Owen's Lotus Esprit GT3 Restoration

[Chillidoggy 4,466]

23 hours ago, Giniw said:

I have read somewhere that the thickness of the new coating could compensate so the liner would be the original diameter again?

If you want to take the chance (I didn't), then I have a set of used Nikasil liners going spare. 75,000 miles, never thrashed, raced, or rallied. One careful driver, but about 8 other unknown lunatics.

[OwenGT3 184]

2020 was a very quiet with regards to my Esprit restoration. Basically nothing has happened to the car, although I did manage to sort one job out during the year.

My wiper arm and wiper blade have never been great on my car, juddering and not cleaning as well as expected. It was a modified Lotus arm fitted, as the head unit that holds the blade had broken, so it had been repaired before my ownership. I have modified the original arm myself several times to sort the problem, but it's never been great.

My first complete change of arm was to use a Citroen C1 wiper arm and blade, again modified to fit the Esprit. This mostly involved shortening the arms length, plus cutting some of the shoulder off the neck of the bolt taper. The blade fitted OK, going up from the Lotus 24" to a 26" blade, also a spring steel blade as well. This arm worked a lot better than the previous one, so was on the car for a while, although I still felt it could be improved.

After some searching, I finally found a wiper arm and blade setup that was a lot better than all the rest. This arm comes from the Toyota Aygo. Not the recent face lift model, but the previous face lift. The arm is the right length for the Esprit, so doesn't need cutting down to fit. The wiper blade is 26", so fits the screen OK with the sweep of the blade.

The only mod that needed doing was to replace the arms head unit that bolted on to the motor shaft, plus a new base plate with relocated position of the sweep arm control pin. After some testing and redesign, I finally came up with the head unit design. Jonathan Edwards kindly 3D printed me my prototypes, the first fitted quite well, with only a minor modification. The second versions with the mods done fitted perfectly. The control arm just slides onto a cut down 8mm bolt with shank. In the end I cut a groove, then fitted an O-ring, which holds the arm on, simple as that. The biggest problem was getting the arm to miss the Esprit Bonnet, something it doesn't do with the original Toyota head unit.

So I now have a wiper arm and blade setup that will work very well with my Esprit, plus a modern arm that is still available. I will in time make a full alloy version, and maybe make this available to purchase for other owners, as I know other owners have issues with their wiper arms.
Here is a video of an early test of the arm. The base plate is wood.

So hopefully this year will really take off with regards to my restoration. I have my project all planned out, what is being worked on in what order, so by the end of the year I should have a rebuilt chassis, ready for the body to go on maybe the following year, see how it goes. The plan is to be completed by the end of 2023.

Some photos of the first head unit made.

 

Edited February 7 by OwenGT3

[laurentsc80 11]

felicitation 👌