S4s rolling restoration project

[tomcattom]

Feels like I've taken a step backwards this weekend. Following the discovery of an oil leak from the cam covers onto the exhaust manifold a couple of weeks ago I've taken both covers off and replaced their gaskets with new again and this time applied a small amount of Permabond A136 to either side of the gasket to try and stop the covers leaking again 🤞

 

The mirror surround and base cover on the drivers side both had damage and while placing a recent order with PNM I spotted they're now selling 3D printed replacements so I thought I'd give them a whirl.

 

The finish on them is certainly different to OE by the nature of the way they've been produced and its very obvious when you see them side by side, but both parts fit well and once on the car look pretty good. New mirror glass has gone in too because the adhesive backing had failed on one and the other wasn't far behind.

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New numberplates have also been fitted to give the car its identity back and I thought I'd pay homage to the late Sir Roger - yes I know it's not the right type of Esprit...

 

I've also disconnected the passenger fuel tank again. It was disconnected when I bought the car and was told by the seller that was because it leaked. However the car still stank of fuel, so having dealt with the other suspects and having now got rid of the smell I thought I'd try my luck connecting the other tank again to see what would happen for myself and the garage quickly stank of fuel, so that's been disconnected again   New ally tanks are due to arrive from Axminster Specialist Panels in October; apparently they're stopping making Esprit tanks so I got my order in just in time.

The only thing left to do now before it can go in for an MOT is to complete the repairs on the boot floor and get it reinstalled.

[Chillidoggy]

That should cure the cam cover leaks. I did that with mine, and no problems thus far.

Assuming it’s disconnected, if you knock up a bracket to support the throttle cable, you can get rid of the throttle jack can and linkage.

Meant to ask earlier, if I disconnect a headlamp operating rod, can I tilt the pod back far enough to get at the drain hole? Was out in various deluges recently and I’m wondering whether the pod drain hole is full of leaves again.

[tomcattom]

2 hours ago, Chillidoggy said:

Meant to ask earlier, if I disconnect a headlamp operating rod, can I tilt the pod back far enough to get at the drain hole? Was out in various deluges recently and I’m wondering whether the pod drain hole is full of leaves again.

Should do. How far you can rotate them back will depend on how generous Lotus were with the length of loom between the body and the pod. There should be enough slack to adjust the position of the grommets in the loom if not though. It's easy enough to try it and see.

Watch out for the back corners of the pod catching on the sides of the pod well the further you rotate them back; you don't want to scratch the paint.

[Chillidoggy]

4 hours ago, tomcattom said:

Should do. How far you can rotate them back will depend on how generous Lotus were with the length of loom between the body and the pod. There should be enough slack to adjust the position of the grommets in the loom if not though. It's easy enough to try it and see.

Watch out for the back corners of the pod catching on the sides of the pod well the further you rotate them back; you don't want to scratch the paint.

Ta. I’ll put a bit of foam around the back corners of the pod just in case and see how I get on with it. Other than that, I think the flat bits under the front can be removed to get to the hole, shame I didn’t do that when it was in pieces, but hey-ho.

[tomcattom]

New Bosch O2 sensor has been fitted today in the hope of curing my intermittent stalling issues. It wasn't as simple a job as it could have been though. I couldn't get the sensor to fully seat because the threads in the downpipe were all full of corroded rubbish. Amazon Prime to the rescue with a M18x1.5 tap to clean the threads out and the sensor is now seated fully against its washer.

No idea if its cured the stalling yet, but the car does run so I've not made it any worse 😆

[tomcattom]

The boot floor is about the only thing left to sort before I can go for an MOT. Up to now its been low priority so I've only really been doing repairs in between the other major jobs, so this is just a snapshot of where I'm up to as of this morning.

This is the main area of damage requiring attention

 

I tapered the damaged area back and then applied a generous area of fibre glass so I have plenty of room to trim the tab back to the right shape later.

 

After some careful measurements and finessing this is how the tab now looks with the restored hole. Not one of my better fibreglass jobs, it was quite tricky to create a suitable form to support the new tab as I created it. Its nothing a bit of filler and paint won't fix though.

 

This morning I flipped it over and with the use of various size paint scrapers and wire brush attachments on the drill I've removed all traces of the old foil and the horrible adhesive from the underside ready to accept some new Thermal Velocity once I've got the top side all painted.

 

Once all the fillering is done I can then set about trying to replicate the paint finish on the top side.

[tomcattom]

On one of the hottest days of the year so far I decided now was a good time to tackle the lack of cabin heat in the car 🙄

Having bought the car during winter and driven it home through snow (nice conditions for a first drive as an Esprit owner!) I was well aware that the heater wasn't working very well if at all. While the coolant was drained from the car to do the radiator etc earlier in the year I completely forgot to investigate this problem then 🤦‍♂️

Earlier this week I'd stuffed my inspection camera up under the dashboard and verified that the heater valve above the pedal box appeared to be working, at least from what I could see externally. I got the car up to temperature with the heater on hot and neither of the hoses to the matrix were even remotely hot which pointed to a blockage rather than a valve problem so I set about back flushing it this afternoon.

To avoid draining the entire system I clamped off the heater flow hose at the back of the engine and the heater return hose in the area between the fuel tank and power steering pump. I then disconnected the two hoses where they connect to the through chassis pipes at the front of the chassis and drained a mere dribble of coolant out of the heater circuit. I then installed two 5/8" to 1/2" reducers I'd bought in the week so I could connect the heating circuit up to my garden hose to back flush it.

As you look at the four pipes coming out of the bottom of the backbone the pipe on the right is the return pipe and to its immediate left is the flow hose. Here the yellow hose is coming from the garden tap and is connected up to the return hose of the heater matrix to back flush it and the clear hose I had routed to a bucket to see what actually came out.

On the first blast with the hose I got a rather unpleasant grey/brown substance out of the matrix.

 

After emptying out the drain pan and flushing again this time I got clear-ish water with lots of little bit of grit. Clearly this car has not had the right coolant mixture for some period in its life!

 

I then reversed the hoses and flushed through the normal way and got much the same out again. I repeated the flushing process probably a dozen times, swapping the hoses around each time until eventually I was just getting clean water through it. After that I reconnected the hoses to the through chassis pipes, disconnected the temporary clamps in the engine bay and bled the cooling system again and I now have a nice warm functioning heater... in the middle of summer 🤣

[Sparky]

Coincidentally I did exactly the same to a TE today!

[tomcattom]

I didn't realise it was national esprit matrix cleaning day @Sparky 😆

[Sparky]

Coincidentally again, it's also National Gin Day!  I've marked that too, naturally.

[tomcattom]

Surely every day is a gin day?!

[Sparky]

Yeah, but let's keep that secret, eh?

[tomcattom]

Finally finished restoring the boot floor this weekend. During the week I'd spent some time working out how I was going to recreate the textured finish of the OE paint and finding a suitable colour match. With very little to go on I ended up giving these two products a go.

 

After applyng a couple of coats of primer and letting it dry I applied two coats of the Mipa fine structure spray which left the following finish.

 

And this is it with the final matt Anthracite finish. I'm not sure how good the match is yet because I ran out of time to actually fit it today.

 

This is the main area of repair all painted up 😃

 

Then this afternoon I spent a good two or more hours fitting the closed cell foam edging tape and Thermal Velocity stuff to the underside of the boot floor. It was quite a game cutting the stuff to the appropriate shape and sticking it down. Part way through...

 

And all done 😌

 

I then had to punch the necessary holes through the Thermal Velocity to refit all the other parts that hang off the boot floor, including a new header tank bracket since mine was missing - the header tank was previously only secured on one side with a random bit of flimsy bent steel 🤦‍♂️

 

On the other side i fitted new bolts and buffers for the engine cover - I'll need to check and adjust these when I refit the boot floor.

[tomcattom]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Barrykearley]

🎉🎉🎉

remember 

 

[tomcattom]

Fear not it will get driven, but I need to get it up the local tyre fitters to try and at least get it going in a straight line. Not worth doing a full geo workup right now because I've got all new bushes and shocks to go on it over the coming winter, but getting the front toe setup somewhere vaguely near centre should make it a bit more enjoyable to drive.

[tomcattom]

Having got it through the MOT I decided to refit the engine cover but immediately ran into minor issue. The cover wouldn't sit down fully at the back right because it was resting on the low coolant sensor in the top of the bottle which also prevented the deck lid from closing too. I'm not sure if this was caused by the swtich to the Spoox alloy header tank being taller than the original (not checked that yet) or if the replacement bracket I bought was genuine or a pattern part having bought it so long ago. Eitherway the solution was relatively straightforward, just whipped the header tank bracket out and drilled a new pair of holes 15mm below the slots that were already in the bracket.

 

Cover now sits as it should and the deck lid closes. Sadly my paint colour match for the boot floor wasn't very good as you can see with teh engine cover say in place. I still need to repair the little electrical cover thing so I'm going to trial some other shades of grey to get a better match to the cover and then I can repaint the boot floor in the winter when its out again for the next round of work. The texture spray feels like a very good match, so one out of two isn't bad.

 

Just need to speak to @Steve V8 to hook me up with some new bits of boot carpet.

[Steve V8]

On 06/07/2021 at 13:05, tomcattom said:

Just need to speak to @Steve V8 to hook me up with some new bits of boot carpet.

Ah, there's a colour matching issue here too, the anthracite corded boot lining has been discontinued, there is only a slightly lighter dark grey available now.

 

[tomcattom]

Colour matching shouldn't be an issue @Steve V8, the whole lot really needs changing. The coolant overflow pipe from the expansion tank was broken when I got the car (didn't realise it at the time because the expansion bottle has that little velcro cover over it) and when it got particularly hot when the fans ceased functioning one day the coolant overflowed the bottle and deposited it into the boot and now all the old carpet sticky in several places from the left over coolant residue. Plus I ripped some of the carpet trying to remove it to replace the rusty bumper and rear valancer brackets.

[tomcattom]

It might be out a "little" 🤣

[910Esprit]

Pity about the left rear camber!

[tomcattom]

I've already had words with that corner about letting the side down when I got back home 🤣

[Chillidoggy]

Not as bad as my first set of readings!

Have you got a box of shims?

[tomcattom]

1 hour ago, Chillidoggy said:

Have you got a box of shims?

No shims yet. My task for this weekend is to work out what shims I'm likely to need and get them and anything else worth doing while I'm in there ordered.

Speedo developed a case of Tourettes last night too, so need to investigate that this weekend.

[Chillidoggy]

It's worth 'going either side' of what you think you need. I have a fair few, happy to let you use them and replace what you use.

Presumably you already know what shims are currently fitted?