience I got a good idle position set. To check the 0.1mm clearance on the full throttle abutment on the engine I had to get creative with a builders prop to hold the throttle wide open while climbing into the engine bay to measure the clearance with my feeler gauges. I had a bit of luck and got the positioning of the throttle downstop spot on with my first adjustment!

 

I even installed a new bit of insulation over the throttle cable while I was at it.

 

Those five extra inches on the correct cable definitely made all the difference to fitting the new cable 😌

Chargecooler is all now re-instated and tomorrow I plan to pop out with the laptop and check/adjust the TPS to get that all within spec.

[Barrykearley]

Make sure the tps reports 100% 👍👍 thats when the magic happens. My S4 had never had the pedal adjusted from 85% thats supposed to occur after the run in service.

[tomcattom]

Checked with Espritmon earlier today and was getting a swing of 0-94% tops, so after a minor tweak to the TPS positioning I'm now getting a reading of 0-100%

I tried to read the voltage with Freescan but while it connected to the ECU it wasn't showing any value for TPS (voltage or %) 😕 Does the engine need to be running for Freescan to report TPS values? Eitherway, based on Espritmon I think everyone looks to be set okay after my faffing about with the cable.

[tomcattom]

Slight change of attention today, I've gone back to the brakes again to finish some jobs that I'd started just before the tanks got removed and needed finishing while the car is still up on stands.

I'd had an issue with the ABS light behaving normally from start up (after I'd fixed the binnacle wiring fault) and then after a few yards of actual driving it would flash up an ABS fault light. Diagnosis with Espritmon revealed that the front left ABS sensor wasn't reading any speed at all when moving and therefore needed to be replaced. After doing a bit of research it seems the originals are NLA and difficult to come by, but after a bit of cross referencing investigation work on the interwebs I believe an ABS sensor used on some old Daewoo models can be made to work and as an added bonus they only cost about £7 a pop . I've not driven the car yet, but if this proves successful i'll post details of the part I used. Had it not been for the fuel tanks taking the car off the road for such a long period of time and a baby arriving I'd have been fitting @Chillidoggy's brake kit, but I just want to drive the car again, so for £7 this is worth a go at fixing.

I had real trouble getting the failed sensor out because corrosion in the brake disk backing plate was seizing it in. I ended up getting it out in pieces, but not without taking part of the backing plate with it, which is only tack welded on it seems. Here's what's left of the old sensor that didn't turn to crumbs and the new sensor with its mounting bracket clocked to match the original part along with the bit of backing plate that came off all tidied up.

Rear face of the backing plate all cleaned up as best I could and the holes redrilled (the original bolts snapped off of course) and tapped with fresh M6 threads to fix it all back together.

Everything reassembled ready to test.

 

The other task I wanted to tackle was annoying because I'm repeating work I've already done once before and all because a supplier provided a part not suitable for its job 😠 I'd noticed what initially looked like condensation on the rubber hose that goes between the brake master cylinder and the accumulator pump.

Nothing else anywhere in the garage had condensation on it, a little more investigtion revealed it was actually brake fluid leaching/sweating out of the hose because what I'd been supplied to replace the original hose last year wasn't actually suitable for carrying brake fluid. The most annoying part is I bought based on a Lotus part number and I foolishly assumed I would be supplied something suitable for the fluid it should carry, shame on me for not checking the hose before fitting because it would have been obvious it was wrong from the outset 🤦‍♂️

This is the hose I fitted last year - a fuel hose

This is what I sourced myself from a local hydraulic hose specialist which is actually suitable for carrying brake fluid; it's an EPDM rubber hose.

 

Brakes all bled again and all that remains is for me to put the power steering fluid in and get it back on the deck 🎉

[Gibbie]

Hi Tom

could you let me know the part number for these Daewoo abs sensors and where u got them from?

many thanks!

kind Regards

Paul

[Barrykearley]

Pretty sure I’ve the sensors off mine sat on the shelf in the garage.

[Gibbie]

Hi Barry

if they are surplus to your needs, could you let me know what you would want for them?

kind Regards

Paul

[tomcattom]

11 hours ago, Gibbie said:

Hi Tom

could you let me know the part number for these Daewoo abs sensors and where u got them from?

many thanks!

kind Regards

Paul

I'll look the paperwork out later this morning and confirm what I bought. Like I said in my last post I've not run them yet so if you buy them now I can't guarantee if they'll work.