Rubber Buggy Bumpers

The rubber mounts and Sport 300 brace have arrived. You can see them here...

The mounts to the right are the trailing arm mounts, in the center we have the motor mounts and buffer washers, and on the left are the gearbox mounts. I installed these today, along with one of the shocks Dave brought down. I now have a three-wheeled frame. I should get the fourth corner mounted tomorrow.

For the first time since starting this blog, it has the opportunity to actually help somebody. One of the guys on the Turboesprit list has an '84 Esprit that needs new motor mounts. So, here are some pictures to help you through the replacement.

First - here is a shot of the orgami heat shield over the left motor mount. This shield is required, otherwise the exhaust manifold would cook the rubber motor mount in a matter of weeks. Early cars had an asbestos shield that was not this complex. The top 2 layers of this need to be removed to get at the bolt holding the mounting leg to the motor mount.

There really is a motor mount under all of that. This is what they look like - from the right side, which does not have a heatshield - instead it has part of the shifter installed over the top.

The nuts for the motor mounts are inside the box section of the frame. You can get to them with stubby wrenches fro mthe side (you can just see an access hole to the left of the mount) and from underneath.

There is enough slack in all of the hoses, pipes, wires, etc. around the engine that you can tilt it up high enough to remove the mounts, or you can remove the mounting legs from the block. Here is a picture of the right hand side leg bolted to the block. The left side is similar, but behind the exhaust manifold, which is not as restrictive as it might sound.

The next steps for FrankEnSPRIT are to assemble the Sport 300 brace and figure out how and where to mount it to the frame. The brace bolts to 4 bungs that are welded to the engine cradle. There is one bolt per leg that passes through the brace into the bung. The bungs are tapered at the top, like steel tepees. When the boys at Lotus were welding up the Sport 300 frames, they welded the bungs in place before sending the frame off for galvanizing. As a result, there aren't any spare parts to be had, so something will have to be fabricated. My plan is to pull molds of the inside of the brace legs to get the tapered shape, and then fit the engine into the frame to figure out where the bungs should be welded to the frame.

So, the next steps are to pull those molds, bolt the engine and gearbox together, and then mount the assembly into the frame.