Paul Coleman

I saw a comment on another forum that asked if his booster seat was part of the 350 sale

This is the first of the three wheel trolleys I need to make. I had some metal paint kicking around in the garage so I treated it to a coat of paint. I actually bought the paint to paint the front gates but I've been too busy playing cars so the gates still haven't been painted, oh well... The 10" swivel wheels will make it easier to move around on my gravel driveway. This will also be very useful for painting it as I will be able to spin it over and do the underside as well. One down and one to go and then onto the frame to mount the body on.

Ah the eBay one! Yeah it looks like a good starting point The sun visor frames and brackets are available from SJ Sportscars and the window motors are also available new off eBay... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/194238422977?hash=item2d39831fc1:g:EksAAOxy9X5TbBLs https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/203518702688?hash=item2f62a8f460:g:K6oAAOxyUgtTPGkK

I made one for the e-type I was restoring but I sold it when I sold the car last year. I didn't think I'd ever need it again! It had a locking bolt to keep it in whatever position you wanted so I will do something similar with this one... I'm going to make the width of the movable bits 2m so it will be stable enough

Nope, I'm going to make a rotisserie so I can turn the whole body through 360 degrees. I want it upside down to do the repairs and with a rotisserie I can spin it on my own. Watch this space...

Hahaha good idea! I hadn't thought of that

I have moved the stands which were holding the body up so that they run lengthways instead of across as I need access to the tunnel where the chassis sits... And I have bought a load of mild steel box section and two bits of round pipe... Plus I bought 6 of these 10" swivel wheels... Can you guess what I'm going to be making next week? The clue is the round pipe, where I needed two bits where one fits inside the other.

The bloke who trims cars for SJ said he had spent ages scouring the country and couldn't find anybody. You apparently run the risk of sparking which on a nylon material will ruin your day.

The marcasite type seats were originally ultrasonically welded to create the ridges but you try and find somebody to replicate that now!

I thought I'd better just check the heater matrix that came with the heater I have so I rigged up a contraption that Heath Robinson would have been proud of... I put 40 psi into it as I wanted to see if it had any weak spots and sure enough there's a tiny leak on one of the corners of the matrix. You can just see it here in the top corner as a tiny stream of bubbles where the horizontal pipe connects to the end tank... It may have been water tight and just not air tight but it's not worth taking a chance as you basically build the car around the heater and changing it after the fact would be a nightmare of a job so it needs re-coring. I was lucky that the heater even had a matrix as the replacement ones that SJ sell are not the same. The pipes on theirs come out at a different position so I suspect these early ones are no longer available but at least I have one to rebuild.

@LOTUSMAN33 has just done something similar I believe...

Has anybody got a LH bare fibreglass door shell for an S1/S2 or possibly S3 if they're the same physical size/shape.

I made a bit more progress on the most important part of the mongrel... the heater! The heater I bought was missing the plastic pipe reducers to get from the heater outlet to the actual flexible pipe which feeds the fresh air vents and demisters. So, after a failed attempt at 3D printing some Amazon came to the rescue and I bought some which were close-ish... They're a bit thicker than the originals would have been but beggars can't be choosers. There are 2 fresh air vents and 2 demister vents. I was very fortunate to find the correct heater so I haven't had to add/remove vent holes - I've quite possibly bought back the original heater which came with this car! I just need to get a motor for the blower and pressure test the matrix and I can put it all back together ready to go back in the car

I did a bit of investigation today on the passenger side door. I fully expected that this had been 'repaired' as the definition of the waistline on the door had been filled in on one side. I wasn't disappointed, well actually I was disappointed at the way it had been repaired! You can see here where I've stripped it down through all the layers to the gelcoat... There should be a nice ridge horizontally down the middle of the door but unfortunately that's been deleted with the repairs. the polyester filler is very thick and the door has almost been carved out of the stuff. There should be two parallel lines down the middle of the door but you can see here that they're nothing like that... The hole is for the pop rivet that holds the carrier strip that the waistline trim fixes to. God knows what they used on the door to make those scratch marks, the roughest file known to man I should think. I could repair this but I'm not sure it's worth the time and aggravation if I can get another door shell. I have all the internal metalwork so I just need the bare fibreglass shell. It will take a lot of effort to recreate this area properly so if it's not too expensive I will just buy another shell. So if you have one in the back of the shed for the passenger side of an S1/S2 let me know I have contacted LotusBits and I'm waiting for them to check...

I bought a heater for the mongrel a while back and there were a few bits missing which I need to source. The Bowden cables that operate the flaps were missing along with the adjustable ends that the cables sit in. These allow you to fix the cable to the heater and I couldn't find any that were a close enough match so somebody at the college where I used to work made me a pair from scratch... I just need to make the loops in the end of the cable to fix it to the lever and it will be good to go but I'll wait until I fit the heater as the cables need shortening. He's made me a pair as there are 2 flaps that need to be controlled... The 2 nuts give you a bit of adjustment if the length isn't exact. I can do without ABS, traction control, air bags etc. but I can't do without a heater! As I've said before I find it ironic that some of the stuff I've bought for this car has probably come off it in the first place. Still, if that's the case then I'm reuniting it back again Somebody sent me a picture the other day of the original head from the car but they're unlikely to sell it, so it's probably gone forever. The other thing I need for the heater is a single speed fan motor so if you have a spare one you don't need that you would sell then please let me know.

I had a bit of a session on the mongrel today looking at the bodywork. So I did a bit of stripping on the front wing. I counted 5 layers if you count them from bottom to top above the waistline... We have the redish paint on the bottom, then a yellow'ish primer, then another red layer, then a grey primer and finally a light grey polyester. If you look closely, you can see the blisters in the paint so I suspect the polyester had moisture in it which all came out and blistered the paintwork. I suspect the car has been in a side impact with another car at some point, which is why the waistline moulding is missing down one side of the car. I took some paint off areas of the front wing and it's had a lot of fibreglass repairs on that wing. You can see here that all around the wheel arch it's been repaired... To the left at the top of the wing is the original red gelcoat but then it's all fibreglass repairs to the right. There's a fair sized vertical ridge if you look? So then I checked the other side of the wheel arch just to see if that had also been repaired and sure enough it has. You can see here I've gone down to the repairs in the middle... So my analysis is that it's been side swiped at some point and has also been painted twice. So all of that has got to come off as I want to see exactly what's been done to this car before I start the repairs. It's going to be a long job stripping this! The HPI check was all clear so this damage was a minor shunt and with a car which is 44 years old it's not surprising that it has a bit of history.

The car actually hammered for £53k but the price they quoted included the buyer's premium. I saw the car and he'd done a great job on it and must have been gutted to lose money on it after 2,000 man hours

And how has it held up after 4 or 5 years?

I'm planning on spraying it rather than brushing it but I have seen that it's supposed to give a good finish even when it's brushed on. Thanks. More time for 'playing cars' hahaha

No real progress lately as I'm concentrating on finishing up at work as I retire on Wednesday. So after that I will hopefully have more time to work on the mongrel. I pulled the fuel pump and fuel lines off today. The pump wouldn't work so I took it apart and cleaned the points and hey-presto it now works fine. So I then cut all the fittings off the original braided fuel lines so that I can just buy some fuel hose and clips and re-make them as per the originals. The question is am I going to go down the plating route on this only to find in 4 years it's all rusting or am I just going to reuse it as it is and not worry about it? I've decided to use POR-15 on the chassis and all the suspension components and I'm going to prep them myself so that I can follow their instructions as it's important to prep it correctly or it will not adhere properly. I don't really want to have to throw £30k at this think so I'm thinking about just recommissioning it rather than fully restoring it...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284031905675?hash=item42219eef8b:g:OK4AAOSwK2VfduVU

Jonathan, if you get stuck I have a 12 ton press in the garage you can use when you come to pickup the wheels.

I can't answer for Pete but I took my motor out the other week and it's an easy job as it's only held in with three nuts. You need to drop the window half way down to start with (as it makes it easier) and it might be worth marking where the motor mount is located before you undo it as the door check strap will also be loose when you've taken the motor off. Once you've undone the 3 nuts you need to get the motor out of the door and then slide the arm out of the runner fitted to the bottom of the glass. At that point there will be nothing stopping the glass from dropping so I usually put some tape round the frame onto the glass to stop it going anywhere. The bottom nut is a pain to get to but you should be able to get a spanner on it.

I used 2-pack satin black, the same black as everywhere else on the car

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/393385630798?epid=10029708743&hash=item5b979c5c4e:g:BIoAAOSw3ktgv149