910Esprit

You are ramping up the drama Fabian! Mine has never failed to start or get me to and from a destination in in about 40k miles and 26 years of ownership... A well maintained Lotus is a perfectly reliable thing.

Just seen this - I simply used a generic flat copper washer from a 'multipack' it formed to the flare and sealed perfectly.

I reckon if you built a 'new' car entirely from brand new replacement/pattern parts it would be the biggest crock of s**t ever!! 🙃 Like you, the non-standard thermostat is worrying, but odd why the car then runs OK on the road. Maybe you need to interrogate the previous owner - There are 2 possibilities: Either one of the new parts have introduced the problem, or someone has spent a lot of money chasing this problem but has still not resolved it.... NB - Find another LC owner, leave the 2 cars idling while comparing temperatures at all points of the system

Wonder if it would be worth temporarily bypassing the rad, just to rule out a blockage there?

Dont worry about it, as long as the distributor has been timed correctly and the cams and crank marks have the correct alignment, it makes not a jot of difference.... NB I'd personally redo it as I like things to be 'just so'

Err no - Stop driving until you have identified and fixed it!

Am I allowed to prefer the one in the background? (Not the VW)

Have you sold it?

I'd be interested....

The diagnosis was the easy bit.... If you can be bothered, a complete factory reset maybe an easy option. Even if you cant resolve the issue, an SSD should effectively mask the issue as the computer will be much faster as it no longer has to physically read/write to the HDD to manage the problem - i.e. the problem will persist, but it can deal with it faster!

Have you checked the Performance tab on Task Manager? Based on your description it sounds as though disk usage could be exceeding 100% for excessive lengths of time during startup.

I'm mainly in Manchester at the mo, so not that close - Not sure about Hull area members - can't recall seeing many!

Not particularly - try your dizzy parts first and see how it goes

Yep they look fine - but the originals would have been a nice blue colour! supposedly higher resistance, but I wouldn't worry about that at all NB - If you decide to change the coil it needs to be something like a lucas DLB198 - Not just a generic 'points' type coil

Hi Paul - The distributor type is a modified Lucas 45D4, which were used on countless british cars. Any car shop (or Ebay) could match the dizzy cap on sight. Plenum is the 'square' aluminium casting that is attached to the outboard side of the carbs