In The Beginning

I got the idea to do something like this about 3 years ago. I have a 1983 Esprit Turbo that was a bit rough when I bought it in 1998. Over the years, I have been steadily improving the car, fixing exhaust leaks, oil leaks, gearbox leaks and other various and sundry mechanical issues. I've rebuilt the gearbox (twice!) due to a munched pinion and an ill-advised replacement part made by a gear house in Australia. The going rate for pinions and the exchange rate made it seem like a good idea at the time. Since then, I have found Harry Martens in the Netherlands who is able to provide most any part you need for the Citroen gearbox. Dave Bean Engineering and JAE are also excellent resources for parts and technical advice (Thanks Ken and Jeff!). I have recarpeted the car front and rear, redyed the interior, and had the car repainted. I guess you could say the car has been pretty much restored. It has been driven to a number of Lotus Owners Gatherings, and has never failed to place in the casual concours.

I joined the local Minnesota Lotus club (the Lotus Owners Oftha North - or LOONs) early on, and they have been invaluable with providing help, advice, tools, and encouragement. My wife would call it enablement. Tim Engel, Jeremy Engel, Dave Lindemann, Dave Cammack, Jess Hartley, and Keen Young have been particularly helpful in getting my '83 into the condition it is in. Another great resource is the turboesprit list on yahoogroups. What we can't figure out locally, the list can usually resolve within a matter of hours.

But I digress. Keen Young got started with Esprits by finding a repairable car and doing the bulk of the repairs himself. Watching his progress with his first car, the work he did on his second Esprit, along with helping out with gearbox rebuilds, engine rebuilds, along with all of the other work I helped out on for other LOON Esprit owners convinced me that there really isn't much to this stuff as long as you are willing to make the occasional mistake. Armed with a service manual and (most important) a parts manual, there isn't anything I won't try on these cars. I have gotten to the point of picking up some of the original Lotus service tools, and have had fixtures made for tools I couldn't find. For anyone who is rebuilding a Citroen transaxle, I have a kit with all of the factory tools necessary to properly locate the pinion, set differential bearing preloads, and torque the speedo gear. Let me know if you need the kit and I'll send it out. You pay shipping both ways, use whatever shims you need, and put your old parts back in the box to replace the parts you take out.

I digress again. After having driven my Esprit for a number of years and taking it out on a few tracks, I have begun to want more power. More power means more brake and tire, and in the case of the Esprit, more brake means bigger wheels. One of the peculiarities of the early Turbo Esprits is the inboard location of the rear brakes. This leaves a lot of room at the hub for some pretty radical rear wheel offsets. Lotus used this to put together some great looking BBS wheels, but because of the offsets, no generally available wheel with a larger diameter is available. Wheels can be made, but they get pretty spendy as you are automatically into a 3-piece wheel at the rear. So, I got to thinking.

Keen's experience taught me that the hard points of the Esprit have not changed in the 20+ years the cars were made. This means that the frames are pretty much interchangeable. As are the drivetrains, brakes, suspension and anything else that goes under the car. My original thinking was to build up a later frame with all of the running gear, suspension improvements, plumbing, and accessories sourced from the Lotus parts bin. I would then swap out the '83 frame for this new frame over a winter. This way, I could work out most of the bugs on the new parts and still drive the car. My original idea has changed, and as the blog goes on, I'll get into the reasons why, and how I am going about the task of building FrankEnSPRIT. Some of this is past tense, some is happening now, and the rest we will learn about as we get there.