Esprit Forum show what's possible

Lotus Esprit Forum help out a fellow owner

BigSi, helpers and the Esprit

Here’s a really heart-warming story from the Lotus Esprit forum (LEF), showing just what’s possible when online car enthusiasts work together. Site administrator ‘Bibs’ takes up the story:

“In the middle of 2006 a member signed up wanting a new car. He found one and did a straight swap with his concourse Fairlady for a S3 Esprit Turbo. Once home he found it lacking in pretty much all areas - despite a thorough inspection beforehand. Fortunately, Simon Pritchard, or BigSi as we know him, was a dab hand at car restoration and set about the long task of getting his ‘new’ car to the condition he would like to see it in. It would involve many hours of work over many months, or perhaps years, considering the problems with the car.

Esprit heaven

Unfortunately this was not to be. BigSi’s health conspired against him and he developed Reiters Syndrome on top of his existing lung condition. In turn, this lead to a mini-stroke, or TIA on New Year’s Eve: the first of five in succession. Despite this, BigSi still insisted on working on the car but when I found out that he had passed out in the drive while attempting to remove the rear callipers one day, I decided that enough was enough and it was time that his new friends at LEF stepped in to help, before he did himself some serious damage.

The job was underway: a secret area on our web-based forum was set up that all members bar BigSi could see, read and add to. He didn’t even know it existed so was completely in the dark about our plans. Our initial appeal for donations towards parts was overwhelming with hundreds of people who had never met BigSi - many of whom are abroad and are unlikely to ever do so - sending us what they could spare.

Esprit was completely rebuilt

Our chief mechanic for the project, Troy Halliday was now refusing payment for his time as long as the smurf jokes stopped (he’s 5’ 5”!) and an LEF member in Wales, Simon Thomas, offered his garage, spare rooms and hospitality until the work was completed. We assembled a parts list of what we needed, Troy took BigSi’s car away on the auspice that it was to head with him to his garage in Hertfordshire so he could ‘hopefully get it running again’ and we were underway in our secret location 20 miles from BigSi’s home town.

Over the next five weeks literally hundreds of parts were fitted to the car with people from all over the UK heading to South Wales to help out. Members of LEF from Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Hampshire, Kent and so on came along with spanners and oily things on the weekends while the three main men; Troy, Simon and Punky worked away all week, sometimes starting at 7am and working until 4am the next day. Along with all the hard work much fun was had with midnight BBQ’s and donations of beer arriving unexpectedly to ease the workers’ weary bones.

Many helped in the rebuild...

The work completed on the car would take up 7 pages in a list, so let’s say that the car was stripped of its engine, gearbox, all suspension parts and radiators, and all were either replaced with brand new OEM parts in most cases, or thoroughly restored to ‘as new’ condition. The engine was also given a full rebuild and the suspension replaced with the new Lotus developed Bilstein and Eibach setup. The chassis also received a full strip and repaint with protective paints to make it look as good as new and last another 20+ years. Our estimates are that somewhere in the region of 2,000 man hours were put into this work on the car, with many more hours spent behind the scenes sourcing parts, picking parts up and other associated activities.

The handover to BigSi was also a secret of course, planned entirely without his knowledge and keeping that from him wasn’t easy! Club Lotus hold an annual track day for its members at Castle Combe in Wiltshire and the plan was to have him trackside as his newly restored car whizzed past on the track. This was arranged with thanks to Alan Morgan of Club Lotus and the plan was set, however, we shelved the track idea following an accident the week before after which BigSi mentioned on the forum that he would never, ever take his car on the track…

...to achieve this

55 Esprit’s turned up for the day and approximately 100 people - all keeping Mum about what was to happen. At 2pm, Alan Morgan led out in his Excel closely followed by Simon Thomas and Punky in BigSi’s car. The big man was shocked to say the least, and a very emotional afternoon followed with him seeing all the hard work which had been put into making his not so great Esprit into one of the finest looking and running Giugiaro Esprit’s on the road today.

Thanks must go to all the members of LEF who donated money, time, parts, expertise and beer to the project. Also, Lotus Cars for their help with sourcing parts and technical advice, Club Lotus for allowing the handover to happen on their trackday, South West Lotus for all of their assistance with parts, PNM Engineering, ESPRITism and Frosts for the supply of materials to us.”

For more information, head to:

www.lotusespritforum.com

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chris_crossley

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