VIPs and not so VIPs

Very Important Parts.

I received some in the past weeks. What makes these important is that they are the bits I need to integrate the late V8 shifter and cables to the early V8 high torque gearbox. They are the brackets in this picture:


The right hand bracket fits across the gearbox mount on the right hand side and retains the gear select cable. The pivot bracket in the center mounts to the cross shaft/selector shaft, and the gear select cable attaches on the hard to see bend at the end opposite of the hole. The bracket on the bottom bolts to the rear cover and retains the cross shaft cable. The smaller bracket with the flat edge gets welded on to the cross shaft. The hole in this bracket is where the cross shaft cable end attaches.

The pulleys are the infamous "green dot" pulleys. These pulleys are used to shift the MOP of the intake and exhaust cams to something more performance oriented (104 degrees vs 107) instead of the emissions optimized pulleys that were shipped on the stock engine. With these 3 pulleys plus the ones on the Emme engine and the original FrankEnSPRIT engine, I have enough to set up both the Emme and the engine going into the black Esprit with 104 pulleys. An additional benefit is that these are all HTD pulleys, which means they have a better belt tooth shape than the original trapezoidal tooth pattern found on the black Esprit engine. So I will get a little better belt reliability with this swap.

Now for some not so very important parts.

This is the rear cover of the Renault UN-1 gearbox as used in early S-bodied Esprits. As you can see, the shift translator is on the left-hand side of the gearbox as you look from the rear. There is something unique about this particular rear cover, however. If you look closely, the shifter shaft itself has been sleeved to make it thicker, presumably to keep it from bending under shifter loads. This is not what I needed in terms of parts, but I got myself convinced from some not-so-very good photos on an eBay auction that this was the rear cover I needed for the later V8 shifter cables. I think the modifications are what threw me. Oh well, it wasn't that expensive, and now I have something to sell on to someone else if I need to raise some quick cash.

Oil, Leather and Leather Oil

The blog has been pretty quiet lately, partly due to work, partly due to slow, sure, but unexciting progress. I have been treating the door panels, center armrest, and center console panels with Leatherique rejuvenation oil. This stuff really works well to rehydrate old leather. It works best with the old dye removed, which, as you may recall, we did in the last blog installment. I have been treating the leather every day or two with the oil, massaging it in on every surface. It is about done, as it takes almost all day for a treatment to be absorbed. Next step is to fill a few small nicks, cuts and scratches with their filler, followed by a prep solution treatment and airbrushing the dye onto the panels. These panels will be dyed the original grey. I will do the leather below the windshield and the instrument cluster in black to cut down on glare. The rear panel will be grey, as will the seats. I haven't decided if I want to do the rest of the dash in black or in grey. My '83 Esprit has a black dash with tan leather for the rest of the interior and I really like it. The car is black, so that may have something to do with how well the black dash works. I'm not so sure with the blue car yet.

Dave Cammack, another multiple Esprit owning LOON, brought the front valance from his X-180R down to the barn over the weekend. He was doing some radiator work and as long as he had it off the car we wanted to see how well it would line up with the G-body contours. As you can see from the photos, with the trailing edge of the valance even with the front wheel arch, the valance extends in front of the bumper by about a half inch. Otherwise, it fits to the lower part of the bumper and the radiator duct pretty well, all things considered.





One problem that you can't see very well in the photos is the contours of the valance. The original valance has negative radius (concave) curves on the sides of the valance, where the X-180R part is convex. It just doesn't look right. Part of that may be the white color against the metallic blue, but it would still be a big difference when compared to the side sills and rear valance.

Side to side, the X-180R valance winds up pretty much where I thought it would - about an inch wider than the 87 valance. This could be made up with a light shell panel to blend the trailing edge of the front bumper to the leading edge of the front wheel arch below the bonding seam, but that will probably make the car look nose-heavy. Another possibility would be to see how an SE front bumper cover would look, but that would be even worse when compared to the squarer contours of the rear bumper and valance.





Tim Engel, another multiple-Lotus-owning LOON had a spare '87 valance he has donated to the cause. We talked about some ways to modify this valance to fit the contours of the newer radiator duct while maintaining the design elements of the car. We can pull molds off of the valance of my '83 to make some splitters to duct air into the radiator duct and the brake cooler ducts. This would take some cutting and glassing back together the front part of the duct to extend it further forward and to widen it. We also discussed ways to accommodate the oil coolers along the sides without having to mess with as radical of a false panel behind the front bumper. Dave also suggested abandoning the V8 oil coolers and going with smaller, more common coolers from an aftermarket supplier. At this point I am thinking I will build up some wooden models of the various coolers available to see how they will fit. If I can find something that would work in the original width of the valance, that may be the way to go. The V8 coolers are probably overkill for the application, so I can give up some cooling capacity for space. Time to break out the table saw...

Leather Prep

Everything leather-covered that can come out has come out. I hadn't planned on removing the lower portion of the dash, but it turns out it was easier to take it out than to try and remove the eyeball vents, the side vents or the speaker covers with the dash in place. Here you can see what is left of the passenger compartment.

The last little bit of leather by the windshield is glued to the car. In fact, the leather is tucked into the channel that the windshield is bonded to, so in order to replace that leather you have to remove the glass. Fotunately, the leather is in good shape. It will get redyed with the rest of the interior after some prep work.

Here you can see the lower dash out of the car. Taking these cars apart gives you some insight as to how they were put together. There appears to be a lot of hand assembly with these cars, as the center stack with the HVAC controls and stereo appear to be assembled after the lower dash pad is put into place. I couldn't get the frame to fit through the opening without stripping all of the components out of it first. There are also a lot of little bits screwed to the lower dash, like electrical modules, relays, and such. These could have been put in place before the dash was installed and then attached to the wiring harness. Another interesting tidbit is Lotus' mantra of making each part perform multiple uses in order to save weight. This is even true with rivits. The fuse panel and relays are tucked into the opening on the left side of the dash panel. The relay holders clip together and are then rivited to the fibreglass dash panel. There are two rows of relays - the one on the left hand side backs up to the fuse panel. The rivits for the relays also help hold the fuse panel in place.



Before the leather can be redyed, it needs to be prepared. Leather dye isn't really a dye like a fabric dye. It is not absorbed into the leather, rather it is applied to the leather a lot like paint. Unlike paint, leather dyes are very flexible and somewhat porous - but not very. All of that leather conditioner we slather on our cars doesn't get into the leather unless you close up the car and park it in the sunlight for a few hours. Anyway, before you can apply new dye, you really need to remove as much of the old dye as possible. You do this by wet sanding the leather with 320-grit wet/dry sandpaper. You need to pay close attention while doing this, because if you go too far, you create suede. You also need to be careful around folds and seams - folds because they become suede faster because they are raised, and seams because you don't want to sand the thread in the seams. Below you can see how the back panel looks after I sanded half of it.



And here you can see how some of the smaller bits look after dye removal. All of the leather is salvageable, with the exception of the instrument binnacle. The leather around the defroster vent has become unglued over the years and has started to shrink and dry out. It doesn't appear that it will ever be pliable enough to glue back down.



The next step is to start treating the leather with Leatherique's Rejuvenator Oil. This stuff really works well with the dye out of the way. I treated the leather in my '83 Esprit with this stuff 10 years ago when I thought I would replace the leather anyway. That leather was like cardboard - very stiff. I sanded the dye off and treated the panels with the rejuvenator oil twice a day for several weeks. At first, I couldn't get halfway down the door panel with a handful of the oil before it was all absorbed. By the end of the treatments, you could still see some oil on the surface for an hour or two after I rubbed it down. I'll do the same with this leather.

Scrubbing Bubbles

I took some time today to try out some different leather cleaners I have around the barn. Since FrankEnSPRIT's interior was so dirty, I figured this would be a good test. So out came the Leatherique Prestine (sic) Clean, Zymoil Leather Cleaner, and Simple Green. Here is what I started with...


The Leatherique product had the least amount of impact on the dirt. To be fair, it is about 10 years old and had separated some while sitting on the shelf. In second place was the zymoil product. Top of the heap was good ol' Simple Green. You could see where it was sprayed on the leather, as the spots where the liquid hit were cleaner than where it missed. I did the whole thing with Simple Green, and while pleased with the results, I will still be redying the interior. It sure does a good job of cleaning the leather, but it doesn't help the fading. Here is an after shot...



I don't think I would use Simple Green as my regular cleaner. It is pretty harsh and needs to be rinsed off. For tough dirt, Simple Green is great, but for every day cleaning, I would use the Zymoil cleaner followed by their conditioner.

Inner Space

With the front ductwork on hold until I can figure out what to do next, I have turned my attention to the interior. When I first got the car, the interior looked reasonable. The lighting in the barn where I first saw the car wasn't all that good, but it seemed it would be presentable after a good scrub. So that is what I thought I would do over the next week or so. So I stared pulling out door panels, A-pillar trim, center armrest, and whatever else I could get to while not able to get the doors open all the way. Which means the seats, dash, and binnacle are still inside the car. What I was able to take out will keep me busy enough until I can move stuff around.

While removing the door panels, I found more parts of the alarm system that just had to go - these were the power lock actuators. I never got a key fob with the car, so it is just as well that I get rid of all of this stuff. I think that is the last of it with the exception of a wire leading up into the instrument cluster. I'm not sure what it would be for, but it will be gone soon enough.

Here you can see all of the interior parts I was able to take out - door panels, console, rear panel, steering column surround, fuse box cover, center armrest, A-pillar trim, glovebox door, headliner, and cant rails. When you lay them all out on a table where you can set parts that don't normally go together, you can see just how distressed this interior is. So now, instead of a good scrubbing, I'm faced with redying everything. That's not a bad thing, as I did this with the interior of my black Esprit as stopgap until I could afford a retrim. It turned out good enought that 7 years later I still have not had the leather replaced.

One of the trouble areas of this vintage Esprit is the headliner and cant rails. Lotus took the foam-backed material and wrapped it around the pinch rail for the weatherstrip for the sunroof, as you can see in these photos. This leads to a problem if you happen to park with the car facing downhill during a rain shower. Water collects in the gutter around the sunroof and wicks into the fabric or it leaks in through the slots for the tabs on the sunroof. This leads to stains in the fabric. I'm not sure just what to do about it other than trying to seal the tab slots and weatherstrip to the body to prevent water from reaching the fabric. If anybody has solved this problem, I am all ears...



One piece of good news is the sunroof itself. When I got the car, the sunroof was well and truly stuck. In fact, the original sunroof was damaged by someone trying to pry it out of the car. I was able to find an unpainted repalacement, but it too got stuck when I tried it out. Since the car has been sitting on jack stands and not on the wheels, the sunroof now works like it should. It appears that several years without the weight of the engine or the rear frame support installed had warped the body enough to capture the sunroof. Now that pressure has been relieved, the body seems to have returned to its normal stance. Now I have to decide if I want to use the painted but damaged original top or have the undamaged, unpainted replacement top. I will have to paint the bumpers and front valance anyway, so it is a bit of a tossup at this point.

Next up I will start removing the old dye from the interior. This involves lots of wet sanding of leather. The trick is to stop sanding before you start making suede.

Making It All Fit

Its one thing to find all kinds of good used original parts at reasonable prices all over the world and have them shipped to your home. Its another to get to the point where you can actually start fitting those parts to the car. Today I fit the SE radiator duct and the Sport 350 oil cooler ducts, coolers and duct platforms to the nose of the car.

I expected that there would be some fibreglass work and some new holes to add to get everything to fit. I was pleasantly surprised at how well things lined up. The mounting holes on the right hand side lined up perfectly, although some of the holes cut to fit around some of the other mounting hardware in the body will need to be moved. On the left hand side, two holes have to be moved in addition to the relief holes. I drilled some quick holes in the duct to get it bolted up to the car. I will need to patch the holes in the wrong place and redrill, but it is good enough for now. There are also two holes in the front of the duct that were not used on the '87 duct, so those have been drilled into the car. They are located in the space below the headlamp pods, so I will need to add nutserts when I finally mount it up.



The oil cooler duct platforms also mounted up a lot easier than I expected. Most of the holes are already in the radiator duct, so some old M6 bolts are holding it together for now. The platforms are also supported by the lower edge of front spoiler, so they will help define the dimensions of the new spoiler.

Since a lot of space in the sides of the spoiler was empty in the early cars, Lotus put stuff there - like horns and hoses. These had to be moved to make room for the oil coolers and ductwork.



Once space is made, you can see that everything will fit in the space available. Some holes will need to be moved and others will need to be filled. The oil coolers are hanging from one of the bolts for the original front spoiler. They aren't quite in the right spot, but that's the nice thing about fibreglass. It's easy to move stuff like holes. You can also see that some of the bits extend outside of the body lines...



Lotus made a styling change in 1988. In my opinion Peter Stevens did a great job, as the car was modernized yet still instantly recognizeable as an Esprit. The hard origami edges of the Esprit were softened and the front and rear bumpers were integrated into the overall design. One of the changes he made was to bring the front spoiler forward to almost match up with the leading edge of the bumper. The cooling boys took advantage of this and moved the leading edge of the radiator duct forward as well, as you can see here.



In addition, the width of the front bumper was carried all the way back to the wheel opening and down into the sides of the spoiler. When the chargecooler was added, this extra space in the sides of the spoiler was filled with oil coolers and ductwork. So part of the fibreglass work I will need to do is make a whole new front spoiler and bumper cover to hide all the new stuff. And make it look nice.

Noting Some Differences

Now that the front radiator stack is out of the car, it is time to make some comparisons between what Lotus put in the car back in 1987 and what they shipped in later cars. Here is the stack that I will be installing in FrankEnSPRIT. Note that it has the same style radiator, but the evaporator and the chargecooler radiators are integrated into the same unit.

Next up is a shot of the tubs without anything in them. I was surprised to see that the newer style tub is a LOT deeper than the original part. In fact, the forward lip of the new tub extends almost to the edge of the lip of the '87 front air dam. Looks like there will be a bit more fibreglass work to be done to integrate this part into the car.

There are several other detail differences between the two parts, like hole placement for mounting and hoses, the way the trailing edge of the tubs are formed, the lack of the raised platform for the oil cooler, and the sculpting of the leading edge. The '87 actually flares out a little (see top photo), while the newer part is narrower in the front and opens out to the radiators. I think part of this sculpting is to make some room for the split oil coolers. There may be room between the tub and the side of the air dam, but I'm not gonna bet on it.





Speaking of oil coolers, it looks like Lotus just about doubled the size of the radiator surface with the split coolers. On the top are the left and right coolers from the V8, below is the single unit used in the early turbos. This setup should be more than adequate for FrankEnSPRITs powerplant, assuming I can provide a good amount of air to them and get the air back out again.

So, the next steps for this end of the car is to secure the new radiators in the new tray and mount them to the car, or at least place them where they belong. I will need to fill the current holes and redrill them to line up with the bobbins in the bodywork, plus sort out how to route the hoses for the A/C and chargecooler. I will also start fiddling around with the oil coolers and ducts to see how they might mount up in the space available.