Another resto...

[Barrykearley]

Are you not tempted with some hid kits ?? More light and less power. Most kits come with the relay box as well

[mikeeech]

10 hours ago, Barrykearley said:

Are you not tempted with some hid kits ?? More light and less power. Most kits come with the relay box as well

I'll have to look those kits up.

[Barrykearley]

Look at this on eBay:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/ulk/itm/171741985485

Hid H1 H3 H4-3 H7 H11 9006 HB4 Xenon Light Bulb Ballast Conversion Kit Headlight 

cheap as chips - and a nice product too. Got one set in each light pod on mine ?

[soldave]

3 hours ago, Barrykearley said:

Look at this on eBay:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/ulk/itm/171741985485

Hid H1 H3 H4-3 H7 H11 9006 HB4 Xenon Light Bulb Ballast Conversion Kit Headlight 

cheap as chips - and a nice product too. Got one set in each light pod on mine ?

Are these kits as plug & play as they sound?

[Barrykearley]

Yes - pretty much. You need a 12v feed to the relay box from the battery - but that's it

[soldave]

4 hours ago, Barrykearley said:

Yes - pretty much. You need a 12v feed to the relay box from the battery - but that's it

Cool. For 15 pounds you can't really go wrong

[mikeeech]

Just took a look myself. One of the reasons for rewiring was to keep the relays and fuses together and not scattered around under the bonnet so as to keep this area as tidy as possible. In my wiring scheme I have included relays for high and low beam so this should be a straight forward install when it comes to it.

[mikeeech]

Thank heavens for soap opera's. An evening on the fixings that hold the light pods and bonnet got to this...

 

you can't really see the shine in the photo's and then I found I missed one!

[andydclements]

On 15/05/2016 at 18:02, soldave said:

Cool. For 15 pounds you can't really go wrong

Really nasty to other road users if used for low beam, unless fitted to a headlight that can truly shape a good cut-off of the beam, which reflector focusing units just don't.

[Loose Cannon]

Has your window fitter done his bit yet?

Just to advise caution, if the windows are fitted with the same volume of clag that modern windows are you will have a devil of a job refitting the lower window chrome. It really has to be as slim a bead as possible which is hard using those mastic guns. Lotus originally used an electrically bonded seal strip which wasn't durable but was uniform.

 

[mikeeech]

Yep windows in and trim attached. So all good there. I will post some pictures of the outside once I have repainted the b pillar covers. Im still um'ing and ar'ing about buying new badges for these.

A pretty light day today but my eBay purchases have started turning up so my aluminium tape for bonnet screening is now on and my new bonnet frame can now be rivetted on. I will repaint the loovers and get the bonnet on since this is out of the way then!

One last thing was a close examination of the late mx5 motor conversion so metal on order for this too.

[Loose Cannon]

Loving the stainless frame. The original piece is an awful weak thing isn't it?

[mikeeech]

2 hours ago, Loose Cannon said:

Loving the stainless frame. The original piece is an awful weak thing isn't it?

Mine wasnt in too bad a shape but was heavily rusted and after cleaning up would have been pitted. Since it's off and I have the old one as a pattern it seemed sensible to get a new one made that will last a little longer than the original.

I guess it's function is to provide stiffness in the only way a composite structure can. The bonnet and frame on there own are not particularly stiff but when riveted together are more than adequate

 

[mikeeech]

Just connecting up my clutch cable to find that my clutch is not engaging. In otherwords the cluch arm just waggles around. I thought I checked this before the engine went back in but alas the engine has to come out again to split the gearbox and engine to have a look at what is going on!

A quick call to lotusbits has been made and Mike suspects that the release bearing has not been located properly! Time will tell

[oilmagnet477]

What a PITA Mike, feel for you after all your hard work so far!

Good luck with continuing efforts otherwise, looking great. Not sure why your last 2 posts have repeated themselves (frustration maybe? )

[mikeeech]

1 hour ago, oilmagnet477 said:

Not sure why your last 2 posts have repeated themselves (frustration maybe? )

Odd that. But I post from my tablet and it does funky things with spelling too... perhaps a moderator can delete one!

[mikeeech]

Having thought about it, I brought my gearbox, prop shaft new clutch and clutch plate and release bearing from lotus bits. I was struck, when I put the new clutch on how similar it looked to my old one and in the conversation with Mike today he mentioned the the s2 clutch plate has rolled forks... that doesnt sound familiar to me so I reckon I have the wrong clutch.

Anyone got a photo of a s2 clutch by any chance?

Edited May 19, 2016 by mikeeech
Additions

[mikeeech]

Ok, engine is back out with cbeclat's help and for the life of us we couldn't see the problem, so a quick call to lotusbits seemed to confirm everything was right. So I chucked there gearbox into the boot of my car and whizzed it over to the guys in long Itchington. Mike quickly diagnosed a broken pivot pin mounting on the bell housing which is particular to the getrag box!

...To be continued

[andydclements]

That sounds to be frustrating, but at least you now have a known fault, and one that's not unique and so not previously solved.

[mikeeech]

So after a bit of tig welding and machining by Mike the pivot pin was fixed...

So engine is now back in and the clutch now works although the clutch cable could do with being a tad longer. There may be some adjustment in it at the pedal box end. I think I can now do an engine out and in in my sleep. Water expansion tank will be back from the powder coaters at the end of the week so I will have a cooling system by the end of the weekend.

I'm just waiting on some odds and ends to get the fuel system piped up so while waiting for that the exhaust will be polished up and put on?

[mikeeech]

The internet is an amazing thing but so much has changed with regards to the local supply of parts. I tried to fit my exhaust today only to find that the mounting points on my s2 chassis are different so I need some different exhaust.  Really cheap on ebay but I could not find any one local that had them. So now ordered and another job is half finished!

I'll do the mx5 headlight conversion tomorrow!

[Farmer Bob]

Instructions with photos would be good!

[mikeeech]

I have had a good look at cbeclat's conversion and some photos of his are below. I have gone for 1.2mm stainless where he has some fairly thick plate to hold the motor. The perforated bar you see providing lateral support is from halfords and the rose ends are about £1.5 from ebay

[CharlieCroker]

Make sure you have some adjustment movement front to back on the motor, as well as threaded bar to adjust the pods. You can fix the motor to the floor of the shell as there will be an existing hole from when you remove the old bellow. I cut slotted holes on my brackets to get that movement, it really helps enable fine adjustment as even with threaded bar the pods seem to have a mind of their own and want to close where they prefer and not where you want. Expect a few hours of adjustment to align the pods in tje up and down position. My build thread has photos if you want to see my conversion. 

I mounted my motor with the manual adjustment knob to the top, that way I can open or close them with my hand with the bbonnet open, I see above the motor is mounted towards the floor, would be hard to manually raise/lower?

Edited May 28, 2016 by CharlieCroker
spelling

[mikeeech]

A bit of drilling some sheets of stainless got me two of these...

These will bolt to the inner wheel arch to keep the motor out of any water that may accumulate in the pod.

I have a couple of these on order. Only ordered two initially since I was hoping that an m10 rose joint would go on the motor arm which measured at 11.8 at its widest! M10 will certainly sit on the bar that crosses the bottom of the light pod. (Let's call this bar the actuating rod!)

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/360603895688?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Now a simple bit of trig... the light pod is almost an equilateral triangle when measured from the pivot point (where they bolt into the body). The light pod has to rise by 189mm at the front but the actuating position is 112mm from the pivot point where the total distance along this edge is 265mm. This is a ratio of 2.366:1. In otherwords an increase in actuating rod height by 1cm lifts the front of the pod by 2.36cm. 

What I guess I'm trying to say is that the actuating rod has to lifts by 80mm over the 180 degrees of rotation of the motor. So the arm on the motor (in the picture) should be 40mm in length if the motor is mounted directly beneath the actuating rod. My motor arm is 37mm so I'm going to be a bit shy of the required lift height.

Of course if the motor is not directly under the actuator rod then more travel is required. Alteratively I could change the position of the actuator rod by a few mm to bring it closer to the pivot point which will amplify the movement in the motor. This might actually be the best approach to any fine adjustment.