Jeemy's Elan Rebuild

[Rusty Wishbone]

Lotus Colours maaaate!

Ah. Yes. How dim of me!

Anyway, I saw this and thought of your workshop: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lotus-PVC-BAN ... 3cd5949612

[JonJon]

Hi Jeemy,
An amazing amount of work you've done, the car is looking great, can I ask where you got the oil filler cap ? Have you sold the wheels? I might be interested if the price is right and if the wife likes them (building the Elan for her).
Cheers Jon.

[Jeemy]

I got the oil filler cap off ebay mate, unfortunately I cannot find the seller reference. It was badged Mugen, although I am not sure it was genuine. The Lotus badge came from an Elise Mugen filler cap.

I originally bought a genuine Mugen which said it would fit Elan & Elise (back in the day, I had no idea there was a difference) - of course, it did not fit, so I pilfered the Lotus badge from it, sold it onwards with the Mugen badge, and put the badge on the one I bought which although it says it is a Mugen, did not come in the same packaging. The difference is £60 vs £10, for the life of me I can't see why they command such a high price or what the difference is.

[Jeemy]

And yes I have the wheels still. Once I get the hubs finished and off, I'm going to start work on this project again - its a bit tight on time still for a couple more days. But prices are a few threads back or in my for sale thread. Lots of people are giving me very positive comments on them, they really like them - its one of the first things they say when they see the car. They are always a bit shocked when I say they are getting binned. But I have, as always, a plan in mind.

[Jeemy]

I should be able to re-start this Friday! I am so excited; I have to say this was excellent therapy - its very nervewracking when each job you do is for the first time, but the sense of satisfaction when you put something back together and it works (this has not always been the case first time) is something else.

I don't think anything will really match the feeling when the engine restarted after all that work. But I think when the brakes and shocks are on, that will be a major good feeling, and after that its when the car is assembled and ready for first MOT in 3 years.

[Jeemy]

BOOM!

Over a month later, I am ready to go. Actually, I've been giving myself a few minutes a day for a while now.

After almost 6 months during which I hurt my back, got my wife pregnant again, got this unit and painted it, filled it to the brim and had to get a second, had a VAT inspection, got ill for 2 weeks, had a very hard time business-wise, and too many other disasters to mention, I'm finally ready to get started.

The respray was a MASSIVE disappointment. Well, I was very happy with the colour, moderately happy with the quality of the work, but flaws in the fibreglass showed up through the paint job during the 6-week curing time. Virtually every panel has a flaw. You can't see them from 2-3 metres away, but my intent was always as close to concours standard as I could get, and I was frankly gutted every time a new flaw appeared. At one point, they were literally appearing every day; when I checked the panels, I'd find a new one.

The second issue was when I went to investigate the play in the rear bushings - over half of them exhibit perishing and severe wear to the metal parts - doubtless contributing to the juddering at over 50mph. I'd always planned to replace them with poly bushings, as advised by SW Lotus when I bought the suspension kit from them. Then I was told that poly would be a bad idea, and original ones are best. But you can't buy these.

After just plain giving up after these two blows, I spent several months just coping with life. I spoke to John (B-C-N) on another matter and he is now giving me help with the bushings issue. Thank god for him.

To get things the way I want them, eventually I bought a second Elan, so that I can be confident that eventually, I will get all the body panels the way I want them.

I can work on the duplicate panel until I am happy, and then transfer it to "my" car.

From now on, I will do all my respray work myself. I hated being in the position where I had to go back to this guy, criticise the work he did and try to make him get it right, cos he has the only and exact blend of paint. So after trying to work out for weeks how to couch this, I decided not to go back to him. I'll get the parts stripped and redone and spray them off the car, when I am happy, I'll swap them over. But this way I get to have my cake and eat it, I get to actually finish and drive the car, which SHOULD be the priority, and I get to be confident I will get the car EXACTLY how I want it - which is my priority - albeit this is now an eventual, rather than ongoing, matter. I'm a bit anal about these things, can you tell? I was so close to stopping, because I couldn't see a way I would be able to finish it without being dissatisfied with some of the work. And if I was going to be dissatisfied, what was the point of spending more money on it? The parts I needed were getting out of my reach financially. Thankfully, a whole car came to less than the parts I needed, and it gives me a second chance on everything - so I have a way forward now and I will do everything myself from here on in.

First step is the rear suspension & brakes strip & rebuild. Then the front. I don't want two sets of mechanical workings in my head so I will do rears until I'm happy, then do fronts.

While I deliberate over either or both of these, I'll work on the electrics - new lights, boot release, that kind of thing. Also full A, B, C and whatever other letter can be thought of, service. As soon as the car can move again, I can have the windscreen done. As soon as thats done, I can empty the interior and send it off to be redone, and finish the engine bay. While the interior redoing happens, stereo and speakers get installed. Then roll cage and interior install, and finally wheels, tyres and balancing. SO happy to be started again. Almost 50 pics to upload over the next few days…..

[Rusty Wishbone]

Good to see you back.

I've just rebuilt the rear suspension & brakes on my car, so I'll chip in with advice if I get the opportunity.

On the re-spray, I recall seeing someone on TV a while ago who skimmed a fibreglass body with a paste containing fine fibres before rubbing down and painting. I think that this was intended to stop any crazing coming through. Have you looked at such a thing?

[maz_r]

Google says it was on Wheeler Dealers, where they prepared a Stingray with black carbon fiber filler before painting. Word on t'Interweb is that this isn't really the right way to go about it....but I don't have sufficient knowledge myself....

[Jeemy]

It should have been taken right back to zero damage - i.e. sand away all the cracks, which will move on expansion/contraction from heat (at least as far as I understand it) to leave solid resin, which should then be built back up with new fibreglass, and then covered over with gelcoat before painting. This is a flexible coat designed to prevent these kind of things.

I cut these back to what I thought was good enough, went over it with the guy (you know me, I drew detailed diagrams) and then checked with him he'd be putting the correct gelcoat on. To be honest, I sanded the areas to draw attention to them, and asked him to take care over these particular areas.

I even named the products I wanted and he gave me a bill with them on. I cannot tell whether he bought them and used them and if he did, he got the mechanics of it wrong - or if he plain ignored me. His attitude, and my experience with a previous spray job he did for me - which caused me to be SUPERcautious with this one - suggests the latter.

What Rusty is talking about sounds just like fibre in resin - a fibreglass repair.

The thing that confuses me, is the actual crack - rather than crazing, or splitting of the topcoat - he did a great job on!

Honestly, if I took photos, you'd tell me to STFU. These aren't major problems. But if I am putting 4-digit sums into a car I would only ever recover 3-digit figures on, I abhor a waste.

How about some photos? I looked at the wrong folder. Its 147 photos.

[Jeemy]

I'd really hoped to subdivide these by jobs, but I am going to be hopping between jobs for a LONG time. And I feel calmer when I am posting these up daily and recording what I am up to.

So here's what I've done so far in no particular order.

I had removed all the plastic parts from the interior, as they are going to be covered in sumptuous, sumptuous leather.

First was the back bar over the hood stowage area. It has little metal clips to protect the attachment points. Pried off with a flathead:

I just want to have all of this as perfect as possible, so the leather job is as good as possible. I found the best thing to scrape all the old glue off was a stanley blade in a window scraper.

The centre console compartment, has a glued in area both top and bottom, gently prised off:

I also removed the bottom section. I'd like to reflock these in walnut.

There's some nasty stuff on these. I've actually removed it but don't have the photos handy (turtle wax interior fabric cleaner, hard plastic brush, wipe down with wet micro fibre, hoover with tiny henry).

The hinges have to come off too, these are attached with tiny black bolts:

There are little tiny plastic clips on this piece where the lid closes. You may not care, but I will when I come to replace it:

Again, in the interest of the leather being perfect, the handbrake surrounds have to come out. Sorry, I have to document all of this in case I forget:

I removed this metal piece (sorry, this was days ago) and seem to have noted there are more than one):

OK, I've got more of these but I don't need to bore you with them. Just keep it to 10 at a time by project.

[Jeemy]

Even I'm boring myself. I'll try to skip through to present day as quick as poss.

Lights - still revising UK rules but have plans.

This is the rubber surrounds. The best thing for cleaning these, and most everything else is Huggies like what you'd wipe the baby's bum with; before:

During (ok, I'm not going to go THAT fast):

And after:

After this I soaked them in APC for a bit and then dried with a Huggy and wiped down with Gummi-Pflege, a rubber protectant. Pics later with the rest of the work.

I'll come back to the rest of the interior later.

[Jeemy]

I've already posted the instructions for replacing the hubs elsewhere which get you to here - wheel off, hub/disc off, caliper hung:

Its easy just to flick the handbrake cable off if you disengage it before starting all of this:

Pry out the front retaining clip for the rear outer brake pad:

And out comes the pad:

Skipping a couple of pics, pull out the inner pad, tie off the brake cable, and release the banjo bolt attached to the calliper:

The banjo has the obvious copper crush washers either side:

[Jeemy]

Moved to the other side as the light was better; I let the brake fluid drip from the caliper and the banjo for a bit:

At this stage, I took a bundle of notes, but they aren't here and I am in the mood to clear through all of these. What I will say is that I took the advice of Car Mechanics magazine and bought a 3/4" socket set - a Draper set where the ratchet bar is adjustable in length. This is the second time I did this - and it was 100 times easier than the first.

From memory, 22mm sockets jammed on a breaker bar on one side, and a 3/4" ratchet on the other, free'd the lower hub carrier bolt quite easily:

And 19mm to the top:

Learning from previous mistakes, I left the hub carrier on to use the car as a vice bench. This meant I could get the rear calliper carrier off using a 6mm socket allen bolt, which you have to hammer past the rust:

Hub as we've seen pull off quite easily. Next thing is to separate the brakes lines from the wishbone mount, from memory its a 11/16 spanner - its certainly imperial, and a mole grip on the tiny part as per the other thread I got the advice on:

Next thing was to lift off the anti-roll bar. After a bit of f**king about, I decided I wouldn't mess with the top section for now, and held the shown section with mole grips while I prised off the lower bit with what from memory was a 17 or 19mm socket:

As I think I mentioned before, I certainly thought of it, the suspension bolts are a bit easier than normal to remove. I used GT85 a week in advance and found a ratchet spanner and a big bloody wrench at 19mm each, dealt with the inner wishbone bolts very easily. I tried my best to note down where the bolts, washers and so forth went.

Same on the bolt to the rear:

Second time around having learnt from my mistakes, I went round loosening all of these bolts with the BBWtm, and didn't bother supporting the wishbone, because I needed to remove the suspension arm. Its best to let it hang loose when you release it. If there is any resistance it can ping off where you least want it. 17mm either side as I recall…..

[Jeemy]

So a little bit more loosening and all the wishbones, hub carriers etc just come off. Next is removal of the suspension shock arm itself - 3 x 13mm (from memory) nuts, and an arm round the other side, its very easy:

Once the arm is out, to remove the top nut its a bit fiddly to get the bit below in a vice, 14mm from memory. I'd of course compressed the springs before this:

Off came top hat, rubber washer and metal cap:

Under which (according to my photo log order, I'll need to check this out in more detail later) is a harder rubber locator:

Under that, another hard rubber locator married to a metal washer, both of which seem to screw off from memory (this is why I want to be logging s*it daily - luckily I have a second set to do which I'll record in more detail):

And thats the shocks ready to replace:

[Jeemy]

Bushings.

Bushings, bushings, bushings. I'll rant about these at length, I am sure. For now, just trying to get my diary up to date.

After a LOT of playing around, I developed the below home-made pressing tool using a 14mm long socket (right), a jack cup extension (left), several washers, a threaded rod, ratchet spanners and fixed spanners held against the workbench:

Using this tool, I could remove the bulk of the outer and one side of the inner part of the bushing (right) and then just pop out the remaining part of the inner (left). Leaving the metal sleeve to remove. At this point, I discovered the issue with poly bushings and their replacement possibilities.

Probably a good time to leave it there tonight. Easily 100 more photos, I think I'll save most of them and collate them into sections for the work done as and when its close to finished,

[Jeemy]

OK, in the mood to do a little more.

Next was the brake calliper. Apologies for the spelling, Safari keeps correcting it and I'm not correcting it back.

In a vice, off comes the handbrake bracket lever. I don't have a vice at the workshop, but thats something I need to fix. For this stuff, a vice on a bench is essential.

This is dirty as all hell, and done from memory, I think the bolt shown just came off easily.

Two washers folded off it:

And in some happy way or other, then out came the piston:

I really apologise for this, its not how I wanted to be presenting things. But I will be doing the work a second time on the other side of the car and will note it down more detailed next time.

I soaked all the parts in Tardis for several weeks, after which they looked like this:

Not much improvement - certainly not what I hoped. I dumped them in my "grade 1" parts washer - 25L of Comma Hyperclean - and prepared to order all new nylon nuts, and sandblast the rest.

I dropped a nut into the hole in the brake calliper where the banjo lived. I am aware I won't be able to sandblast the calliper for risk of scratching the piston "socket" - but I want to get it a bloody sight cleaner than this.

Following the instructions on the wiki that I posted on Rusty's thread, I tried to pull the piston boot off (I've bought the calliper refurb kit from SJS).

It doesn't come off easily with fingers:

And pliers just rip it:

But at least once I ripped it, I could make out (having spent some time with torches already) the retaining ring, which once you know what you are doing, presses out with a wide-blade screwdriver fairly easily:

Circlip pliers remove the next ring down:

[Jeemy]

At least halfway, and then you can ease it out with a fine screwdriver:

After which the holder ring, and piston locator ring below (which doesn't seem to be broken on factory install), come out together:

The slider pins are including in the rebuild kit, and tap out easily using the back of an appropriate socket:

And although a certain Mr Brown has stated the pistons themselves are sealed units and can't be rebuilt, the rebuild PDF on the wiki mentions replacing this rubber cap - it never mentions removing it - I removed it, and 1-2ml of what I presume is brake fluid came out.

I want it clean, they are £32.50 each to replace, and being honest, this whole calliper rebuild is a practice exercise - I intend to have ideally Hi-Spec, but if not, any other gold anodised callipers on the rears and to understand it all - so my plan is to hard plug this hole, sand the thing smooth and then fill it with brake fluid at pressure, before refitting:

[Jeemy]

I think thats actually it. I have tons more photos but thats the gist of where I am. I am building a bigger sandblasting booth, now have a proper parts washer, and am moving my vice to my existing workshop.

Over the next few days I hope to clean the brake callipers to completion, paint and rebuild them. I've ground the anti-roll bar back to bare metal and will be using Bilt-Hamber hydrate-80 to cure it before repainting it and several other parts. I'll be cleaning up the underside - the original work done was very rough and I hope to get it clean and painted to a very high standard. I'll remove the back bumper, deal with the colours and steel and plastics below decks, and finally, cold zinc galvanise the ARB.

By which time, I hope to know where I am with bushings. This is the big bottleneck for me. While I sort it out, I can learn how to make brake lines and be ready to refurbish the wishbones - my guess is that if the ones on the donor car have OK bushings, I'll move them over (it has substantially less miles and more care than my car), and strip out my existing wishbones in the hope of duplicating them for LEC as per my Group Buy thread.

In the interim, I started on the electrics and lights. More on that in a few days.

[Jeemy]

As I've said, I really hoped to post up in sections. But unless I detail stuff with photos, I can't keep it straight in my head. I started a whole new task management system for what order I need to do everything in, but the best tonic is simply to post up here with some photos.

I'm only going to post relevant photos though. I did some messing around removing the front headlights, and indicators, the usual story with this car, 70% of the bolts came out fine, some needed a few days of penetrating fluid, some will need drilled out. I'll post the storyline on that later as I really need to get all the lights finished to adequately test, and before I can do that, the bumpers need to come off.

Main thing has been as my donor car won't now arrive until the 31st, I can't really go much further on the back suspension/brakes. In the interim, I've started putting together my assembly line for parts cleaning and sandblasting. I should be able to move several parts along a stage a day, instead of trying to get all the parts to one stage and work on them all together - a recipe (for me) for getting confused. Photos on that soon.

So the big thing I can do is start to disassemble the front suspension and brakes.

The CJ Autos ramps are brilliant but they recommend (and you have to) keeping the handbrake off while you pump them up - the reason for this is clear. They move laterally a good 10 inches or more on lifting. This is not ideal when you have the back of the car on axle stands. So I spent several hours with my high lift jack and a supporting ramp on the other side, under the jacking points just in case of mishaps, preparing to get the car sitting on 4 stands. Eventually I got the car down onto the stands, fairly level:

In photos its a lot more apparent the overspray thats hit this area. I'd be inclined just to leave it and clean it in place given my bushing problems, but the suspension itself is getting changed, so the rest might as well come out to have the bushings checked, the parts cleaned - "while I'm in there", the project continues to creep.

With the wheels off I can also start preparing to deal with the wheel arch liners:

First thing according to the service manual is to get the old pads out. Without a pin drift I used a stubby philips head screwdriver to get enough purchase to hammer out the pad retaining roll pins, the wire springs just popped off as I did this:

Pushing the calliper out and in allows you to wiggle the pads out. Apparently. I had very little movement available, so I used a big screwdriver and a hammer to tap the outwards away from the hub and through the back of the calliper.

I then used an 11mm socket to loosen the brake fluid banjo and start the fluid draining into my bucket:

Once removed (the bolt has the usual copper washer to each side) and the fluid drained, I turned my attention to the sliding sleeve's protective caps. These were easiest removed using mole grips, I couldn't get them to prise.

Once off, I used a T55 bit (I would have liked to try a slightly larger size as it felt somewhat loose, but T60 was the next Torx bolt I had and was too large) and out came the pins - the calliper just fell off once the pins were out:

I put the whole lot to one side just now - as new callipers are going on completely, I need to find the instructions for that next. Then looking at what I had in front of me I remembered I have NEW FRONT WISHBONES! somewhere…..these will need found too, together with the CV joint boot & tool.

[Jeemy]

At this stage I need to do some thinking. I need to check the ball joint gaiters - apparently if these are damaged, the whole ball joint should be replaced. At £30 each this is probably a wise investment.

I don't know what to do about what lies under the CV gaiter and until I find the MOT, not even sure which one is bad. I think as I have 4, I'll replace at least 2; can't even remember which ones I have replacements for.

I'm going to need to think carefully about how I adjust it all once its back on to get the car performing well, and try to anticipate this as best I can on reassembly.

What I CAN do, and know has to be done, is to change over the suspension strut. So I started revising section CE4 of the manual in preparation for removal of the shock absorber. Once thats out I can look at the bits and try to work out what is best.