Esprit S3 James Bond Project car - part 4 - the continued continuation

[Lotusfab]

Managed to find a picture of the missing parts. There should be two of these in line fuse holders. All I have is cut off wires! This picture is from my turbo wiring before I restored it.msybe the brown wires with the holder on are somewhere in the dash amongst all the other wires. I will check tomorrow.

[Lotusfab]

Weird

There are some strange things on this car. No brown wires found even though they leave the fuse box? In addition it has dash speakers like the dry sump and a dry sump engine bay cover. Lots of other connectors that don’t connect to anything in the loom. A very strange removable dash section with behind it bladed fuses and a metal mounting plate built into the dash. Better solution than the cardboard mounted fuse box in the glovebox. May have to strip the loom back and see whats going on. It has bulkhead speakers as well. The heating controls are a mix of am early ca4 and a Turbo.

[Gjk]

Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out with the looms on this car!

[Lotusfab]

9 hours ago, Gjk said:

Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out with the looms on this car!

Yes it has been fun! I got to the bottom of the door warning light problem. All the wires were disconnected when I started. The Turbo wiring diagram doesn’t apply. On this car there are no brown wire inline fuses. The brown wires were going to the alternator. This has only the fuse box fuse for all the cigarette lighters and warning lights. I spent ages diagnosing and reconnecting it all with some strange meter readings. The purple wire was connected to earth, then I realised it was earthing through the bulb in the other door. I pulled the bulb out and discovered no power to the wire. I disconnected the plug in part of the loom and traced the wire all the way to the fuse box where I discovered the blade fuse had blown! 🤣🤣🤣

After sorting that out the door lights came to life! The hazard lights don't work neither do the main lights and the fans. I had a break from electrics and replaced the bush in the gear lever lower rod.A big improvement already! 
This car has the dry sump dash speakers, door speakers and bulkhead speakers. Doesn’t look like the dash ones have ever been connected.

 

[Lotusfab]

Tomorrow I will be looking at why the Hazard warning lights aren’t working, reinstating the rear heated window, getting all 4 headlights coming on  with main beam instead of two and if I have time fixing the cooling fans, That should do for electrics apart from replacing the stereo with a modern blue tooth one.

After this I will be back on the engine bay cleaning, renovating and replacing all of the spade connectors with the gear linkage upgrade.

I am replacing all of the screws as I go with new black ones, theres a lot of corrosion on the old ones. I got 700 screw selection from ebay.

once the engine bay is  renovated I will drive it rebuilding and renovating the suspension one quarter at a time starting with the rear nearside where the upper link bush isn’t too clever!

[Gjk]

Do you know if there is any reason for all these electrical anomalies? Was this car purely built for the bond film and thus not quite like a normal S3? It is all very interesting and an enjoyable read. Keep up the good work 👍

[Lotusfab]

10 hours ago, Gjk said:

Do you know if there is any reason for all these electrical anomalies? Was this car purely built for the bond film and thus not quite like a normal S3? It is all very interesting and an enjoyable read. Keep up the good work 👍

Thanks,

Don’t think it was built for the Bond film. Guess its a pre production first of t he Type 85 cars. I am doing research to find out more. Hopefully we will get some answers in the next few weeks. Will keep everyone updated.

My electrician has printed my wing mirror trim. Hes posting it to me so hopefully pics in next few weeks.

[Lotusfab]

Hazard warning lights now back on line. Switch contacts had moss growing on them!cleaned the contacts with contact cleaner. Wing mirror trim now printed thanks to an STS file donated by a Facebook Esprit group chap. Just needs  a light sand and paint.

Now I am moving onward to the rear heated window which apparently has never worked! 
Shutlines in bonnet 90 per cent better.Easiest fix yet!

[Lotusfab]

Lucas switches

Started to look at the rear heated screen. Heres some pictures of the switch which failed my meter test. You can dismantle it, but be careful the plastic is very old and brittle. Little clips shown here on the top hold it together. You can prise them apart with tweezers. May have to put them in my sonic cleaner,No surprise the electrics are having issues. This is the heated screen switch the Hazard warning had the same issues. I will remove and clean them all.

When you flip the switch the two upper contacts touch the lower two round ones. In this case not a lot happens!

[snowrx]

I never understood the unplated copper contacts on these switches, I guess we were supposed to do a 10year/20,000 mile cleaning?

I would love to have a little pen that plated gold or something inert on these or other electronics.

[drdoom]

47 minutes ago, snowrx said:

I never understood the unplated copper contacts on these switches, I guess we were supposed to do a 10year/20,000 mile cleaning?

I would love to have a little pen that plated gold or something inert on these or other electronics.

Hadn't someone recently posted in regard to the plating pen?

[910Esprit]

1 hour ago, snowrx said:

I never understood the unplated copper contacts on these switches, I guess we were supposed to do a 10year/20,000 mile cleaning?

To be fair, mine are still working after 40 years, so cant grumble too much - I just give the a blast of servisol contact cleaner if they get temperamental   

[ChrisJ]

I don't know if mine works - I don't remember ever turning it on.

[Lotusfab]

Rear heated screen is not really needed when you have an engine sitting right underneath, but I I have to have everything working properly.

I am slowly recovering this car circuit by circuit and system by system. Not looking forward to the Vacuum system repair. The pipes are right at the back of the dash. By the look of it the system hasn’t worked for some years. The reservoir is disconnected and I found a cut off pipe in the dash. 
 

The other issue I have noticed is when the lights are on full only the outers illuminate unless you use main beam. On the Turbo when full is selected all four lights come on with main beam. I believe this is correct for some cars. Maybe an S3 owner could advise me just in case I have to start looking at the lighting circuits as well.

Considering how much money has been spent on maintenance on this car there is a lot to fix. Although if you are not doing the work yourself I can understand why you wouldn’t want to pay hundreds of pounds to get things like the ventilation flaps working.

[Lotusfab]

Will post more pictures soon as there are some interesting finds such as the upper rear link bush which has seen much better days! 
Research still continuing as to the history of this car. Hopefully I will find out more in the next few weeks.

Maybe ex Lotus employees reading this could explain why Lotus history seems to be more closely guarded than military secrets. I am ex RAF and lots of sensitive information from over 35 years ago is now declassified and freely available, but it seems this isn’t the case with Lotus history. The story of Lotus unfolded more than 40 years ago - the general public no longer cares. They are more interested in getting Oasis tickets and following Taylor Swift! 🤣🤣🤣🤣. I myself would prefer to find out more about Compomotive wheels being put into skips and where the Spy who loved me cars ended up!

[ChrisJ]

3 hours ago, Lotusfab said:

The other issue I have noticed is when the lights are on full only the outers illuminate unless you use main beam. On the Turbo when full is selected all four lights come on with main beam. I believe this is correct for some cars. Maybe an S3 owner could advise me just in case I have to start looking at the lighting circuits as well.

On the early Turbos (mine is 1982), all 4 lights are on on when dipped and main beam. I'd have thought that the N/As were the same. Not sure when this changed.

[skiing]

Early cars (like my S3 as well) have the full four dipped and main - there was a legislation change in the early 80s which caused the switch to only two on dipped - not sure when exactly.

[Choppa]

My 86 S3  has 2 on dipped and 4 on main, bulbs are all Classic Car LEDs but the wiring is un-molested

[Lotusfab]

57 minutes ago, Choppa said:

My 86 S3  has 2 on dipped and 4 on main, bulbs are all Classic Car LEDs but the wiring is un-molested

Thanks Colin

[Lotusfab]

All the switches have now been in the sonic bath, dried and contact cleaner sprayed. This has fixed them all. The rear heated window is back for the first time in many years! 

Main lights working, but only two on without the main beam selected - seems to be correct.

But look what I found taped to the steering Column. Yes is the fibre optic lighting cables that should be in the switches in a surround. Looks like the binnacle is now coming apart! I hate that job having done it thousands of times.

I also have examined the vacuum system. I need new connectors, but most of it is there. The heater cable adjustment is wrong so its not actuating the vacuum switch. Should be able to adjust it. The fans for the heater apear to be ok. Need to clean all the rust up in the system.
 

Right, time to try and adjust the heater control cables!

[Lotusfab]

Well this has turned out to be a lot of work. The control cables have been connected the wrong way around! The black cam behind the silver triangle which controls the air vent doesn’t move far enough to actuate the switch on the left in the picture. I am now in the process of connecting them the other way around and adjusting them so the cam actuates the vacuum switch. Faults like this would drive me crazy I have to fix them all!

[Lotusfab]

Another issue is this…This probably has seen better days but probably still works. I will strip it all out and make it look nice.

Incidentally best to superglue these Vacuum pipes into the rubber ends as they have a habit of falling out, especially if you are working near them. You will then spend ages trying to connect them!

Full marks for the novel use of cable ties - whoever did it!

[Lotusfab]

I am nearly at the end of my electrical journey. There ares only two more things left to resolve. 
The cooling fans that have shown no sign of life and I have found a strange add hock wire connected in the ignition box going I don’t know where.I am guessing it may be cor the RPM indicator, but why didn’t they use the wire in the loom intended for this purpose? 

[Lotusfab]

One for the pot!heater took ages to get right. I had to remove the controls and swap over with cables completely re routed to get the full range on the control knobs, .lenses were dirty so gave them a sonic clean. Should be ready to try vacuum system soon. Correctly actuated vacuum control! 

Bonnet now 100 per cent sorted. Just a tweek required on the lights.Ignore the mess in my garage - you have to break some eggs to make an omelette! 🤣🤣🤣

[Lotusfab]

FANS

bit of a problem here. Shorted them out and they work. The sender is new. Either the sender is the wrong temperature (which I can test) , the temperature guage is reading incorrectly or there is no coolant in the pipe. I need to find out which one of these is the case. Also possible the thermostat isn’t opening.

I also found something that is scary. The fuel pipe connecting the hard pipe around the engine bay to the flowlock valve looks original and is in a bad way. It could rupture, so must be replaced ASAP.