The restoration of S1 234G

[Paul Coleman]

Well I thought we were supposed to get smarter as we get older but obviously that's not happening to me as I've just bought this heap of rubbish. I guess that probably makes me the president of the more money than brains club! This is a 1976 built S1 that was first registered in January of 1977, chassis number 234G. It was originally red with a brown marcasite interior before it was raped six ways of Sunday by the world and his wife... 

https://ibb.co/w6yDpCp

https://ibb.co/H2KQHBb

https://ibb.co/HpwbvZC

So after a quick inspection at least the following have been robbed off it...

1. All 5 wheels
2. The tailgate glass
3. The complete pedal box
4. The complete heater
5. The single headlamp lift motor and all the mechanism
6. Both sun visors
7. The binnacle
8. The fuel filler necks
9. The steering column
10. The steering wheel, crash pad and boss
11. Both rear lights and surrounds
12. The number plate housing
13. The rear latch bracket
14. The gear knob
15. The windscreen
16. The fuel filler caps
17. The rear valance
18. Both sills
19. The front valance
20. The radiator
21. Fuel sender

And that's before I think too hard about it as well. There are a ton of smaller items which are also missing. Can we fix it? Buggered if I know! A fair bit of what's missing can be bought from SJ Sportscars and I am creating a shopping list.

I'm thinking of doing what I believe nobody has ever done before and that is to publish exactly how much it costs to restore one of these including the cost of actually buying it in the first place. It may help to slap some sense into you if you're daft enough to think of doing one hahaha I will have to work out how to setup some publically accessible spreadsheet (I can't even work out how to embed photos in this yet!).

So to kick off the project the DHL man brought these bad boys this morning. I couldn't get a set of 5 but 4 is better than none...

https://ibb.co/C1KC6WT

If you have or know of a front wheel for sale please let me know, it will be going to a good home.

Somebody has done a Turbo conversion on it so I'm selling off all the Turbo panels (louvred tailgate panel, pair of sills and a rear bumper) as they're no good to me... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/164651070420?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Edited January 22, 2021 by Paul Coleman

[RobinB5]

Might have been simpler to list what remained!

[bondbaby]

I bought it a few day before you Paul.

When it was delivered to me and I checked through the parts that were and were not there, I checked the advert discovered the advert was less than honest - the car had been plundered, it went back with a full refund to me. It was collected from me and delivered to you. 

Into the valley rode the six hundred....

[Bob Silk]

Paul, may I swap a Wofrace front wheel and gear knob for your turbo tailgate louvre panel?

Bob Silk

[Paul Coleman]

51 minutes ago, Bob Silk said:

Paul, may I swap a Wofrace front wheel and gear knob for your turbo tailgate louvre panel?

Bob Silk

Send me a message Bob... paulcoleman70@hotmail.com

[ripley5000]

Wow, be interested to see how many weeks/months/years that will take.

the previous owner of my car who restored it kept a spreadsheet of costs. It’s quite frightening to see them and of course that doesn’t include the hours that go into it!

 

good luck

[Fridge]

1 hour ago, ripley5000 said:

Wow, be interested to see how many weeks/months/years that will take.

the previous owner of my car who restored it kept a spreadsheet of costs. It’s quite frightening to see them and of course that doesn’t include the hours that go into it!

 

good luck

Restored it?

What with, dynamite?

2 hours ago, Bob Silk said:

Paul, may I swap a Wofrace front wheel and gear knob for your turbo tailgate louvre panel?

Bob Silk

I like this man.

No nonsense, and a true enthusiast.

[Paul Coleman]

Anybody know how to embed a photo into the page? I tried the Other Media drop down and then Insert image from URL but it didn't like those URLs above for some reason?

[Fridge]

Yes 🤣

[Fridge]

You need to upload images, then insert them into your comment. I can no longer do that, apart from previous images uploaded, as I didn't bother to renew my TLF membership.

Here's one I prepared earlier...

Now, when you find out how to embed video let me know. This and many other forum platforms have shockingly bad usability issues.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Fridge

[Bibs]

It's a space issue and things like youtube already exist as free, useable and easy video hosting. 

We do have space for images and offer our FFM's 100 times more space than free accounts for the equivalent of £2/month.

[jonroberts]

Good luck Paul, this one is in a poor way - but at least you have sourced the ash trays.  You'll need them when you take up smoking. 

BTW, I know where there's nice white one you can rob bits off....  😆

[Lotusfab]

What have you done? 
The biggest cost in my restorations has been obtaining parts that are very scarce or having them made. I hate to think what this will cost, but then again you are one of the best people I know at finding the unobtainable! The problem with making parts is two fold cost and time. The other issue is what state are the parts in that you have? I found to my detriment that a Lotus that hasn’t been running for many years rots. By rot I mean all of it, gearbox and engine corroded to the point most of it needs replacing. Without circulation of oil all the exposed parts in the box rust. This eats them away beyond repair. All of the selectors in my box had to be replaced, as did some of the gears.  I hate to think how much this will cost. 
 

About eight years ago I found an S1 for £11,000. It was running with an MOT, but the wheels were BBS and it had S2 instruments.  I made the mistake of calling a well known specialist who knew the car was for sale and told me not to go near it as the wheels and Veglia were not available. Silly me I pulled out of the sale! I think I know what then happened to the car! 
 

My advice would be to sell! At a guess to return this to mint condition with someone else painting it, trimming it and a gearbox and engine rebuild min £40k plus the purchase price. Thats with you doing everything else and sourcing the parts. It could easily go far beyond and would be worth less than it cost to restore. 
would be great to see a blog with all the costs added up. Its hard to believe how many extras there are that you just don’t think about.

Good luck!

Look on the bright side. You’ll be one of the busiest people during the lockdown and if it goes on for two more years your sorted!

[Paul Coleman]

10 hours ago, jonroberts said:

Good luck Paul, this one is in a poor way - but at least you have sourced the ash trays.  You'll need them when you take up smoking. 

BTW, I know where there's nice white one you can rob bits off....  😆

I could be smoking crack by the end of this hahaha I'm relying on you Jon to put me straight with this as your car is the very next car after this, so you're my reference

4 hours ago, Lotusfab said:

My advice would be to sell! At a guess to return this to mint condition with someone else painting it, trimming it and a gearbox and engine rebuild min £40k plus the purchase price. Thats with you doing everything else and sourcing the parts. It could easily go far beyond and would be worth less than it cost to restore. 
would be great to see a blog with all the costs added up. Its hard to believe how many extras there are that you just don’t think about.

Most people don't want to publish the costs in case their other half finds out! However, I am going to setup up a spreadsheet to keep track of all the costs and make it publicly available. It will serve as a warning to those who come after us hahaha Not sure how best to do that... Google Docs?

I have now found everything I can't buy from one of the usual suppliers apart from the fuel sender and the single headlamp mechanical lift mechanism (I have the motor). I have a solution to the fuel sender and that is to buy any old sender that mechanically fits and then use one of these... https://www.holden.co.uk/p/gauge-wizard-matched-fuel-gauge-with-sender-unit-1

 

[Lotusfab]

The fuel sender is just a variable resistor. Should be easy to convert a new sender to work. You need to measure the resistance of the original sender or use resistors or do it by trial and error with the new one connected to your S1 circuit, an old fuel tank and some water. Alternatively, by the gadget. Must be a circuit for diy somewhere..

[Fridge]

I would have thought so, though Paul is the electronics guru here, so I expect he knows best. I'm hoping that device may help me with a little side project "for the kids" that I have in Q Branch.

[Paul Coleman]

59 minutes ago, Lotusfab said:

The fuel sender is just a variable resistor. Should be easy to convert a new sender to work. You need to measure the resistance of the original sender or use resistors or do it by trial and error with the new one connected to your S1 circuit, an old fuel tank and some water. Alternatively, by the gadget. Must be a circuit for diy somewhere..

The original fuel sender on the S1 goes from 50 Ohms when the tank is full to 345 Ohms when it's empty. So it doesn't start at zero and the resistance decreases as the fuel level increases, so it's backwards to the way you might think it would work. If I could find a sender with a sweep of 295 Ohms in the same direction that started at less than 50 Ohms I could add a resistor in series, that would be simple. But if the sweep is wrong and you try adding resistors in parallel with it it will become non linear. So it's not a trivial problem, hence my link to a gadget that does it all for me and will cope with the upside down nature of the resistance change. All I need to do then is find a sender that fits in the hole, modify the arm so it has the correct arc and it won't matter what the resistance is, it will take care of it. I could have made one (have a degree in Electronics) but it's not worth the aggravation for £50. I will upgrade/modify the loom anyway so adding any modifications to accommodate that device is trivial and nobody will ever see it if I mount it on top of the tank

[Fridge]

Smart arse!

 

[omegaman]

22 minutes ago, Paul Coleman said:

The original fuel sender on the S1 goes from 50 Ohms when the tank is full to 345 Ohms when it's empty. So it doesn't start at zero and the resistance decreases as the fuel level increases, so it's backwards to the way you might think it would work. If I could find a sender with a sweep of 295 Ohms in the same direction that started at less than 50 Ohms I could add a resistor in series, that would be simple. But if the sweep is wrong and you try adding resistors in parallel with it it will become non linear. So it's not a trivial problem, hence my link to a gadget that does it all for me and will cope with the upside down nature of the resistance change. All I need to do then is find a sender that fits in the hole, modify the arm so it has the correct arc and it won't matter what the resistance is, it will take care of it. I could have made one (have a degree in Electronics) but it's not worth the aggravation for £50. I will upgrade/modify the loom anyway so adding any modifications to accommodate that device is trivial and nobody will ever see it if I mount it on top of the tank

S2 one is available and works on the S1, SJ built me an Alloy fuel tank and fitted an S2 sender as my old one had rusted away. 

[Lotusfab]

Sorry paul, didn’t realise you had a degree in electronics! I have a new Turbo tank gauge sender.  I will measure the resistance and let you know what it is, from that you will be able to determine if there is an easy work around. I would have thought the resistance curve on these would be similar, but thats only a guess as I have never measured it. In practice neither my Turbo or S1 gauges seem to be very accurate. They seem to be more of a there is some fuel in there indicator, but I don’t know exactly how much! Especially on my Turbo where I have custom made fuel tanks that are narrower than the originals to allow easy removal.

[Paul Coleman]

2 hours ago, omegaman said:

S2 one is available and works on the S1, SJ built me an Alloy fuel tank and fitted an S2 sender as my old one had rusted away. 

That's interesting as you're the second person to tell me that. The S2 had Smiths gauges but you still have the original green Veglia ones fitted? This is the S2 one but it lists it as Series 2 from chassis number 486G if Steve knew it worked with the S1 I would have expected it to say so? Very strange...

https://www.sjsportscars.com/parts-and-accessories/A079N6029F.htm

1 hour ago, Lotusfab said:

I have a new Turbo tank gauge sender.  I will measure the resistance and let you know what it is, from that you will be able to determine if there is an easy work around.

Thanks, it would be interesting to know.

[Paul Coleman]

Whenever anybody starts a restoration thread on here we always have to play "Where does that bit go?" so here we go then....

1. https://i.ibb.co/JFP3SXr/100-1413.jpg
2. https://i.ibb.co/r0pvjSb/100-1414.jpg
3. https://i.ibb.co/Lr7HD6j/100-1415.jpg
4. https://i.ibb.co/7N9S3Bg/100-1416.jpg
5. https://i.ibb.co/s2KcHNW/100-1417.jpg
6. https://i.ibb.co/MZBdFRZ/100-1418.jpg

there are 2 of the first item and number 6 is solid metal and very heavy. And go...

I'm sure some of them are nothing to do with it but I don't want to throw them away until I know for certain.

 

Edited January 23, 2021 by Paul Coleman

[Fridge]

4. is the holding plate for the windscreen wiper worm drive.

[omegaman]

1413 looks like the front indicator (1417) holder for a federal car. 

 

Re the fuel sender from SJ, I have the tank still out of the car, I can take some photos and resistance readings if you like. Yes I still have the Veglia dash. 

 

[omegaman]

3 hours ago, Paul Coleman said:

The original fuel sender on the S1 goes from 50 Ohms when the tank is full to 345 Ohms when it's empty. So it doesn't start at zero and the resistance decreases as the fuel level increases, so it's backwards to the way you might think it would work.

Surely it works a bit like a Scalextric controller, in which case you can just swap the ground wire and the fuel level wire around. So if it had a sweep of 0 to 300 it would then have a sweep of 300 to 0...assuming you don't ground the fuel tank that is.