S4s rolling restoration project

[drdoom]

Desktop PC running W7 here, all at least 5 years old, no issues with viewing despite the shift in graphics.

Cheers

[tomcattom]

As much as it pains me to have to do it the original Delco Moraine master cylinder has gone back in this evening, just got to finish setting the pedal as per the manual. Hopefully @Chillidoggy will manufacture some more of his kits in the future so I'll be able to replace it.

 

I also got most of the way through putting the bumper back on. The paint match isn't very good, but the picture seems to make it look at lot worse than it actually is in person. Hopefully it will improve somewhat when I've wetsanded and polished it up. Not much more I can do about it now until I can find a better bumper.

There valance needs a few minor repairs before it can go back on, but that won't stop me finishing off the oil coolers and plumbing in the radiators next.

Its starting to look more like an Esprit again 🙂

[Barrykearley]

That’s a fantastic film of dust - I’m jealous of that 👍👍

[tomcattom]

It's taken a lot of hard work on the house refurb to get that quality dust sheen! 😂

[Barrykearley]

Don’t wash it off chap - you’ll muller the barn find value

[Chillidoggy]

11 hours ago, tomcattom said:

As much as it pains me to have to do it the original Delco Moraine master cylinder has gone back in this evening, just got to finish setting the pedal as per the manual. Hopefully @Chillidoggy will manufacture some more of his kits in the future so I'll be able to replace it.

 

I also got most of the way through putting the bumper back on. The paint match isn't very good, but the picture seems to make it look at lot worse than it actually is in person. Hopefully it will improve somewhat when I've wetsanded and polished it up. Not much more I can do about it now until I can find a better bumper.

There valance needs a few minor repairs before it can go back on, but that won't stop me finishing off the oil coolers and plumbing in the radiators next.

Its starting to look more like an Esprit again 🙂

Let me know if/when the Delco situation gets serious. I may have an option.

[tomcattom]

Will do. I'll only know how things are when I attempt to bleed the system in the coming days/weeks.

 

16 hours ago, Chillidoggy said:

Impressive stuff, Tom. I’m interested in getting the front indicators re-chromed, but drew a blank on who can do it. In any case I never bothered removing the front bumper, after taking one look at it, and realising what a complete ball ache it would be.

I couldn't fault VMC's work. They quoted a week turnaround when I spoke to them on the phone but mine took a bit longer because they weren't happy with the finish on their first attempt so they gave them another coat, ended up taking about two weeks when you factor in the time taken for the courier to drop them off and return them too.

[tomcattom]

The house refurb has been gettig in the way again so not a great deal of progress on the banana other than I started putting the oil coolers back on the car yesterday.

Closed cell foam fitted around the coolers. I only did three sides because the shape of the ducts means anything I put on the outside facing short edge is pretty much redundtant.

 

The nearside cooler is fully reinstalled and all the pipework buttoned up. A liberal smear of Duralac was used on all the mating surfaces here.

 

Things weren't quite so simple on the offside. The knock its had at some point on that corner caused some issues. The underside of the frunk floor hasn't be repaired well (its got a step in it that isn't there on the other side) and with foam all across the top of the cooler you can't screw the 5/8" BSP retaining nut down enough that the top cooler line would seat fully so I had to trim some of the foam back off to follow the dodgy floor shape and allow that pipe to seal correctly.

Then on the bottom I've discovered the thread on the fitting on the end of the cooler line that runs through the backbone is all chewed up, probably a hamfisted previous mechanics doing during the original 'repair'. It might also might have something to do with the random 90 degree fitting that was seized onto the bottom of the old cooler that was scrapped. The result is the fitting was trying to chew up the threads on the softer alloy cooler and I've no intention of forcing it and ruining a brand new cooler so I've stopped before it does too much damage and I shall regroup and try something else.

I've ordered some 5/8" male BSP fittings which I'm hoping I can use sacrificially to try and chase down the thread on the end of the hose and clean it up. If that fails I'll probably have to cut the end of the hose off and do a temporary repair until the engine comes out at which point I'll renew both lines in full - I hope it doesn't come to that though, the hoses all look fine otherwise.

[tomcattom]

That's depressing, its been nearly four months since I last had the opportunity to spend time on the Esprit. The driveway and associated earthworks have been consuming a lot of my time since the last post, however during that time I have recevied some goodies to fit to the car in due course; an Alunox manifold, one of @CHANGES suspension and Lotac bush kits and @Chillidoggy's brake conversion. Plenty to be getting on with once the current round of work is complete.

Since BoJo says I can't travel to see my family for Christmas as planned I've decided to spend some time on the car over the past few days and managed to make a little progress.

First up was to finish getting the ABS accumulatory pump paraphenalia back in place. I want to see what this setup is like with the new pads, discs and calipers before I install Ian's setup so I can get a good comparison of before and after.

 

After that I moved onto putting the interior back in place, but before I could do that I wanted to run some extra cabling through the car to support the backup camera facility that the replacement headunit I have to go in the car has.

Before I started this is where the interior was left after I overhauled the gear change mechanism back in the summer.

 

I ran a new length of good quality coax and a reverse light signal feed together from the rear of the car, up over the offside wheel arch, over the top of the fuel tank, down the bulkhead, along the driver's sill and then up and across the dashboard and into the area behind the radio. It was a fiddly time consuming job to pull and terminate the wiring; it took most of this afternoon but I wanted it to be nice and neat.

Then I had to remember how to put the interior back together having dismantled it months ago. After a bit of head scratching and a couple of assembly mistakes I've got it looking more like it should.

I ran out of time to refit the heater knobs tonight so I'll do that another day. The little cubby hole with the ciggy lighter is missing because I need to find a replacement, the coating on mine seems to have reacted and looks awful. If anyone know what parts bin it was robbed from I'd be glad to know.

[tomcattom]

Can't make much progress on the 'in progress' bigger jobs on the car until stuff I ordered shortly before Christmas finds its way through the postal/courier network at a snails pace. So today I tackled a few smaller jobs on the car.

 

First off I fitted the new cable support clips for the front brake hoses and ABS sensor wires. The braided hoses are a smaller diameter than the original rubber hoses so wouldn't hold the new hoses plus they had all become brittle and in some cases snapped.

 

Next I decided to tackle the sunroof handles. One leg on each side had snapped and neither side moved particularly freely so I decided to give it a complete overhaul. After using a punch to drive the old roll pins out it was pretty obvious why they didn't move very freely; moisture has clearly got in there by some means over the years and corroded the pins.

A pair of new legs and a quartet of new pins were installed on each handle set and a liberal cloating of silicone grease was used on all surfaces to lubricate them during reassembly. Here is one set all stripped down and cleaned ready for rebuild.

And back on the roof panel.

The new parts and the grease have resulted in a much smoother operation and I don't feel like I'm going to break it every time I try to open or close the roof now 🙂

 

After that I decided to have a look at the feasibility of replacing the dashboard clock with an oil temperature gauge as found on the earlier S4. After a bit of investigation in the workshop manual and some poking about in my loom I was pleasantly surprised to see that despite deleting this gauge on the S4s, Lotus have left the wiring in place between binnacle connector 'B' and the oil pressure and temperature connector in the engine bay - on my car at least! The only bits missing are the short runs of wire between these two connectors and the gauge and sensor respsectively. Providing I can obtain the correct mating pins to go into those two loom connectors it should be a pretty straightforward job to fit the oil temperature gauge 🤞

[tomcattom]

The car has been off the road a lot longer than I'd ever planned at this stage that that timing belt is a good year overdue. Given the car is not far off running again I'm not going to take the risk of grenading my engine for the sake of £100 of parts. So this afternoon I decided to pop my Esprit cambelt cherry as it were 😂.

I started off removing the thermostat goose neck casting and the associated pipeworks to improve access. I'm pretty sure those two bits are supposed to be attached...

 

I then started to remove the alternator and its belt and ran into my first issue. That bolt aint coming out that way

After consulting the parts list it seems some previous mechanic has, for whatever reason, chosen not to use the original threaded stud on the alternator top mount and evidently this bolt was installed with the engine out because there was no way it was coming out with the engine in situ 🤬 Thankfully the perpetrator of this heinous act chose to use a bolt made of cheese so the hacksaw made light work of it and thus allowed me to get the triangular brace out. I now have my 🤞that there is enough room to get a new stud in from underneath the inlet plenum without having to remove more parts from the top of the engine.

Also discovered an interesting label on the alternator once removed 😲 Date code on it suggests its original to the car though.

Better view of the next belts to be removed from underneath. The tensioner looks like its seen better days (will be replaced) and the thermostat housing mating faces will be getting a damn good clean before I fit a new stat as a precautionary measure.

 

The power steering belt came out without much fuss, but the air con belt was and absolute pig. Even with the tensioner pushed back to the full extent of its travel it was a real fight to get it over the rim of either of the pulleys. Once I got it off the car I compared it to the new one supplied by PNM and that one is slightly larger so I'm hoping putting it back on will be less of a fight, not that I actaully need it given the system is completely de-gassed and in unknown condition.

Should I be worried about that damage on the tripple groove pulley on the peak between the groove for the A/C and PS belts? The A/C belt I removed was pretty freyed on the edges, but I'm not sure if that is just due to neglect or that damage on the pulley.

Next task will be to give the front of the engine a good clean as best I can in the confined space before I swap the new cam belt and tensioner in.

[Chillidoggy]

I'd say someone had problems getting the crank pulley off in the past. Mine was stuck on like glue, nearly beat even Sparky.

Looks like you have an oil leak, too. From the photos I can't see it coming from the front seal, maybe it's the exhaust cam-housing, or camshaft seal?

[tomcattom]

Oh it has an epic oil leak, in true British car fashion it's marking its territory.

I'm not sure if it's one or many leaks, the whole lump is covered in oil up as far as the top of the engine. There's certianly oil coming from somewhere up in the vicinity cam covers/carriers. I plan to give it a good degrease as best I can before I fit the new cam belt and then I'll wait and see where the leaks emerge from again and then tackle them as I find them. Front seal does appears to be okay as you say.

[Gibbie]

Hi Tom

im sure your plan to clean and then monitor is a good one.

In my case when I got my S4 the oil was coming from the seal between the cam towers and the cylinder head!

I hope you end up with a better outcome.

happy New Year

Paul

[Barrykearley]

Whip the cam carriers off and reseal them on @tomcattom you can also check the shimming while you are at it

[Sparky]

Advice ref the A/C belt...

It will likely be a pig getting it on.  Pete should have supplied a Gates 6462MC.  Remove the tensioner altogether, and fit the belt together with crank pulley, making sure you get the woodruff key aligned.  Then fit the tensioner, which does almost nothing anyway!

[Gibbie]

Hi Tom
Are u doing a Cambelt change? If so the triple pulley needs to come off. I would have a machine shop put it on the lathe and remove the burring. Then need to assess the extent of out of balance because of the missing material. If you have any one local who does general engine balancing, I would have it rebalanced before refitting.

good luck with the project!

Kind Regards

Paul

[tomcattom]

I will be putting a new cam belt on when I put it back together @Gibbie. I'm having to shield due to the current lockdown so going to any machine shop is out of the question at the moment. As it turns out both PNM and SJ have new replacements for a not unreasonable price so I'll probably chuck one of them on my next order.

Yesterday I started on the rather unpleasant process of degreasing the engine using car plan engine degreaser and a large drip tray as suggested by @LOTUSMAN33 in his project thread. I forgot to take after shots, so I'll do that another day, but its worked pretty successfully and front of the engine is looking a lot nicer now despite me soaking the garage floor while rinsing the degreaser off!

I started to try and remove the exhaust manifold today, partly to replace it with my shiny new Alunox that I received shortly before Christmas and partly to make it easier to clean up the oil slick that has been caused by the cam housing leaking where it joins the head. This is just a small portion of the mess this leak has caused!

The bottom row of nuts and locking plate tabs were a complete sod to get at with any kind of tool and I'm not sure it would have been any easier with the engine out of the car either. After an afternoon of turning the air blue I've finally managed to get all eight lower nuts off. The top row is a different matter however, the nut on number two cylinder is seized solid and just will not budge with any of the tools I can get on it in the space I have. I doused it in penetrating oil before I finished for the night so hopefully it will be a bit more cooperative tomorrow. Failing that I'll have to either cut the nut off or apply some heat.

The other issue I've run into is that the nuts holding the turbo to the manifold have no discernable head profile left that any form of spanner or socket can grip onto successfully so I'm hoping I can take the manifold off the car with the turbo still attached so I can get better access to cut them off with it on the bench.

I've also whipped the chargecooler off today too so that I can take the cam covers off to measure my valve clearances and order and replace any necessary shims while I have the cam housings off the car to fix the leak. Having the cam housings off will also make gaining access to that remaining exhaust manifold stud that bit easier if I have to resort to using heat or cutting it off.

Once the cam housings are off I'm also going to replace the cam seals and check the camhaft endfloat to make sure that is all within spec too.

[Barrykearley]

I tip my hat to you having the patience to do a manifold in-situ. 
 

Doing a cam belt and manifold - Id have opted to pull that engine out chap. It makes life sooo much easier. I really didn’t wish to pull the engine on my S4 - but it really was worth it for my sanity and time. Cam belt takes 15-20 mins to do with the engine out.

[tomcattom]

In hindsight yes it probably would have been easier to take the engine out @Barrykearley but I don't currently have enough free space in the garage to do that right now. The Esprit is currently up on stands still and there is another immobile car behind it in the garage taking up the space I'd need to get the engine out

I never really anticipated doing so much at once when I first started this rolling restoration, but if I want to get it mobile any time soon I'll have to stick at it and live with the position I've put myself in.

At least I'm not regretting buying it... Yet!

[tomcattom]

Whipped the cam covers off this morning. For bolts that are supposed to be done to 9Nm, they felt a hell of a lot tighter than they should be.

Valve clearances have all been measured as follows. There are a couple outside limits (too little clearance) and a few that are close to the limits.

Valve	Exhaust (Spec: 0.25 - 0.31mm)	Inlet (Spec: 0.13 - 0.18mm)
1	0.27	0.10
2	0.30	0.14
3	0.29	0.11
4	0.29	0.15
5	0.26	0.14
6	0.29	0.13
7	0.27	0.14
8	0.28	0.08

After that I got the engine all timed up ready to whip the cam housings off. Excuse the crude screwdriver timing pin; the correct part is absent so I had to make do with what I had to hand. Can't seem to find the correct part listed in the part manual when I looked

All timed up nice and easily, which makes a change from other engines I'm more accustomed to working on.

[Barrykearley]

Timing pin is perfect chap - genuine lotus tool that👍

[tomcattom]

The magnets I ordered to hold the tappets in place arrived today so I spent a couple of hours removing the cam housings this evening.

Magnets in place

The 8 torx and two nuts per housing were removed as per the book and the housings came off with ease and I was pleasantly surprised to see all 8 shims remain attached to their respective tappets. I was a little skeptical about how effective the magnets would be!

You can just about make out the stubborn exhaust manifold nut too. I'll address that later.

 

This picture may go someway to explain why I had a leak on the cam housing joint *shakes head in disbelief*

 

Cam housing have been transferred to the bench along with the box of neatly organised tappets and shim ready for me to start cleaning and measuring everything tomorrow to get the necessary parts on order.

[Barrykearley]

Is that reminance of an old paper gasket 🤪

Chuck that throttle Jack in the bin while you are there 👍

[Sparky]

2 hours ago, tomcattom said:

This picture may go someway to explain why I had a leak on the cam housing joint *shakes head in disbelief*

First time I've seen that!  Suspect you'll be ordering a fair few shims.