The Start, by Guy Therien

My first thought was to attempt to acquire a car without an engine or transmission as I had often read that the Lotus power train was unreliable and expensive to fix by comparison to other cars. I thought that a more commonly available drive train might be a better choice. So I placed an ad on the internet for such a project and was contacted by Bert Curtis of Curtis Unlimited Inc. who had such a project car available, which I purchased from him. The car is a red 1989 Lotus Esprit Turbo SE with an unusual history. The car was purchased new from Lotus in the U.K. by British modified sports car champion Duncan Drye and was sent to NTC Cars for race preparation to participate in the Bridgestone Potenza Supercar challenge race series. This included switching the car from right-hand  to left-hand drive, removing most of the interior and anything else that could be removed to lighten the car, adding a complete roll cage,  fuel cells, kill switch, and a fire control system.

The '89 car as I found it

After the race series, the car changed hands a few times and was raced in various SCCA events in the U.S. before being retired to the woods to age with just over 5000 actual miles on the odometer. Bert and his wife Fay build and repair Lotus race car frames suspensions and bodies for a living and acquired the car without an engine or transmission in 2000 as part of a barter deal. I picked up the car from near Eureka, CA in July 2001 along with a Cadillac Northstar V8 and a Porsche 914 Transaxle that Bert had envisioned he might put in the car. Bert had made a plate to adapt the engine to the transmission but there were many additional parts needed to get the drive train into the Lotus. Bert can make just about anything so this effort was more about time than capability.

The '89 car on the trailer back home

I removed the roll cage and race interior from the '89 car. During this process, I found the source of the funky smell emanating from the interior. It seems a number of animals had been hibernating in the car during it's time in the woods.

The '89 car's race interior with animal bedding

Shortly after I received the car, a wrecked 1997 Esprit V8 was posted on Ebay. After assessing the scope of the task to get the '89 car on the road and considering the cost, I decided a better route might be to use the body of the '89 car to repair the '97 Esprit V8 so I purchased this car and drove with my father over Labor Day weekend 2001 from Portland, Oregon to Baton Rouge, LA to retrieve the car. We drove straight through only stopping for gas (and trailer repair) leaving Friday afternoon and returning very early Monday morning - just over 5000 miles roundtrip.

Kimuel Lee, the '97 car, and my dad in Baton, Rouge

Interior of '97 car back home

The car is Blue (Azure) with a cream (Magnolia) interior. It had just over 11K miles on it when it got hit hard in the right front in March of 1999 and was totaled (a correct assessment).

Both cars outside the garage at home

After I got the '97 car running, with help from Larry Marsala and Wes LaRiviere, I began the task of disassembly.

The '97 car getting naked

The '97 car without its interior

The disassembly went along fine until my fear was confirmed. The frame was bent.

Bent Frame - notice the T ain't so perfect

Considering my need for a number of front-end parts (bumper, valence, etc.), an intact set of wheels, a new frame, and other parts and considering the potential cost of these parts... I decided to purchase yet another car. A burned 1999 Lotus Esprit Sport 350 with a good frame, tires, wheels, and front clip.

The Sport 350

Unfortunately, the only deal I could strike for the car included yet another Esprit. This time a '91 that had many of its parts already scavenged. 

The '91 car - minus its rear wheels

So after a trip to Los Angeles to pick up both cars in mid October 2001 I was the proud owner of 4 Esprits - none intact and none drivable. (Did I mention that on the way back from Los Angeles we had an accident where we rolled my '97 Mercury Mountaineer 5 times into the southbound lane of I-5 and totaled it while sending the borrowed trailer it was towing with the '91 Esprit slamming into the median blowing a tire and breaking the wheels off the Esprit due to the impact? Oh well.. that's another story...)

Totaled the Mountaineer

SO... after another trip to California to retrieve the '91 car and repair the trailer....I'm back to the Esprit Project! First thing to do is to remove the Sport 350 from its frame.

Sport 350 coming off its frame

Sport 350 rolling chassis sliding out

Whenever an Esprit is removed from its frame, it must be done at night using OSHA approved  lifting methods. These methods incorporate kitty litter containers filled with water, multiple wooden blocks stacked precariously on floor jacks, and at least one 8-foot long 4x4.

Sport 350 body on the ground (where it came to rest after the fall)

I might mention that fiberglass does not burn but fiberglass resin does. When what's left over gets beaten by wind it looks a lot like hair. I will also mention that the smell of a burned fiberglass car body is sickening sweet and is very penetrating. Thus the "smelly parts from that car better not be in my house" rule from the lady of the house. Luckily, I agreed. (She forgot to mention about no tracking black soot and grease from the burned car through the house though heh heh heh).

The next step is to remove the engine from the chassis.

The Sport 350 has what's left of its engine removed.

So now that the engine is out, I can start building my car. 

Guy's Lotus is Born 

The Sport 350's frame begins its resurrection

The power washer and sand blaster are the frame cleaner's friend. Next, we.... remove the body from the '97 car of course! More kitty litter and wood would be needed. Plus a new floor jack to make up for the one that got thrown from the Mountaineer and was never found. Wait.. I think I see it.

Where's jacko? and did I mention this was my wife's car?

We must again wait for night. Question: How do you remove the body of an Esprit from its frame when every time you pick up the front it simply flips up in the air because of the body damage? Answer: Engine Hoist + Nylon straps that could break at any instant and whip around and decapitate you.

Hoist of death

My wife told me "If you hurt yourself bad, make sure you die". I think she knows about the insurance policy. 

The body has to be hoisted up far enough so that the front wheels will clear it when rolled out.

The '97 car's frame rolls out

This time the engine just cleared the 4x4 and ... it's out.

Garage is getting small

Multiple bodies off their frames serve to make what I thought was a big garage small. Oh well - Out with the BMW. The Lotus' need the space. The next step is to remove the engine from the '97 car and to move everything needed over from the '97 car's frame to the Sport 350's frame.

'97 car's engine comes out

The Sport 350 frame needed some additional cleaning up (e.g. grinding off melted aluminum from the engine fire) and the rear suspension parts from the '97 car were used because the rubber parts on the Sport 350's rear suspension and drive axles were damaged. After moving over the suspension parts, the Sport 350's rear brakes were transferred as they are definitely more manly than the '97 car's brakes (bigger and cross drilled rotors).

Sport 350 Frame restoration

A number of other parts were damaged on the Sport 350 and needed to be moved over from the '97 car including shifter and cables, brake lines, oil lines, power steering lines, clutch line, vacuum line, and everything else in front of the engine and in the rear of the tunnel. At this point the frame is ready to have the engine installed.

Sport 350 frame almost ready for engine

Sport 350 frame almost ready for engine - rear view

A few more things to do like installing the engine and transmission mounts and running a new clutch line after finding a crunch and.....

Sport 350 chassis - ready for the engine!

Guy's Lotus - In goes the Engine

It's a lot easier to put Lotus engine in its frame when the body is not sitting on it. A number of folks have asked about what the front of the engine looks like so... this is it. A bit more slow, delicate maneuvering and finally the engine is in!

http://theriens.com/lotus/
Guy's Lotus - The Engine is in!

A few more ends to tie up for sure but a significant milestone has been achieved. Next... do everything the wife has been telling me to do lately that I have been putting off  "instead of working on that damn car you are obsessed with".

Now we turn to the body...

Body Work II

Nasty looking interior - count the holes

Since the body is not hanging from the rafters (like Keen's - heh heh heh), I had to tilt it to get to the underside to glass it and finish it. While no one will see this when completed, I couldn't bring myself to leaving it a rough or unpainted finish even on the underside.

The Sub Wannabe
 

Glass on the underside too

The glass was followed with filler, sanded, and primed. Oh yes..... let's talk about paint.

I used to paint - Lacquer. If you know paint, you know that lacquer was used to repair cars for a long time due to its ability to blend well and dry fast. This is true even of cars with enamel-based paint. Another quality of lacquer is that it is non catalyzed. You can leave it in the gun for a long time. With a slow job ahead of me and knowing that the final paint would be a Dupont catalyzed finish system with clear coat, I decided that I would paint the interior and the underside of the car (yes I'm going to paint the entire underside of the car) and engine compartment semi-gloss black. This would keep me away from the final blue (Azure) until the end and provide a good look. I also would need gray lacquer primer to coat the repair work (dries real fast and is immediately sandable). This would allow me to keep primer in one gun and black paint in another indefinitely to use as needed during the long repair process. Well just you try and buy lacquer primer or paint nowadays. It's like a black market thing. Friggin EPA let me breathe that stuff for years.

After a long search. I found one place in the U.S. where I could get the exact equivalent of Dupont 80s light gray lacquer primer. It's Southern Polyeurethanes in Georgia. Around $30/gallon plus UPS hazardous material fees ($19). I found that Sherwin Williams still had SherLac on their web site so I went to the local Sherwin Williams automotive finishes outlet and asked the young woman behind the counter if they sold SherLac. With a bit of a stunned look she hesitated and then said "We're really not supposed to sell lacquer in Oregon anymore but.. we do have a few left there on the shelf - black only." YES!!! and discounted down from $84/gallon to $36/gallon. I bought 2 gallons and flattening base. Now back to our story...

So I want to paint the left gas tank area of the engine compartment and get the tank in but I need to rivet in the sill then as the rivets are underneath the gas tank. I go to attach the V8 sill and guess what? It does not fit. The wheel wells were ever so slightly expanded with the S4 and so the area between the A-pillar and the well  is shortened by about a half inch. As such, later sills do not fit on older cars.  What to do? What to do? Give up the project?  Heeeellllll No! Get out the sawzall!!!

Front wheel well mods

A few bits of fiberglass in the eyes, a wedge piece of glass removed, some new glass added and ... Now it fits!

Left front wheel well mod

Right front wheel well mod

If the P-Zero's rub, I'll just do the rest of the mod all around the well but at least the sill fits now.

Body Work III
(April 2002)

Deep holes through both molds

Fiberglass filled

The bottom side

Ready for paint

I also needed to fill holes above the rear window where the roll cage passed through from the rear suspension mount points into the passenger compartment. Unfortunately, the body was cut in the hatch sills making the repair more difficult.

Roll Cage passing through (see top)

The holes are beveled (both sides) with a grinding stone so that the fiberglass attach is strong and will not crack. More fiberglass is then layered in from both sides.

Adding glass

After the layering and surface grinding/sanding, filler is added, sanded, and primed.

Finished repair

What about the gas filler cap holes Guy, are they the same size between the years? Umm.. No.

Original filler hole

Enlarged filler hole (now the same size as the '97 car)

Now.... I'm looking at the steel cross member behind the firewall. The cross member from the race car had number of extra holes drilled in it. I felt that replacing it with the one from the '97 car would be best but I was unsure as to how hard it would be to get it out. I was afraid it might be bonded to the firewall. I decided to tackle it one night and after removing the thin headed bolts in the door jambs and about a zillion other bolts in the fire wall, it did come out. I then bolted it into the the body. It's a good thing I did too because take a look at the door latch holes...

 New door latch hole position

If I had not replaced the cross member and frame behind the latches, I could have completed the car and found that the later model doors would not latch. Whewph!

Cross member removed - '97 car parts moving in

Once I got all the bolts out things went fine. I then filled the old latch holes with glass and filler.

All filled

I noticed a problem with the upper portion of the firewall. It wasn't straight. At the point where the engine hatch latches attach, the firewall was bulging forward.

The Bulge (at top)

The bulge was so large on both sides that a window in the bezel would break if you tried to install it. So I soaked the firewall and clamped a 2x4 to it for a week and it got better but not good enough so... I took the circular saw to the front of it where the bulges were..

It's straight now

I still need to fill in some glass from behind in the bulge areas but the glass won't break now.

I had to fill in the right hand drive instrument cluster dash cut out so...

Lexan, wood, and wax paper from behind

Finish grind/sand before the fill

You can also see I'm filling in the right hand driver steering column and front holes and... Hey! wait a minute. Something is funny here. At some point before I had noticed that some measurements from the doors to the tunnel were not the same between the cars but I put it out of my mind. What's this big hump at the front and sides of the tunnel on this car? I have to move a bunch of bolts in the tunnel (sticking through for other things to attach to) over from the '97 car and if they are not in the same place the interior and dash parts won't fit! I better measure. . . . . . . .

I need a drink.

It seems the tunnels.... are not the same between the cars. The '97 car's tunnel stays small in width the entire length of the tunnel and only rises about a quarter inch on the top while the '89 car's tunnel grows about an inch wider and 3/4 of an inch taller.

I need another drink.

Guy: "Hello Johan? Yeah its Guy. Ya see I got this problem blah blah blah....."

Johan: "Well Guy, You and Keen are crazier than me so you know what you got to do or you will regret it later."

Mark

Cut

Cut the tunnel out of the '97 car...

Place, trim,  grind, bevel, and glass

Fill, sand, and prime

What tunnel problem? I might add that the angle of the rear firewall is steeper in the later cars to allow the seat to go back about another half inch. That tunnel width reduction also provides additional interior room.

Notice that the dash is now finished on the right hand side also (with the exception of cutting out the hole for the blower vent).

Body Work IV
(August 2002)

New vent slot and left side fiberglass


Done - sort of (now that looks like the dash of a '97 V8)

On the right had side, I also had to transfer a plate under the dash of the '97 car that supports the passenger airbag. This took a while to get it in the right place, rivet it in and fill in the holes and prime again. Hangers for the electronics also had to be repositioned. Here's a picture of the '97 car for comparison.

'97 car's dash (it's dead Jim)

Next we move to the front bulkhead. This needed a lot of work to make it the same as the '97. It had been converted from right hand drive and so the right side was (filled but it was not filled that well). The left side had been modified (cut) for the brake and clutch master cylinders, fuse box, and relay box. Un fortunately those holes were close but not in the exact place they needed to be for a '97 car. As such, I spent a lot of time cutting out and fixing the right hand side and then repositioning all the holes on the left hand side. This includes the holes for the heater box intake, which incidentally are different between the years (3 holes on top goes to 4 holes on top).

Black lines show about where things need to be

I filled in with glass as necessary and then made a template (one of many) from the '97 car. This template was then used to establish the exact hole positions. Getting the template exactly placed in the right spot on the final car proved to be one of the most difficult parts of the project thus far because of all the curved surfaces.

Template in place

Holy Cow II

Then I had to cut, file, fill, etc.

Holes in the right place

I then worked a while on the heater vent holes. Here's the completed bulkhead.

Complete but looks nasty

I then turned my attention to getting all of the holes under the hood lower down the same between the bodies. This again took a lot of time and effort. I opted to use the windscreen washer bottle from the Sport 350 as it is bigger but of course it has different mounting holes. sigh. I then primed with primer surfacer (yellow).

Primer makes it all OK

I decided the next thing to do was to get the underside of the car completed. This  task involved filling all the holes, filling and sanding the area where the tunnel was grafted, filling the brake vent holes in the nose, fixing some small collision damage forward of the right front wheel, removing the rubberized body shutz (undercoating) from the wheel wells, and fixing the damage from the race rub in the right rear.

I hate holes

Under the body

Getting the shutz off was quite the test as I used a wire wheel in the sander and it sprayed what seemed like powered tar everywhere. It took a few days to come out of the eyes despite the eye protection

Race Rub Fixed (mostly)

The race rub shows really well what happens when a fiber glass car is damaged. It flexes and then when pushed too far it fractures. To repair the fracture, it is necessary to cut out all of the fractured material and to then bevel the edges on both sides and layer in new glass. Then you grind off the excess and fill with body filler and sand. After all of the other repairs where completed I sanded and primed the underside of the body.

Primed - had to move the kitty litter containers

After you prime you... paint!

Black is Beautiful

Lower engine compartment

If you paint the bottom then you can surely paint the interior since that's complete too.

Paint inside

What do you do if you engine catches on fire and flames lap out from underneath the car and burn one of your sills and you need to use that sill elsewhere?

Burned Sport 350 right sill

Grind

Sill is Glassed

The fine fiberglass net is perfect for this application. Next we move on to heat shields. The car needs heat shields in the passenger compartment sides of both bulkheads to distribute the heat rather than cause a hot spot. I found a product called reflect-a-cool (catchy huh?) but it was quite pricey so Clyde at LCU came through for me with a part number that was not in the books and it arrived via Ben at FVMC within a few days.

Shields up

I used a spray adhesive to attach the shields and they went in easily. The shield feels like really thick aluminium foil. It better be more than that for what I paid.

Shields in

I ran out of shield material so I still need to attach it on the underside of the body above the radiator. You can see the '97 car's dash leather sitting on the dash in the picture above. I've decided to go with black leather for this area.

There have been a number of other developments including a clean up of the outside garage area (wife and neighbors celebrated), a certain car rolling frame escaping from me and then rolling over me on the way to the woods (dislocated shoulder), I threw out the twins, I sold the left rear quarter of the '97 car (ka-ching!), I got the OZ Futura Modular wheels from the '97 car fixed (and man do they look nice) and I have the OZ Chrono Magnesios in the paint shop exchanging the burned brown paint for charcoal gray.

Body Work V
(December 2002)

Resurrection:  A fellow Esprit owner, Dave Platt, had an unfortunate accident with his car earlier this year - severely damaging the left rear of the car. The lead time for a new quarter panel was such that he searched for and found an alternative source - the residual portion of the '97 car's body. It turns out that the only completely undamaged portion of the car was exactly what was damaged on his car so Dave and his young son drove up to Oregon from the Bay area and...

Mark, Saw, and .... Lift

Whoa! Something is missing here

Fits Perfect

He was at my house no more than 15 minutes. Back to CA and the body shop and...

Resurrected!

It's good to see the parts getting used to keep other Esprits on the road.

Next, Keen Young was kind enough to take me up on my offer to provide him with the frame from the '89 car while also being crazy enough to buy the remnants of his '91 car back from me (see: http://www.usinternet.com/users/kyoung/lotus/s44/). After the last clean up, the '91 car's body was sitting on the '89 car's frame in the woods so it was just a matter of pulling it back up to the garage, stripping off un-needed parts and putting it on the trailer. A number of Esprit friends showed up for the fun.

Colin Smyth, Keen Young, Scott Kovalik (in the car), & Jon

Colin brought me Johan's old wing for my car (all the way from Canada Aay) and Keen brought me an oil filter from Lew (that I traded him for some lug nuts he can't seem to find) along with a rear window and a crispy but verified high torque '99 Sport 350 ECU from Johan. Colin was also getting Larry's old wing, which Keen also brought from Johan's - Got all of this straight? Hey Colin - What did the Canadian Customs guys say on the way back in anyway?

Amazing! Two running Esprits at my house.

Johan's old wing looks good on my car

I had the OZ Futura Modulars fixed. Right front got inner and outer rims replaced by OZ in Florida and the right rear had a bump on the outer rim that was fixed locally.

OZ Futura Modular Wheels Looking Good

I found a great local wheel shop called "Skip's Wheel Werks" (503 641-8001 ask for Skip) and he stripped and repainted the OZ Chrono Magnesios (matching the paint) for $600. Skip also fixed the bump.

OZ Chrono Magnesios Looking Real Good

I travel overseas a few times a year on business and was in Taipei and Tokyo for two weeks in late October but before I left I cleaned up the garages a lot.

Enough space for....

With the quarter of the '97 car missing I seemed to have space in the garage. What should I put there?

A British Car Of Course

The wife was a bit grouchy when I came home from Japan since I neglected to mention to her that a car was going to be delivered while I was away. I'm still in the doghouse. "Like you need another frigging car around here!" This is my best friend's (PorscheCar N.A.'s Martin Peters) Triumph TR-250. The car that started all of this. He bought himself a new Mini Cooper S and I could not let him sell it to anyone else given the long history. I wonder how his co-workers at PorscheCars are treating him? They should have given him a 911. Maybe they will now ☺.

And so without further delays... onto Body Work V!

The initial goal in this phase was to get the engine / trunk compartment completed so I could install the wiring harness so I could install the gas tanks so I could get the body back on the frame but things never go as you plan. I began the long and arduous task of removing all of the adhesive from the engine / trunk compartment. Paint stripper proved the best solution. I wanted to paint all of engine / trunk area to cover the red and then re-apply the adhesive and carpeting. To finish this area I had to make it the same as the '97 car. The trunk of the '97 car is wider to make it easier to stow the removable roof. As such, I removed sections from the body to match.

                                            Before                                                                                         After

The air intake vents for the turbos are different between the years so I moved them over.

V8 Vent Installed

The old style vent is lower right in the picture above. Someone cut out a section on the right edge of the engine bay so that had to be replaced.

Missing Piece

It's There Now

I then noticed one more difference between the bodies. Under the battery box of the V8 car there is a heat shield. The V8 exhaust routing requires this but it turns out that a portion of the body under the battery box is cut away and the bottom portion of the battery box forms the underside of the car on the V8s. This is where the heat shield attaches while still leaving clearance to the body.

Underside of Battery Box of the V8

Same section of the SE body

This area of the '97 car was damaged in the accident including significant damage to the battery box itself. I realized however that since this is not a visible part of the car, it does not have to be that pretty so I decided to repair the battery box and bond it into the body. So I templated the '97 car and transferred it to the body.

Bottom below Battery Box

I then cut the above section out and went about fixing the battery box by making a wooden form that conformed to the inside of the battery box. I then used wax paper to cover the form and glassed in the missing sections and ...

What Damage?

You can see the repair above in the upper right. Most of the seams were busted or missing also.

Fits Perfect

I talked to Tony Grasso a while about my dilemma with painting the jambs in order to put the wiring harness through the firewall. I also visited the Lotus Esprit assembly line at Hethel (Norwich, U.K) in early November and found that they paint the body shells without the doors and hatches etc. then protect the paint and assemble the cars. I also received a number of other tips from the twelve guys that assemble Esprits and got a few more through observation. As a result, I decided to finish all the body work, prime and paint the body shell before continuing with assembly. So I attached the sills.

Right

Left

One thing that always gives V8 conversions away is the lack of the recessed panel forward of the door on the A-pillar.

No Recess

I hate this and my car has to be exactly the '97 car repaired so...

Cut

Position

Glass and Fill

V8 Recess!

I also needed to fix the external cracks from the Race Rub on the right rear of the car. This was accomplished by grinding down through the Gel Coat and then layering in thin fiberglass net.

Layered Net

I also needed to fix the edge near the rear light similarly.

Paint Gone Reveals Cracks in the Gel Coat

Net over the Ground-through Gel Coat

Completed Repair Prior to Primer

The exit holes for the door wiring are also different between the cars.

                                    Before                                                                                                After

Before I could complete the bodywork though, I had to attach the wheel arch extensions. Lotus did not modify the molds for this but rather grinds off portions of the body shells as appropriate to make the wheel arches fit.

What's Under the '97 Car's Wheel Arch Extensions

As you can see from the right hand side of the above photo, it's a nasty mod even for Lotus.

Before

Body Ground Away and Filled

Since the earlier body does not have expanded wheel wells, the stud bolts that attach the extensions protrude into an inaccessible part of the body above the wheel well. As such, this is bored about an inch deep with a circular saw and filled with glass in a bowl so that the bolts and nuts are accessible from outside of the body.

Bolt Access Enabled

V8 Front Wheel Arch Extension In Place

The rear wheel arch extension are attached in a similar manner except that they are a one piece design. Unfortunately, I had one of mine stolen from me (along with my front valance and lights - long story) and the one remaining was broken in two places during the collision so I repaired it.

V8 Rear Wheel Arch Extension In Place (mostly)

Unfortunately after more examination, I noticed many more cracks completely though the part. It would require a lot of work to get rid of them. I was able to get a good deal on a complete Esprit V8 styling conversion kit that includes all of the parts I am missing so I am using the rear wheel arch extensions from this kit instead.

Paint (and other stuff)
(January 2003)

'97 Relay Box a bit damaged

Cleaned up relay box in position

I have decided to refit the carpets later.

'97 Right Fuel Tank

Wiring transferred

Under Dash Wiring Transferred

And with this we say good bye to a 16-month resident of the garage.

Not much left

Both Johan Hybinette and Tony Grasso have been kind enough to advise me on modern painting materials and techniques. I have been asking Tony for advice with issues and questions almost daily during this phase and it has indeed paid off. My sincere thanks goes out to him (and my condolences to his wife). So on to the paint! Next I masked the body.

Ready to be primed

Masked Front

I then sprayed the car with primer surfacer. I used products from Western Automotive Finishes called Refinisher's Select. RS3701 2K Surfacer, RS8800 Medium Reducer, and RS9710 2K Surfacer Hardener. These are mixed in the ratio of 8-parts, 2-parts, and 1-part accordingly.  The surfacer fills scratch marks from sanding very well. Next I...

Kathe (over the phone intercom): GUY!!!
Guy: Yes dear?
Kathe: You've got that damn smell going through the whole house. It's so bad up here in the guest room that it woke me up! Thanks a lot!
Guy: Sorry.

My wife can't tolerate any chemical smells. The house's furnace is in the garage and it was off for painting but it must have sucked some residual drying fumes into the house when I turned it back on. Sigh.

Next I sanded down the first coat of primer.

First coat of primer (a.k.a. red be gone)

I dry sanded this coat of primer with 220 paper and then sprayed 2-3 more coats of primer / surfacer. I had some difficulty getting the HVLP guns I have to spray like I wanted but through adjustments, I finally got a nice wet fan going. I am using a Sharpe Platinum H.O. gravity feed gun. I then wet sanded with 320 paper.

Wet sanding

I used a squeegee and a work light at an angle to verify a smooth surface. It took about 3 days to wet sand the entire car.

Shiny

Even with 320 paper, it is fine enough to make the primer shine. Especially as the paper wears, the finish gets finer.

Real Shiny (notice Tina has a sister)

A few rub throughs

I rubbed through the primer in a few places. In the front, I reached the previous yellow primer but elsewhere I did hit red. This is OK though. I went over this with 400 paper wet sanding again. I also fit the rear wheel arch extensions (more grinding, filling, and  primer surfacer). Next we move on to base and clear coat. The base costs $471 per gallon.

Paint Plus
(March 2003)

UnCool Paint

After consultation with the paint master, the problem was diagnosed as contamination. Also, I had not prepared the surface correctly as I had used the wrong type of cleaner (exactly what I used to clean the surface will only be revealed on my deathbed). I bought the proper prep solution (Refinisher Select - Surface Prep), wet sanded, cleaned with the Surface Prep and tried again. And... I had similar poor results. Possibilities were that I had not cleaned the HVLP gun correctly, my air lines had crap in them, I had water in my air. I cleaned the gun the right way (according to the master), wet sanded and prep'd again AND... I still had the same problems.

With this I gave up for a while. The first few months of the year are extremely busy at work so I did not spend ANY time on the project from early January to early March. Then, I bought a new air hose, installed a water trap, bought a detail gun, wet sanded, prep'd and tried again. This time everything came out fine. So then I clear coated.

Base + Clear Looking Good

Well I should have said mostly fine. I got some crap in the clear coat. It most likely came from the masking paper as I did not re-mask from the primer. I was properly chastised by the paint master but I had sanded after the base and with 3 coats of clear I could always straighten it out during the rub out phase. So I went on to do the other jambs.

Again - Looking Good

I also painted the door jambs.

Door Jambs Done

I then went on to the task of rubbing out under the hood as instructed by the paint master. First, the surface was wet sanded with 1000 grit paper then 1500 grit paper then 2000 grit paper to get the last scratches out. Then it was buffed with a rubbing compound and then a finishing compound.

Much More Shiny

Hey! but what about the top. Isn't that supposed to be trim black? Yes it is.

Masked

And of course once the trim black was on then I could put in the windscreen washers, the wiper motor, the hood latches, the fuse box, the relay rack, and the rest of the wiring through the front bulkhead.

Now We Are Getting Somewhere

Not to mention the heater box.

Getting Crowded

After the '97 car was wrecked, it spent a lot of time out side and the rain took its toll.

Tank Rust

Both tanks had rust on the top and bottom so they were ground and sand blasted. I then used a rust proofing product recommended on the Lotus list called POR-15 and this worked well.

Coated with POR-15

POR-15 leaves a very hard plastic like coating on the tank when dry. The top and bottom of both tanks were treated where rusted. I then installed the tanks in the car as well as the heat shields in the engine compartment on the inside of the tanks.

Tanks In

When I first got the '97 car, we found that there was debris in the fuel line so I had the Injectors cleaned and flow tested. Once they came back, it was time to get the top of the engine back together.

Before Cleaning and Injector Installation

Mike Griese was in town on business and stopped by one night and helped me put the injectors and figure out were all the wires were supposed to go. Next, I installed the plenum. And finished up with some detailing.

Plenum Goes On

Back Together

I finished up a number of things in the engine compartment including attaching the recirculation pump, glassing, sanding, and painting the sill air intakes, and other clean up. Then I went to Home Depot.

Wife's Car - Not wrecked

After all this work, I became a little reticent to use the 3 jack / kitty litter method of hoisting bodies so I went to the local Harbor Freight retail store and bought a few chain hoists and together with the wood I bought at Home Depot I made a much more stable set up for hoisting the body.

Hoist of Life

Then... in accordance with OSHA rules, I waited for night. You can guess what came next...

Up She Goes

In Rolls The Chassis

One Jack + Kitty Liter Container In The Front

Down She Goes (I like the way that sounds)

Down She Is

Home Sweet Home

As you can imagine, this is a major milestone for my project and I am very glad to be here. I went over the car inspecting all of the the body mounting points. I forgot to drill the right front top bulkhead hole but after doing that things fit fine. All holes line up (including the tunnel- yeah!). There is still a lot of work ahead but things will go fast now - when I have the time to work on it.

I will also mention that I did not tell my wife or kids that I was putting the body back on. My wife came out into the garage just as I set the body down on its frame, looked at me, and said - "can you bring my car back up top so I can load some things into it for tomorrow?"  She came out once again a little while later but did not notice that the car was on the chassis. I was very amused all evening. I called Larry Marsala and shared by accomplishment - he understood ☺

Assembly II
(May 2003)

Naked Dash

A friend of mine, Kyle Blake, was kind enough to provide me with the large portion of dyed black cow skin that I needed for the job - free of charge☺ Is Kyle great or what? After a few hours in the oven to pre-shrink the leather I...

Kathe: Guy!!???!!!
Guy: Yes my Queen?
Kathe: What the Hell are you cooking in the oven and are you going to leave it on all night????
Guy: Part of a cow. No.
Kathe: Well it is making the kitchen smell awful.
Guy: Hold your breath??? (heh heh heh)

Holy Cow (Deja Vu)

Despite using the template from the'97 car to cut the new leather (twice) the upper edge just didn't quite fit right when laid on the dash. After a few minutes of cursing in frustration I called Tony Grasso for some advice. He told me that he would call me back in five minutes as he was busy. He eventually did call back a day or so later while I was on my way to Berlin but since I could not wait, it occurred to me that I could wedge the leather in the slot between the dash and the windshield and use the crease as a mark to cut to. This worked well. I needed glue to attach the leather so I went to.... Lowes! You thought I was going to say Home Depot didn't you? The truth is that there is a local Lowes and Home Depot that are (get this) co-located. I'm not kidding - the front drive lane of one leads right to the front drive lane of the other one next door. Lowes was closer. I bought some DAP contact cement as it said it adhered to both fiberglass and leather. The leather had to be coated twice because it is porous. The fun part was getting that long piece of leather in the right spot on the dash while keeping the underside from touching and sticking in the wrong place . After it was down and pressed and stretched into place, I trimmed it and folded the extra under and glued it. I also cut out the vent hole, glued that and attached the vent.

Dashing

With the dash leather in this allowed me to install the steel cross member. The cross member came from the '97 car and so the non-airbag '89 body's right A-Pillar needed to be drilled to allow it to attach. I had done this previously but on the '97 car the retaining nuts for the cross member's right hand side are welded in from behind - inside the box channel. It was a tough job to get a wrench with a nut in it in the right place but after numerous tries I got the cross member bolted / secured.

Cross Member in Place

Now what I also need to install here is the Vehicle ID plate on the left side of the dash but since the '97 car was totaled it looks like this:

Label Trouble

Now Lotus is good about providing labels when required but to protect against abuse they need a few collaterals like the title to ensure you own the car. Well my title is from out of state with 3 assigns and I couldn't get the car titled in Oregon to date because I can't show them the car intact etc. with all it's ID plates. A sticky wicket. But this is where modern computer optical technology helps out.

What Label Trouble?

I have been working on the labels as a side project for a long time. My dad is retired and has some time to do some research for me once in a while. I told him I needed non-fading, foil-backed, adhesive labels and wouldn't you know that in just a few days I got the free samples delivered to me from the label factory ☺. These were not laser printer size so I printed the label in the center of a piece of paper then cut about an 1/8 inch of the backing off a label that was larger and pressed it on the paper in the same spot. I then put this paper back in the paper tray and printed again and Voila! And... It was free! (if you don't count all the hours laboring with the apps to scan and fix up the image).

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the body mounting holes all seemed to line up. I did not attach the body mounting bolts as a hedge against having to lift the body in some manner to get to something that I had forgotten and ... there was sure a small amount of this ☺. I went on to attach / fit many body / frame connections in and under the engine compartment including: hand brake cables, shift linkage, coolant hoses (forgot one additional body hole / cut out), fuel tank ground straps, fuel lines, electrical connections to the alternator and various other electrical ground straps from the engine to the frame and then to the wiring harness. All this results in a pretty normal looking Esprit underside.

Connected

With this done, the next step seemed to be to install the steering column. This is where I ran into some slight trouble. When I sat the steering column in its box on top of the frame pedestal (4 mount points) it was too far south in the car to mate with the bolts on the cross member. This was with the steering box flat against the bulkhead. To make matters worse, I discovered that the steering box holes were not even aligned with the pedestal and to make it aligned forced the column even farther south into the passenger compartment (about a 1/4" or so separation from the bulkhead). I decided to start by getting the body mount bolts in and locked down. The rear body mount holes also seemed a little south and it seemed putting them in their correct position would move the body north on the frame more - effectively moving the steering column even farther south - not good. I started looking long and hard at all the attach points to get a better feel for what should really be where. Of course the tunnel was the most probable thing to be out of position so I did not even worry about that. Instead I looked at the alignment of the other mounting holes .... for a long time while drinking. The holes under the bonnet were in perfect position to the frame. I also read the service notes regarding replacing the body and the key knowledge gleaned there was (1) there are some things that are done to mate specific bodies to their frames and (2) spacers are used to make sure that the body is not flexed too much during the attachment (no more than a few millimeters) and (3) all the the mounting bolts are installed before they are locked down to help sort our the body's position. 

After a consult with Tony Grasso for moral support and after staring at  how the body was sitting on the frame for a long time, I came once again to the conclusion that everything was pretty much right where it needed to be with a few slight exceptions. In other words, nothing was horrifically wrong or wrong to the point of my suicide. I decided to attach the forward bulkhead horizontal mount points. There are typically large thick spacers here between the body and the frame. These attach points are also custom fitted so I had to drill a new hole / move the existing hole in the '99 frame to accommodate the new body.  I then inserted the large spacers and tightened things down. This had the potential to draw the body closer to the frame  in the northerly direction, which again would not help my steering column position problem. I then attached the vertical mounting bolts under the bonnet, which were in the right position. I then went to the rear mounting points, lifted the body a bit and inserted the long bolts in to position and lowered the body. This area of the body flexes quite a bit and the body came into the correct position when lowered with the bolts in place.

I then turned back to the steering column, which was still too far south and decided to take some small actions in a few places to make it fit in its correct position. This included elongating the four holes in the box so that it would fit snug against the front bulkhead while mating to the frame pedestal points (~1/4" elongation) and shortening the sliding plates on the steering column where it mounts to the cross member allowing the plates to slide slightly more forward so that the bolts on the cross member mated to the bolt slots on the steering column. All of this took an iteration or two but in the end the steering column was installed in its proper position.

Steering Column in Place (finally)

There is a mounting plate for the passenger side airbag That was significantly damaged on the '97 car so I removed the burned plated from the Sport 350, sand blasted it, cleaned it, painted it, and installed it. Lotus assumes that the under dash mount points for these things will vary so they have built in the ability to move things around a bit as needed via slotted mounting holes. The good news was that mounting plate and airbag fit just fine.

Airbag in the Right Place Too!

I will mention that despite multiple coats of paint, the airbag mounting plates still emitted trace smell of the sweet burned fiberglass resin smell (yuck).

What about the mounting holes in the tunnel? How did they line up you ask??? Well, believe it or not after all this, the four mounting holes on the sides of the tunnel were in the correct position to mate with the threaded plates on the frame, which are held in boxes that do allow some degree of movement ☺. This gives me hope that the interior will fit. I did have to shorten the cross member support however as it was too long to mate to the cross member and forward right tunnel mounting hole (just a tad though). All along the way I keep looking for some kind of out of alignment problem either with the cross member to the dash or to the the car but I've stared at it a lot and everything is parallel and fits now so I am going to just stop thinking about it.

Next.....Well to get this thing started I am going to need a radiator connected to those coolant lines but above the radiator I need a heat shield and I used up all my official Louts heat shield on the bulkheads so I turned to a product I uncovered called Reflect-A-Cool from a company called D.E.I.. It turns out that my local Baxter Auto Parts store is a D.E.I. distributor and while they did not carry the item in the store they had it delivered from their warehouse the next morning. $63 for a 48" X 36" sheet that is self adhesive, metalized, fabric and I have to say this is a great product! It cut and molded easily filling in sections as required and man is it sticky. Expensive - but much better than the Lotus stuff and spraying my own adhesive. I only used about half of it so I nope to have enough left over for the boot.

Shielded (P.S. where does that clamp on the clutch line connect??!!!??!)

With the heat shield installed, I attached the nylon retainers for the A/C lines and then installed the radiator, A/C condenser, and cowling with the fans and shroud from the Sport 350. This included attaching the A/C lines.

Radiator & A/C Condenser In (jack stand of death)

With the steering box in, isn't it possible to install the brake and clutch master and the ABS control unit?? Yes! - at least that's what I thought. I had planned to use the brake and clutch master from the Sport 350 but alas the clutch master is different between the '97 and '99 cars and  the steering box has different mounting holes for it. Since I used the '97 steering box, and I was not going to change that now, I decided to use all the '97 brake and clutch items. The ABS controller was in good shape (I cleaned it and painted the frame) but the the lines got a bit bent in the collision so I sorted that out via some gentle metalurgical persuasion. Despite taking a template from the '97 car, the holes I drilled to attach the ABS controller frame were just not in the right place (note to self - do not template from wrecked portion of salvage vehicle). You can imagine my anguish (I hope) at this point in having to fill holes / move holes  in this area but that's just what I had to do with two of them to get things to line up.

ABS Controller is Straight Now

Now I had asked on the Lotus list about the latest hydraulic bleeding technology but after no response it occurred to me that the 9 year old slave boy living in my house was perfect for the job. So... I decided to teach my son, Colin, a new game.

Dad: Colin!
Colin: Yes Dad?
Dad: Do you want to play a game with me in the garage?
Colin: Yeah Dad. What game is it?
Dad: It's called "down.... up" and you are going to love it!
Colin: Cool!
Dad: Just one thing though... if you make a mistake and you let air into my hydraulic lines...there is a death penalty (heh heh heh).
Colin: Cool! Who dies?
Dad: I'll let you know... it may begin with a "C"

Well wouldn't you know it provided an excellent bonding opportunity for the little guy that likes Gameboy and Nintendo exclusively and couldn't care less about exotic cars Working on the clutch, it became apparent that the large diameter of the line made for a long journey of air from the master to the slave and double or triple that for the times I let the reservoir go dry - we won't talk about how the master cylinder was a little stuck and I used the compressor to coerce it spraying a bit of DOT 4 all over my under hood paint - Colin learned some new words though) - and believe it or not in the end, I had a hard pedal! Colin actually had fun too. We found and fixed two leaks along the way including one at a union that was up in the tunnel requiring me to pull out the lines to get access to tighten it up and put them back in but once they were tightened up - no leaks! Too bad the little guy had to go to bed - something the wife said about it being midnight on a school night or something (I don't really know as I wasn't really paying attention). I could have used him on the brakes though, which I did next. The lines here are smaller and using a simple hose on the bleeding nipples draining into a cup I was able to bleed everything and get a hard brake pedal that actually stopped the car within a short time.

After a speakerphone teleconference with Larry Marsala, getting him to describe the routing of the throttle cable in the engine compartment (he does not sleep either during race prep) as I strived in vain to understand where things went, I successfully attached my throttle cable. Observation: No matter how many pictures you take of you wrecked car when disassembling it... you will need more pictures at different angles than you have to actually put it back together.

Assembly III
(May 2003)

With the radiator installed, I attached all the lines this time including the water lines and the routing of the wiring to the fans. Next, I installed the oil coolers. Since the '89 body had oil coolers in different places than the V8, I had to determine placement and drill the holes for the coolers, which I installed from '99 Sport 350. There is an air shroud and a bottom plate that also need to be installed as the oil lines route through them on each side. But... with these installed you can't get to the headlamp motor bolts so I installed the headlamp motors and then the oils coolers.

Front Coming Together (notice the horns)

I had been dreading working on the vacuum systems for some reason. I had to remember how all the lines routed and I think this had me worried but between the pictures and then parts manual, things went together. Inside the left rear wheel well there is a canister mounted behind a plastic cover. The body section that this cover mounts to was grafted from the '97 car as the early cars have air here. Most folks never take this cover off (it is riveted on) so here's what it looks like off.

Canister - Naked

With the lines attached, I installed the cover (rivets and silicone).

Covered  (and it fits the grafted section perfectly ☺)

I then tackled reassembly of what's above both of the gas tanks including bolting down the top plates themselves. On the left this entails routing a slew of vacuum lines and on the right we have the ECU and bunch more lines (fuel, wiring etc). I also routed all the lines from these areas to the engine compartment. The pictures on my lap top were invaluable here. I still had to call a few folks like Jeff Heald and Larry Marsala to get some hints but it's really tough trying to talk folks through to the exact thing that I can't quite figure out where it goes and get them to tell me where it goes on their cars. I also mounted the radiator expansion tank within the right rear wheel well and routed all the coolant lines in the engine compartment.

Ready to Run

Ready to Run

Left side Lines

Right Side Lines, ECU etc.

I need an exhaust system on this baby to keep it quiet. It turns out the '97 cats are in OK shape but the muffler was damaged in the collision cracking off the pipe from the muffler to the cat on the left side. The '99  muffler looked like hell as the car burned down around it and the pipe leading to the left tip was cut off during the salvage process (prior to me taking ownership). To get things rolling along without going to the welder, I decide to clean the '99 muffler. I had to wire brush the hole thing to remove the carbon black etc. (a mess). Then I attached the cats and the muffler using the hangers that I had previously bonded to the body.

Exhausting (note no left tip - we'll weld that on later)

Cats in Place

Wow! We are getting close. What's left to do to start this puppy? Instrument cluster! Again, the pictures are priceless.

Wired

I need oil, antifreeze, a fuel filter, a battery, the ground strap from the left post to the frame, and the new plugs installed. Then I need to turn the key.

Assembly IV
(July 2003)

The oil went to the coolers and the filter. It was full with 6 quarts in it but I added two more after starting it and it was still not full. After purchasing one more case of Mobile1, I can report that if you have no oil in your Esprit it takes 10 quarts to fill it. This means that when you change your oil you are are really only changing just over half of it!

I put the car in gear and moved it forward a bit just for fun.

Considering that I set the bare fiberglass body on the frame on March 28th, I was very happy with the progress and reaching this major project milestone just two months later

During the next few days I bled the coolant, verified the fans were coming on and off according to the service notes and fixed up a number of other things under the dash. I set the seat in the car and took it up and down the driveway to the top garage (wife's) under full throttle and got the turbos to spool and the waste gates to open - it was scary - I'll get used to it ☺

Oh yeah.... the brakes work too.

I then had to take a break and work around the house prior to another trip to San Jose, Korea, and Japan  and a day after returning went on a 2.5 week vacation with the family to Maryland (wasting good Lotus building time I might add). I did manage to buy a scanner on the way to the beach and use it to scan in the entire Esprit parts manual and then scan in and OCR all the parts number pages - Is that a great vacation or what??? (http://www.theriens.com/beach). Of course taking that much time off work means there is no time to do anything but catch up on work after you come back in early July for a week but then I got back to Lotus building.

After motivational discussions with Tony Grasso we decided the best thing to do would be to get all the external panels attached to the car and to then paint all of the outside at one time to ensure consistency. Of course this is not how Lotus does it but have you looked closely at their paint?!!??

This led me to a long known issue of the passenger door. The '97 car had been hit in the right front and the door was damaged. In fact, it was split at its seam.

Door Split Open

I will also mention that it does not want to go back. There is also some crack damage on the inside front of the door. I had received advice from Lotus on how to bond it back together but I did not like how it was not fitting well so I then turn my sites on this:

Crispy Critter

What??? Come on! It's not that bad!!!

Crispy? Not really that bad.

Structurally, the door is intact. It has surface damage on the top inside and outside otherwise it is solid . So I decided to fix this door and move over the hardware.

A door able

After cleaning the moss our of the door....the next step is to grind off the burned glass and resin. Oh goody!! Fiberglass dust in the summer again!!!

Ground and Glassed

The top of the door is long and this can pose a problem when sanding it down as you need a long straight sanding bar to maintain the door top's integrity so I made one from an old growth, and hence dense and straight, 2x4 - stapling sandpaper to the edge.

Glass Sanded

Next we add filler to the low spots and have at it again with the sanding bar.

Sanded

The result is an edge that resembles the original one. See the sanding bar at the bottom. Next steps here are to prime and fill to refine the edge. Also notice how the mirror attach bulges the glass The Gel coat is pink by the way. The filler is light blue. The primer is gray and paint is black.

I also needed to use the right headlamp pod from the Sport 350 but since it burned at night when the lights were on and the pods were up, the surface of the pods are seared. As such, I had to take the Dremel tool and grind out all the popped divots and the fill and sand them. This took a while.

Enough with the Divots
 

Assembly V
(January 2004)

The hood of the car was damaged in the collision. The hinge points were half ripped out and needed to be repaired.

Typical under hood hinge point damage

Additionally, the adhesive that holds the upper and lower shells had cracked so I ground it out, replaced it with new adhesive, and filled it again.

Under hood repairs

Not a good picture but alas the only one I have. The top of the hood also had some damage that had to be ground and filled. I used body filler with fiberglass in it for this job.

All Fixed

I primed the hood but will show it to you later. Now what about that burned door??? That will never be right again will it?

Looks ugly

You mean this door? Well it just need a HECK of a lot of work and then it looked like this:

All better (tape is mask from painting the other side)

What burn?

Painted and clear coated

No one will ever see the remnants of the burn on the inside. Man do I love this paint. Look at that shine in the clear coat. I also painted the top of the sills (I was silly for not doing this when I painted the rest of the jambs but I was not thinking clearly) and the lower portion of the headlamp pods.

Last of the left jamb is painted

Open the pod bay doors Hal

I bet you are wondering how the top of that burned pod turned out aren't you?

Pods ready for assembly

The burned one (left) needed some extra love but it worked out ☺. Next, I had to move the fittings over from the damaged right door to the fixed one. This includes the window frame, glass, lift, etc. first I took some pics and then disassembled the damaged right door.

Original '97 Right Door

This took a lot of time because the devil designed this door. I found a 666 on it to prove it. After getting all the parts out, I found that the window frame was slightly bent and worse ... the plate that connects it to the door edge was torn off - broke at the welds. Where am I going to get a window frame??? The woods of course. A quick trek down to the woods in the rain to pull back the tarp and get the right door from the '89 car and back up to garage. I took out the frame and found it to be the same except that the plate has a small spacer added to it in the later years. I used the frame with the front glass but replaced the channel liner with the one from the '97 car. After several more hours of assembly and adjustment the door was complete.

All better (notice test window motor wires)

I tried to save the edge strip at the base of the window and even made a special tool to get to the bolts.

This gets small nuts with long bolts off (Special Tool #G22)

Unfortunately, I could not salvage things because of rust and frustration and bleeding of knuckles. So I guess I will be buying those edges for both doors from Lotus Cars. I will say that of all the things I have done to assemble this car, I hated working on the inside of the doors the most. Even more than the shutz grinding and the fiberglass specs in my eyes.

Next, I attached the doors. This can be difficult with one person. First, I covered my newly painted sills so not to put gashes in them. Then I built a platform even with the sills to sit the door on.

Special tool #G23

Then I lifted the door up and placed it in the opening with the aid of the slave boy keeping it upright. Keen's site mentions that it took the better part of a day to attach his doors and get them in the right place. It does take hours. You have to add spacer plates or remove them to gain correct alignment. I wedged plexi-glass and wood under the door and crawled in the other one pulling the door shut and tightening the bolts. The door will sag slightly so you have to compensate for that by lifting the rear higher than what looks right before you tighten down. The latches were then attached (they were in he right place I might add - so it was a good thing that I moved them).

Door Hung

The other side followed.

Another Door Hung

I then attached the headlamp pods and the hood. It was a bit tough getting the inside bolts from the headlamp pods to the hood hinge. Slave boy Colin learned a few new words the second or third time I dropped the hinge bar (he dropped it the first time - but I was calm at that point). The hood needed the right amount of spacers and adjustment also and the hood latches were also adjusted to hold it down (but they need more work).

Headlamps and Hood

Things are starting to look like a car now. I then turned my attention to the hatch. In the accident, the hatch hinges were bent and the left side of the hatch near the hinge was damaged.  Folks with Esprit V8s know that there is an overhang in the forward portion of the hatch that makes painting the hatch nearly impossible. How to remove the overhang is not obvious.

Underside of Hatch

There are 8 nuts that must be removed to remove the overhang. First, the rivets holding on the plastic bezel forward of the window are removed (drill off the heads). This provides access to most of the nuts. The access holes for the remaining nuts are hidden under the rubber hatch seal and covered with black plastic tape also. After getting all the nuts out the overhang still did not want to come off so I persuaded it with a block of wood and a hammer.

Overhang Off

I made a funny discovery with the overhang removed. Every fiberglass part of the car has the last 4 digits of the VIN etched / carved into them for identification. The last 4 digits of the '97 car 's VIN is 5363.

Wrong Hatch

It seems Lotus fitted the hatch from 4 cars earlier instead.

Next I fixed the damage to the hatch - more fiberglass work - I can't escape it.

Hatch Damage

The damage was only in the bottom part of the hatch. I ground it down and glassed it. Of course the crack had to run through both the holes for the defroster wire - sigh.

Hatch Fixed

I then needed to attach the hatch. I used the hinges from the '89 car after removing the rust and painting them.

Hatch Attached

I may need to add a spacer to move the hatch over a millimeter to the right but it is fine for now. I then sanded it for priming (while protecting the already wet sanded areas next to it. I had also bought a hard top (white) off of eBay so that was also sanded. After looking over all the mirrors that I have, it seems the best pair were from of all things... Keen's '91 car. This is the only thing on my car from the '91 car. All the others had some problem or damage. These are shown on top of the hard top along with the sanded fuel flap doors. I also sanded the driver's door. I next turned my focus to the rear bumper.

The '97 car was hit in the right front and then the right rear. The bumper took a hit.

 
Ripped and Cracked

And the light got it too

Now bumpers cost around $800 so I thought I would try my hand at flexible bumper repair. First, I fabricated galvanized steel plates that fit the damaged areas and riveted them to the bumper closing the tears. I recessed the heads of the rivets below the top level of the bumper.

Galvanized Repair Plate

Riveted In

Big Galvanized Repair Plate

The panel that holds in the marker light was destroyed. I made a new panel and spacer from the bottom flat portion of the damaged '97 car's front valance and riveted it all to the the bumper.

Marker Light

Next I applied a two part, epoxy-based flexible bumper patch from Evercoat.

Bumper Patch Goop

This stuff was some of the weirdest goop I've worked with. It has about a 10-15 minute working time. It is runny so vertical surfaces need to be filled a number of times. With practice, you can coax it to where you want it just before it sets up though. I spent an evening making and attaching all of the plates and most of the the next day applying and sanding the patch. I applied it many many times but still did not use much from the two tubes in the kit I purchased for around $30.

Repaired Rear Bumper

This repair was very labor intensive - especially the sanding and the smell was fun also. The patch sands very smooth compared to the bumper material so you can feel a difference passing your hand over it despite the sanding block telling me things are flat. I will prime this with flexible bumper primer later but my gut feel is that I will not be happy with the end result. We shall see.

And sometimes... it snows in Portland (but not often).

Snow

Since I was tired of sanding, I decided to finish the front valance. My valance is from SJ Sportcars Ltd. in the U.K.. I bought it in a lot of parts from eBay.  The valance has a number of metal grates fixed to it normally for the radiator and the oil coolers. Unfortunately only two found their way the left oil cooler exit and the center (damaged). I fixed the center easy enough but Lotus wants an arm and a leg for these grates so I looked for the source and finally found it in the U.K. with the help of Tony Grasso here: http://www.expandedmetalcompany.co.uk/mesh_scans/html/HEX1.jpg.html . I had visited Les Twigg while on the Esprit manufacturing line tour in November of 2002. In April of '03, Les got a quantity of the grate and cut it into squares larger than the areas I needed. He then sent it to London where a co-worker of mine, Duncan Glendinning, was staying. Duncan brought it back to Arizona and then to San Jose where I picked it up. Les refused money for the grate material and so he is always welcome to a warm meal at my home. Duncan gets a free drink. Since the valance is made from fiberglass instead of GRP and is quite thick and strong, I did not need to make forms. Instead I was able to cut and beat the grating into place on the valance itself.

Grating Cut and Pounded

Isn't This Great?

Folks have sometimes asked about the quality of the SJ parts. Generally speaking the quality is good but you have to accept that they will not just come out of the box and go onto the car. The parts must be sanded and touched up where there are flaws or blemishes. The attachment holes must be drilled and nut plates must be fabricated and attached . They must be sanded and sanded and sanded. I ended up using 100 grit paper to get things smooth before moving to the 220 grit. The only real quality problem I had was that the lip spoiler just did not fit the valance right. It's curve did not match the curve of the valance. If I lined up the rear then the front would bow in in the middle. If I lined up the front to fit the curve then there was a gap in the front middle.

Lip Gap

I decided that it was best to not have a bow in the front middle and to fill the gap making the lip spoiler one piece. I have always hated the two piece spoiler anyway and since it is fiberglass, it was easy.

Fattened Lip

I then test fitted the front bumper, valance, and lip spoiler and found that many of the holes for the bottom panels need to be moved or adjusted.

Front Looks like a V8

Lotus uses a number of plastic inserts and screws in this area but I have found these to fail so I decided on a subset of screw holes and fabricated the nut plates needed to hold everything together underneath.

The fiberglass aerofoil (as Lotus calls it) beneath the rear bumper was also damaged.

Ouch

The left attach point was gone and the base was cracked / broken the right side base was also cracked. And so once again the fiberglass called to itch me.

\
Aerofoil All Better

I should mention that I have been using glass reinforced body filler on these repairs in addition to fiberglass resin and mat. The last thing I did was to get all of the wheel arch extensions in shape. This includes the right rear one that I pieced together. At this point I ground out all of the cracks and filled them. I had some similar things to do on each of the other pieces finishing up with sanding.

Arches are Done

At this point I am nearly ready to prime and wet sand all the pieces that are not yet ready for paint.

Paint Plus Plus
(November 2005)

Well, what happened is that while I made a bit of progress on the car in the late Spring and Summer of 2004, which I will outline below, the main reason behind the lack of additional progress was that I was in the midst of a divorce and the desire and time to work on the project were not there (not to mention the fact that I could drive the 2002 car  for a speed fix anytime I liked). Within Lotus circles, the first thing that folks say when they find out that you went through a divorce is that they are sorry (which is what everyone says) and then this is quickly followed up with the question "Was it because of your Lotus work???". Divorce is a like a death. It is not to be wished on anyone ... even your enemies. It must be mourned over time before you can recover. Kathe and I sold our home in mid December 2004 and moved into separate homes and were divorced in late January 2005. It had nothing to do with the Lotus work. We did it the right way to minimally impact the children and we did not use any lawyers. We are still great friends and jointly raise the children.

"Guy! Did you have to sell your cars? What happened to your garage? Where did the cars go?"

DID YOU REALLY THINK THAT I WOULD LET THE CARS GO!???!!!?! I paid her off.

Actually, partially assembled and previously burned salvaged titled cars tend to not be valued very highly. They are worth more to you or me than the general market or what I could sell them for on E-Bay. As part of getting divorced, Kathe wanted a new Expedition so that she did not have to worry about car maintenance for a while. I needed something to tow the trailer with the cars on it so in the settlement I got the old Expedition, the BMW, the Triumph, and the two Esprits.

After having the house on the market for about a year, in one weekend we sold the house and Kathe found another one leaving me with no place to live and no place for the cars to live and me with the possession of only half of my previous means. By chance, a small home 2 houses up the street on the same side as my home was slated to go on the market the next Monday. It had two acres of land, it had a barn, it was close, I'd have the same neighbors..... so I bought it. The barn was a pole barn with a dirt floor and no road to it so everything had to be stuffed into a two car standalone garage.

Tight Fit

Now I know how Johan feels.

Gee! that Esprit on the right looks blue doesn't it? So let's go back now and see what happened before the move.

Ok, We were up to the point where I had to prime and wet sand all the pieces that were not yet primed. I primed the back.

Back Primed

I primed the bumpers.

Bumpers and Valance Primed (disregard that yellow wing)

I primed and wet sanded everything left and then went over the body again as well. That's just boring tedious work so... no pictures.

Primed Parts in the Hall

Why are these primed parts in the hall? Because it is time to prepare the garage for painting.

Garage Sprayed Down

I blew all the dust out of the garage and then took the hose to it to try and reduce the amount of dust I would stir up when spraying. I used conventional spray equipment - not HVLP.

Garage Sprayed Down (pay no attention to that yellow car)

The next step was to get the car back in the garage, raise it up a bit so that it was easier to paint down low on the body and to mask everything.

Ready for Paint

Ready for Paint

First I shot in the jambs including the sunroof jamb.

Jambs Done

Then I painted the rest of the car.

Painted (dull)

Then I put 4-5 coats of clear-coat on the car and it looked like this:

Back - clear-coated

Front - clear-coated

And the next day I took it out in the sun and it looked like this:

Painted

Looks good right? Wrong. Right away I could see that the paint pattern of the metallic was uneven in the hood (go back and look closely at the un clear-coated hood picture) and that I had indeed got more crap in the paint than I had realized. Thank goodness for 4 coats of clear. I went on to paint the rest of the parts.

Parts Painted

I planned to wet sand the car with all of the parts attached so I set upon the task of attaching the bumpers and valances etc. The foam insert for the front bumper, which holds the lights in, was damaged in the wreck but another guy (Phil) had a damaged insert that was damaged on the other side so....

Cut and Paste

The wiring on the right side of the bumper was damaged in the wreck. I thought I had the piece but I did not so I had to fabricate the wiring for that side of the bumper after which I immediately found the original part. Sigh.  This was all taped into the bumper (yes taped just like at the factory). I even used black duct tape just like Lotus.

Bumper Ready to Install

I then painted and attached the grates to the valance using the same construction adhesive (PL-1 from Home Depot) that I used on the body previously.

Grates Painted

Grates Attached

I then attached the bumper...

Bumper Attached

... the valance...

Valance Attached

... and finally the lip spoiler.

Lip Service

This included getting the fogs in and all of the panels underneath attached, which took some diligence.

Panels on too

I started rubbing out the paint. I had to deal with some runs. Like this one.

Paint Run

Unfortunately around then I suffered a brain aneurism and mistakenly grabbed the 1000 grit paper instead of 1500 to rub out the car. This left the surface with a lot of scratches that are difficult to remove. I started wet sanding with 1500 and worked painstakingly to get things kosher but there is still a lot of rubbing and buffing left to do to get it right. I also need to repaint the hood.

The rear bumper that I worked so hard to repair revealed an unevenness in the repair after painting that was not observable in the primer before painting and I ended up rubbing through the paint there. I will have to repaint that and build up the clear a lot to get that right. The bad news is that I am out of paint.

Rubbing it out

The last bad thing is that the buffer head on the left buffer (above) broke off  just after the picture was taken and I nicked the left rear fender with the buffer as a result when it happened. That needs to be fixed too.

So about this time.... work on the car came to a grinding halt and halted it has stayed.

The first picture on this page shows the Esprits stuffed into the new garage. The majority of my time has been spent making the house livable (new water pipes, roof, gas service, laundry room, etc . etc. etc) but instead of boring you with that, I will at least bore you with stuff that is leading to future Lotus work. I needed a shop and a road to it. What I had was a pole barn. A stinky old ex-animal inhabited pole barn. The first thing I did was get rid of all the crap and then I put in a concrete floor.

Concrete Floor is In

I then got a quote to put in the road to it and that was $18K, which included $6K for excavation and moving and placing of rock. So I did what any man in this situation would do.... I bought a tractor so I could move the dirt myself.

Tractor

I then moved a *LOT* of dirt. I also learned how to smack my shop with my tractor many times. I also smacked the house. I even rolled in on its side when I ran over a big rock with a full bucket in the air at speed. I'm pretty good with the tractor now. I decided to take the front of the shop off and put in 3 garage doors including a used 10' square door in the middle that I bought with all hardware and the lift for $400 from an old ambulance shop. I had to get power to the shop and after many discussions on how I might do this I ran a separate service to it, which I had to trench and run conduit through from the pole 200 feet away to the shop. Lucky for me slave boy who suddenly has grown to 5'3" can still fit in such a trench to dig out the chuff.

Trench

Now the one thing that you must remember when trenching is to call the locate service before you trench so you do not cut into any buried utilities. And I did. But this does not keep you from cutting through the 8000 volt primary supply line to the transformer on your neighbor's lot if they spray the paint in the wrong place, which they did.

Supply line (directly below the bracket the power company attached for me to trench to - all fixed)

I just have to say that cutting that line made about the loudest noise I have ever heard. Then all the neighbors ran out to see if I had killed myself. Hah! Rubber tires - riding trencher.

By the way, the two 3' 90 degree fiberglass sweeps were transported from the electrical supply house (Home Depot does not carry such stuff) in my Esprit and no they did not fit. They stuck out the window and looked VERY strange in transit.

Now, if I am spending all this money on a shop then I think that it's too far from the house to have to walk when you need to "use the facility" so...

Water and Sewage Ejector Lines in the Trench Too

I got a sewage ejector off of Ebay and then found and intercepted the line to the septic system.

Ready for Sewage

Now I happen to have an extra heat pump and air handler and electric hot water heater from all the work on the house that I am not telling you about here so... to keep things cool in the shop in the summer and warm in the shop in the winter...

|Spray Foam Insulated Shop

I had a company come out and spray insulate every inch of wall and ceiling space in the shop for about $3K. And of course I needed large retaining wall blocks to retain the banks left from all that dirt I moved.

Blocks Arriving

Just about then.... I had to go to Japan and Taiwan, and then I had a house guest from New Zealand for 3 weeks, and then I had to go to Russia, Japan, and Taiwan.

House Guest and Me at Mt. Hood

Yes, I said Russia (Moscow - Old Arbot Street)

And in the mean time... The rainy season started and the back yard is now a swamp of mud. I quickly added trim and weatherproofed the shop. I also mounted ceiling lights (with help of slave boy Colin) as well as an outside light. This allowed me to gain approval on the final electrical inspection.

Shop Dry - Yard Mud

I tore down the rickety loft and am building storage over the two side garage doors. The bottom of the storage support will be used to mount the door openers. As soon as it is lockable, I will move the stuff from the other garage into the shop. Since it is winter, I will spend a lot of time working on the inside of the house. I will return to the shop and potentially work on the '97 car next year. But... there is still a lot of landscaping and work to do in the yard. I also ran phone, cable, and internet lines out there. The shop needs those.

Nov. '06
(November 2006)

Shop Dry - Yard Mud (Fall 2005)

And now.....

Shop nearly done (Fall 2006)

A Place to Park and Drive

BMF Wall

I spent the dry season building retaining walls, pouring concrete, and getting the shop plumbing roughed in. The retaining wall blocks weigh around 1 ton each and as a result, the effort was a bit challenging. You can see full pics here.

During the hiatus from Lotus reconstruction I generally had not been looking for things Lotus related on Ebay but once in a blue moon I checked and in late August I saw this:

Buy Me - I'm Fixable

No one can fight his destiny. BUT... that is another story and it starts here.

For now, the '97 car sits in the shop waiting for bandwidth. I think that she aspires to be something unlike normal Esprits now that she has two sisters to compete with. You know young girls  ... they always want to be noticed.

Make Me Special

That's the end of the update as of November 16, 2006

Regards,

Guy

What???  You want to know about the house guest from New Zealand??? Well ... I did manage to spend some time in Maui with her in September (Yes that is a Lotus hat).

Nov. '07
(November 2007)

For the folks who are only here for the Lotus update, Not much got accomplished this year. I was able to buy / collect most of the parts needed to repair the Back '97 car. I am still looking for a left front section to keep me from making a mold. The only other work performed was removing the windshield. I also received the engine cover for the 2002 car back from Jim Knowles who saved it for me after I stupidly left it in the garage at the LOG in Birmingham.

My Father had been losing weight for no apparent reason during 2006. He came out to Oregon for a visit in September 2006 and we spent  much of the week together investigating the towns and sites in the Columbia River basin.

Dad and Me at Vista Point lookout - September 2006

Early in 2007 Dad lost his voice. After various tests it was confirmed that he had Cancer - Adenocarcinoma in his left lung at Stage 4 - metastasized to his spine and right hip. He passed away in mid April. He was my best friend.

I made a number of trips to Maryland during his illness and another to pack up and ship the contents of his garage and den to Oregon. He had a lot of stuff and the shipment filled the shop. Much of the year was spent working to organize the shop and on improvements both inside and outside the house. As a result, there was little time or space available for Lotus work. With all vacation leave exhausted, I could not make the trip to Denver for LOG as well.

I had some custom rock sculpture put in. I ran drains and had the upper patio poured.

Rock Sulpture

Rock Sculpture, Gas, and Electrical Lines going in

Patio Poured

Patio - curved area is for fire place, wooden square is hot tub position

I also poured concrete in front of the house to make the parking area more usable and for a future man-door to the left of the detached garage. I also put in a foundation wall at the front left of the house as I have decided to build an attached garage as well.

Beefy Foundation Wall

Can you see the new Garage?

I put a loft in the shop last November and got the heat pump installed and operating over Christmas. Shop is now heated and cooled.

Loft in - Heat pump air handler top center

Dad's stuff was piled high (very high) all around the shop. I spent a lot of time unpacking and arranging it and I am still arranging it. His stuff was well labeled.

Dad's stuff with the white labels

Dad Loved Labels (cable TV in the shop works as does the phone and internet)

Dad Really Loved Labels

Alot

I had a lot of stuff and Dad had a lot of stuff so now I have two of everything (maybe 3 or 4). I have been amused many times when I go to garage to get something only to find that I don't have it and Dad does.

I put a full bath in the shop (why not?) but it is not finished yet. I also put a urinal, which is fully functional, on a wall outside the bathroom - This is a *MAN's* shop.

Unfinished Bath and Functioning Urinal (electric hot water heater also from the house)

Loft

The loft is supported by a large glue lam and 2x12s on 1 foot centers. It can support very large women but I hope the need does not arise. I bought additional shelving and unpacked (finally after 3 years) a lot of the Lotus parts placing them on the shelving for easy view.

Lotus Parts Store

I put the Black '97 car in the center as this is the best place to lift the body off and removed the broken windshield. I also replaced the driver airbag. Shortly after this photo was taken, I removed the seats.

Windshield removed (view from the loft)

Blue '97 Car Waits for Attention

Fix me

Parts for the Black '97 Car have been purchased / collected and are stored by the side of the shop. I got a radiator and fan set, various under-car lines, rear bumper, right sill, duct parts, oil coolers, various lights, transmission mount, front valance from SJ Sportscars in the UK is on the way with the new oil lines as well as a number of other parts.

Parts Pile

My plans are to intersperse work on the house and the Black '97 car this next year to keep active on the Lotus work. The first task is to prepare the new frame, remove the body, and switch to the new frame.

That's the end of the update as of November 2007.

Regards,

Guy

P.S. What??? You only come here see new pictures of my friend from New Zealand? I mentioned this to her and she said to show you this one from two years ago.

Shop - Unfinished because of worker strike (skin colored bathing suit)

But you might also enjoy this one.

Cool Beachwear?

More of Shelley here.

And sorry to let you all down but .... She's just a great *friend* not a "girlfriend" and yes she is single.