Lotus Europa Resto/Project Under Way

Lotus Europa Resto/Project Under Way

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Discussion

Tubes63

Original Poster:

130 posts

129 months

Tuesday 16th May 2017
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bow

Feel like a rich man, now, Brian! Appreciate the resources.

Bobo W

761 posts

251 months

Tuesday 16th May 2017
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Bobo W said:
- I'm 6ft 3in and fitted albeit with a saucer for a steering, the seats are laid back and supremely comfortable, you might be able to fix the seat to the floor to liberate a bit of extra headroom

- the umbrella handbrake is next to useless so never gets used at least until MOT time.

- my memory maybe playing tricks on me but I believe the original 1470cc engine was from a Renault 14 although availability of parts meant many were subsequently fitted with the 1565cc from the 16 - mine was, with a straight through drainpipe of an exhaust!

- getting the gear linkages right can be problematic given the number of ball joints

- Richard Winter at Banks is your friend for all things Europa but I guess you know that
my car was a 1470cc but availability of parts and costs made the decision for Richard to fit the 1565cc a lot easier although he did a very good job of pushing the 1800cc Fuego Turbo engine as an alternative.

You're obviously not short of sources of information but just to add to that I used Alpine specialists for engine spares as the A110 used the same engine

robinessex

11,046 posts

180 months

Tuesday 16th May 2017
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I put a smaller steering wheel in my Lotus TC, as I found I could catch my hand between the wheel and the windscreen. Keep the original though

PS Anyone know where LYY 667 K is ? It's taxed and MOT'd

Edited by robinessex on Tuesday 16th May 09:50

Astacus

3,363 posts

233 months

Tuesday 16th May 2017
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We definitely need to see a blow by blow, knuckle scrape by knuckle scrape rebuild diary of this car... keep us posted.. with plenty of pics...

Astacus

3,363 posts

233 months

Tuesday 16th May 2017
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Tubes63 said:
Cheers,

Just went to grab a copy of this on your recommendation... Not sure what the wife's reaction will be when I tell her I spent nearly £200 on a short used book from the 80s! laugh bodes well for the rest of the project!
Oops sorry. Did don't realise they were gold dust. Must dig out my old copy and put it somewhere safe!

brycheiniog1

116 posts

129 months

Tuesday 16th May 2017
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What is the firewall like? I am currently baby sitting a friends Europa (2L Vx & a bunch of Banks bits) whilst he moves house and the firewall looks like it is made from oil soaked carpet!!

Tubes63

Original Poster:

130 posts

129 months

Tuesday 16th May 2017
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brycheiniog1 said:
What is the firewall like? I am currently baby sitting a friends Europa (2L Vx & a bunch of Banks bits) whilst he moves house and the firewall looks like it is made from oil soaked carpet!!
Haha sounds delightful. Doesn't seem bad at all from first impressions but I haven't had a proper dig in the engine bay/interior yet except for a quick clean.

Cheers for the interest, chaps; I'll be sure to keep as thorough a log as I can.


Bobo W

761 posts

251 months

Wednesday 17th May 2017
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Here's a picture of my S2



And again alongside a friends S2 which he still owns 25 years on



Said car though is now a bit like Triggers broom having morphed into a Banks 47 with XE power


gibbon

2,182 posts

206 months

Wednesday 17th May 2017
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OP would you mind passing on the details of the friends paint shop you will be using?

I have a early plus 2 that im contemplating having the body resprayed, and am finding it hard to find a person i trust without paying obscene money. Feel free to email me it if you wish.

Lovely story and project, good luck.

Many thanks

Tubes63

Original Poster:

130 posts

129 months

Wednesday 17th May 2017
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gibbon said:
OP would you mind passing on the details of the friends paint shop you will be using?

I have a early plus 2 that im contemplating having the body resprayed, and am finding it hard to find a person i trust without paying obscene money. Feel free to email me it if you wish.

Lovely story and project, good luck.

Many thanks
Sure thing, will email them through (not sure about rules on posting info on here etc.) smile

Tubes63

Original Poster:

130 posts

129 months

Wednesday 17th May 2017
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Quick update:

If anyone is interested, my old man has caught wind of this thread and has provided me with a few corrections to my history:

1) My father actually bought the car the day after his own father's funeral, as you do... he also bought it directly from Squeaky before he passed away. Poor squeaky was apparently unwell and knew he could not finish the project.

2) the damage was not done on returning from Le Mans, but on the way to Le Mans, immediately (and I mean immediately) after picking it up from its restoration. In the words of the old man himself: "one mile down the road and BANG"

3) the kind French-type who sorted the spare part was driving a white van with "washing machine repair" written on the side (in French) and did not ask for payment, and no deal was done. He gave the part freely and my father sent him back a replacement when he got home.

texaxile

3,289 posts

149 months

Wednesday 17th May 2017
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This is the essence of PH - great interesting thread with history and hopefully a blow by blow account of the resto.

Awesome!

Tubes63

Original Poster:

130 posts

129 months

Friday 19th May 2017
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Quick update.

Set out today to try and get the radiator out and the front compartment as clear as possible, with the idea being to start making progress towards getting the body off asap.

Being used to working on my rotten and unreliable Land Rover I was worried that the fiberglass body and little more than 1,000 miles since the last rebuild might mean that I wouldn't get to experience the joys of rusty metal showering down into my eyes... Oh how happy I was to find that almost every bolt was rusted tight and the washers completely disintegrated. Not to mention the pile of rusty garbage left behind by the spare wheel which is looking decidedly worse for wear. Thankfully because this is probably mostly from rainwater while being sat uncovered, I am still confident that I will find the chassis in good condition when the body comes up.

Anyway, rusted nuts and bolts were conquered with the help of these little extractor sockets, which I had never heard of before I bought them for my crappy Land Rover, but which are the best thing in my toolbox:



These ones are from Irwin but I have another set from someone else, equally good, just slightly different sizes.

First step was to drain the coolant, and since the workshop manual suggests just removing the bottom hose from the radiator that's what I did. Sounds a lot easier than it was, because the head for the hose clip was facing directly into the steering rack:



Eventually the bottom hose came off and because I had positioned the drip tray significantly wrong, I succeeded in making a mess of my floor and creating a small puddle inside the body itself. The jug is there to collect the water trickling out of the radiator (into said puddle). It's the only thing I could find to hand that would fit. I also removed the horn which would have been in the way of the top hose.



And with top and bottom hoses removed.



Next step was to undo more extremely rusty bolts and get the radiator onto the workbench. Thanks to my lengthy limbs this was possible without assistance, but it did involve wrapping one arm into the wheel arch while the other was on the radiator, with my head nestled comfortably into the place where the headlights would go. If anyone had come to the door at that point it would have looked like I was rather more fond of my car than I would want anyone to think.

Anyway the bolts all came out with some effort, and the radiator was removed.







And electric fan separated:



This gave me the opportunity to take my first real look at the front suspension components. From what I saw, I'm not too concerned. Looks very simple, and corrosion-free. Plenty of dead rubber, and probably some new springs needed, but that shouldn't be a problem.



Getting the rad out let me access the side-indicators, which were removed. The housing is riveted in so will extract them later.



And I found a little more damage:



Since I was on a roll I decided to take the blower out as well, however when I took the hose off from where it joined the body, I found that it was connected to exactly nothing and there was a blanking plate behind it... Curious!





And this is where we are left now:



So the only things left in the front bay which require shifting before the body can come off are the washer bottle and the brake fluid reservoir (looks like the throttle may need to be disconnected as well but I count that as "interior")

If you are wondering about the pile of shirts nestled in the corner a couple pictures up, this is what was wrapped inside them:



The offending part from the Le Mans trip! OK, not split in two, but definitely broken.

That's all for now, hopefully some more progress this weekend.


Edited by Tubes63 on Friday 19th May 18:32


Edited again because Photobucket died

Edited by Tubes63 on Friday 15th September 10:07

Tubes63

Original Poster:

130 posts

129 months

Saturday 20th May 2017
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Not much time today but the front is now stripped and ready for the body to come up. Will start clearing the engine bay next, then the interior (pedals, linkage, dash/electrics) once I figure out where to store all the bulky bits!



Edited by Tubes63 on Friday 15th September 10:12

Tubes63

Original Poster:

130 posts

129 months

Sunday 21st May 2017
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Made a start on the rear today in between BBQing and baking myself on the lawn. Stripped the ignition coil, fuel pump. coolant reservoir and hoses and heater control valve, and removed the battery leads from where they ran along the bodywork.

The fuel pump was an interesting one. It was held on by three bolts that were attached to what looked like little rubber bushes/dampers, the dampers themselves seemingly directly bonded to the body somehow (at least, I can't see how they are otherwise affixed). The interesting part is that the pump was hanging on for dear life, with two of the three fixing points torn from their place and the remaining one looking very worse for wear. Not sure how long it would have held on there if the car was running, and since it's probably not best practice to have your fuel pump dangling loose in the engine bay I will be investigating replacement mountings.

The fuel pump:


This is where I left her today. The exhaust silencer is stuck fast, no amount of thumping or pulling seems to be getting it out, so will need to investigate a solution there, too. Has to go for the body to come off. (this picture is just before the heater control valve came off)



This evening I decided to take a quick look at what we were facing in terms of stripping and repainting the body and it has left me a little puzzled. Would appreciate opinions here.

This is where I started to investigate (where the windscreen meets the body) by peeling away the cracked paint with my fingers and then giving it a bit of a scrape. To me, this looks like yellow paint on top, followed by grey primer, on top of red, on top of orange, on top of yellow, on top of brighter yellow, on top of fiberglass:



And on the other side of the windscreen, same again. Yellow, grey, red, orange, yellow, yellow, fiberglass:



And down by the indicator, same again, although seemingly much thinner paint; Yellow, grey, red, orange, yellow, yellow, fiberglass (fiberglass not shown here):



And then on the rear wing, the lip of the "bread van" part, is where I became confused. I did the same thing, peeled away what looked like loose paint, to reveal this:



Here it seems to go Yellow, Grey, Questionable Beige Substance, Red, Orange, Yellow. But is the questionable substance fiberglass as well? Or filler? Why would there be filler? Or do you think it's just where the primer has piled up and created a really thick layer... And the thickness of said layer varies from the top right of the photo above to the middle of the photo. At the middle, it's a good few mm thick!

Anyway, opinions welcomed. Let me know what you think.

Cheers

Edited by Tubes63 on Friday 15th September 10:25

TooMany2cvs

29,008 posts

125 months

Sunday 21st May 2017
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No, not filler... Just 10mm thick primer...

Astacus

3,363 posts

233 months

Sunday 21st May 2017
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ETA: Actually, it could be filler. In fact it looks very much like Isopon P38. Looking at your first picture, it looks like the level of the bodywork had possibly been built up slightly to match the level of the bonnet

looking at my car I had Green, orange blue, another blue then Gold

Edited by Astacus on Sunday 21st May 23:19

b2hbm

1,291 posts

221 months

Monday 22nd May 2017
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It could be normal filler or more likely polyester spray filler which is what it sounds like, a sprayable filler. Good hold-out against shrinkage and builds up much thicker than conventional primers. It's supposed to be used on the bare shell but it'll stick between paint layers as well.

Whatever it is, it needs to come off and get down to the bare gelcoat to be certain of a decent paint job. There's an old book by Miles Wilkins in the Osprey restoration series called "Paintwork" which is worth a read. Unlike his book on fibreglass restoration in the same series, that usually goes for sensible money on Ebay and although it's very dated now it does have good sections on body preparation which are still relevant today.

Tubes63

Original Poster:

130 posts

129 months

Monday 22nd May 2017
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Ok so it's probably a good idea to get rid of it then. I was nervous to chip away at it because it seemed so fundamental to the shape of the body! If I get rid of the entire coat (plus three/four coats of paint) the weight savings might be enough to compensate for my gut! laugh

Chipped away a little more toward the door as I was curious, still makes me nervous just looking at how ridiculously thick that layer is:



and pushed the car out into the sunshine to get cracking on the interior; rusty screws make progress very slow, so only the centre console and door trim is out so far. I stopped when I saw how much of a faff getting the doors off their hinges is going to be.



And made a little more progress in the engine bay, freed up the fuel tank and lines, throttle and choke cables, most of the wiring, speedo cable. Just the clutch cable to come out and the silencer to come off (still stuck).

My spreadsheet (nerd) tells me I have the following to do before we can take the body off:

1) disconnect and remove all the heater hoses
2) remove seats (I looked today and they won't move forward on their rails so could be interesting trying to get the rear bolts off)
3) remove pedal assembly
4) Handbrake lever
5) brake master cylinder
6) steering column
7) possibly remove some of the coolant pipes beneath the car

You will notice the work I haven't yet done mostly involved me lying on the ground or getting into tight spaces biggrin

The above should be a day or two worth of work... Which means I'll be stuck waiting for the 340R to go home in July before I can actually lift the body, and I can't look at the brakes because there isn't enough room, so will start to focus on the interior and pretty bits I guess (rechroming, changing out gauges etc.).

Edited by Tubes63 on Friday 15th September 10:29

b2hbm

1,291 posts

221 months

Monday 22nd May 2017
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By all means try to remove the door hinge pins as it says in the manual, it's one of those jobs that true enthusiasts call "character forming". wink

If you're lucky the bottom of the pins won't have rusted solid and you'll be able to get a threaded bar through the sill to make a sort of slide hammer arrangement. (it's good to think positive). With the car a foot or so in the air the pins should slide out through the holes in the sills.

If your car is normal though, it will be a rusty mess. I'd try to get the pin rotating in the body bushes - mole grips on the bit you can see inside the door - and once that's moving you've just got the rusted door bushes to contend with. Again, so you can fully appreciate the joys of working on an old Lotus, give it a week or so of release fluid and skinned knuckles before slipping a hacksaw blade above & below the door to cut through the pin. Slide out door, knock out remnants of pins, then start again on the other door......

Most folks either replace with Bank's hinges or the Lotus arrangement but using a stainless pin. (I think it's 1/2" rod ? easy to make anyway.)

Brian