81 esprit s3 starting soon

[hilly]

Hi Shane

Yeap, I have got a shed load of parts waiting for a good home, so we need to get them to you.

Hilly

[fenton]

I'm sort of doing jobs all over the place on the car at the moment, usually cash driven, I can't afford to buy all the suspension parts at the moment so i,ve been doing other things. A little sanding here a bit of tinkering there, but nonetheless all jobs that need doing.

I removed all the cappings at the weekend , boy were they held on with silicone sealer, it took two hours to tease them off.

I had to eat my words and go back to JAE to order the stainless manifold studs and nuts i wanted along with the rubber cam cover gaskets and s/s locking tabs for the studs and nuts. I had had a bad experience with these guys in the past when they didn,t process an order.' but this time they were excellent. The quality of the product was superb as you,ll see in the photo, i'd recommend these studs if you're fitting a new manifold, which we have all already done or we're going to in the future if its not a s/s replacement already.

[silverfrost]

Shane,

Well done on the progress so far, that engines going to be one fine looking motor

Keep up the good work and keep the photos coming, are you going to get the respray

done at a bodyshop or have a go yourself!

regards danny

[fenton]

The respray i think i can handle, i,ve done a few in the past. Its just the limitations of doing it at home that concerns me a little. I have all the kit , big compressor with 400ltrs of air etc, breathing aparatus and a big extraction unit , but the garage isn,t long enough to spray it with the door shut which is going to mean i have to rig up some sort of a tent out of some nice new dust free tarpaulins.

The colour of the car is causing me a dilema, due to the fact its metallic and i have never sprayed a car with metallic paint, smaller items such as bike tanks and helmets have been ok, but a car in a garage at home may cause me problems. For those who havn,t had a go before, you ideally need to spray everything in one go and all on the car if possible as metallic paint can take on different shades according to the way it has been applied, a bootlid and bonnet sprayed on friday may look subtly different than a bodyshell done on saturday.

If i do it, lets say black, i can do bits seperately with better success and i don,t need to laquer it either. GRP is better painted with the least amount of paint as possible, i'd prefer to use full gloss paint and flat and polish afterwards.

This is my dilema, i like the original colour and s3 n/a is unusual finished in it, but its going to be harder to do and it may not end up perfect. If i do it black, which i love. It will be easier to paint and easier to get the finish i,m after. The jps cars are a childhood dream and i already have some ideas for a jps themed car with some nice gold graphics.

[silverfrost]

Shane,

I think you have already decided in your mind that its going to be black

Yes have to admit it a good colour and add Gold wheels it will look super,

Also a s you have already stripped down everthing you can do a proper

job,

Bring on the JPS S3

Regards danny

[fenton]

Ok. Black with some JPS logo's it will be.

I havnt had much time recently, but i had a couple of hours this afternoon, so i decided to wrap up the exhaust manifold with some Thermetec Copper Generation 2.

The exhaust gaskets overlapped into the ports by as much as 3mm in some places, something i found undesirable as i don,t want that exhaust flow interupted. I used a die grinder to remove the excess material and burnt my fingers a few times in the process. its all bolted up now but i havn't bent the lock tabs over until i check it all line up with the ok

[talon]

Looks great. I am a little shocked that the gaskets were that far out of spec...

[yeti]

Nice project!

I spoke to Mike at LotusBits today and he told me that if your car has a flowed head from them you need to modify the original exhaust gaskets to fit. He talked about using a grinder.

LotusBits will supply modified gaskets.

Do you know if the car has been converted to HC spec?

With the 4-2-1 exhaust, a flowed head and HC pistons you can expect in the region of 200HP.

If the carbs have been rechoked the engine will have approx. 210-220HP.

You might want to consider changing to Esprit Turbo clutch and flywheel (cost