This is my summary of the work I have done on my 1986 Lotus Turbo Esprit, VIN SCCFC20A4GHF60851.
When I first received the car, it clearly had a fuel system problem that needed correction. This was done by Curt Peebles, a certified Bosch technician. After much evaluation, he diagnosed the problem as a bad oxygen sensor ground. He also did some other necessaries, the most important of which was replacing some bushings in the shifter linkage, a job he had done for an Esprit once before.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 11/01 | 45,420 | Oil Change & Filter
Replaced Fuel Injectors Corrected ground problem in lambda sensor wire Rebuilt shifter linkage |
When I got the car back, Curt pointed out to me that the trunk floor was cracked. I picked that up as a first order of business, ordered a replacement trunk floor from JAE and installed it. During this effort, I discovered that a DFO had already once replaced the trunk floor. But, they did it by cutting out the relay box and the relays in it, and riveting the removed rivet box to a replacement trunk floor with the relay box cut from it! Obviously, that completely undermined the strength of the floor, and probably led to the re-breakage. Doh! So, I did it the right way, moving all of the relays from the old box to the new one, one at a time. Unfortunately, I didn't notice that the DFO had also left two relays out of the box and underneath the floor, until it was too late and the whole floor was back in. I decided to leave it that way for then. I also did a number of smaller items to get the car in perfect running condition:
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 12/01 | n/a | Replaced trunk floor
Corrected burned bulbs, light wiring problems including miscalibrated brake light switch. |
It was about this time I started to notice that I did not have a key that worked the passenger door lock(!) I then noticed that both of my keys, or any other object (including a screwdriver) worked the driver's side lock, which did not have a barrel(!) The two keys were, however, unique to the two gas caps. What a strange situation. Anyway, I purchased two matched lock sets from JAE and installed them. I evaluated the door lock system and decided it could be readily retrofitted for power locks. I purchased some actuators from Bulldog Security and put them in. Also, I finally arranged to fix some damage done when the car was shipped to me from Florida. The shipping company (Thats, Inc.) damaged the front spoiler when they drove the car onto their delivery truck. They agreed to pay for the fiberglass work to fix it, which I ultimately had done in the Spring of '02:
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 2/02 | n/a | Replaced door locks |
| 4/02 | n/a | Installed door lock actuators
Refurbished front spoiler from transport damage |
During this time period, the car was running very well and I was dealing only with "cosmetics" -- until about a mile from home one day, I completely lost spark. A bit of evaluation in the relay box (after a tow home) revealed that the problem was that the distributor wire had fallen off the coil. A rather freak event, but it goes in my service log. A month or two later, I was at it again, fixing cosmetic stuff.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 5/02 | n/a | Corrected bad connection from coil to distributor wire |
| 7/02 | n/a | Reglued fuel tank balance hose, repair of passenger door seal |
In the Spring of '02 when the weather turned warm, I began seeing the "fan fail" light on the dash. A bit of electrical diagnosis ensued, after which I figured out there was a bad connector, and that one of the fans had been wired out by a former owner. While the car was on the lift for an oil change, I determined that the wired-out fan was bent in its mounting, which simply needed to be bent back. So, I did that, and then wired the fan back in. Suddenly, the car, which had been running warm, was running very cool! Then I realized the DFO had also put in a 70 degree thermostat to compensate for the missing cooling fan. Something to get fixed later... Also, during this oil change, a technician noted a broken vacuum line, which he replaced.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 8/02 | 48,600 | Oil change & filter 10W30 Mobil 1
Straightened LH cooling fan mount & tightened loose cooling fan connector under washer fluid bottle Replaced broken vacuum line @ rear of intake cam tower |
It was about this time I had my oil filler cap break off when I was adding oil at a gas station about 10 miles from home. It was an interesting "experience" trying to contain the oil in the engine for a 10 mile drive home, with no oil cap! Anyway, when I got home, I ordered a new cap:
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 8/02 | n/a | Oil filler cap |
The car was overall running so well, but these continuing little items incited me toward greater diligence, and I continued to check for "issues". One thing that became apparent is that I never saw the "ECON" light go on. A little checking revealed a bad relay. In my next work session, I replaced it, and also redid some other cosmetic items:
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 8/02 | n/a | New oil filler cap |
| 9/02 | n/a | Replaced fuel cutoff control relay (ECON mode), replaced engine cover hooks, reseated power window switches |
Now the car was really coming together, but there was still one more latent issue that would become apparent. My left rear tire went flat, and I discovered very uneven wear on both the front and rear tires-the camber way too far negative, worst of all in the rear. -2.5°on LR, -1.6° on RR, -.8°on RF. Only the LF was in spec. I later learned this is endemic of the Esprit in my model year range. (I was told it is not related to the fact that a previous owner lowered the car, but I'm not so sure.) I was told by my suspension mechanic, Bill Braucksick, that there is no camber adjustment on my suspension. After a bit of checking I learned front and rear camber adjustment was added in the later S4 cars. The S4 front suspension parts are interchangeable to earlier cars, but the rears are not, because of the difference in the rear linkages created by the conversion from a Citroen to Renault gearbox. Undaunted, I had Jeff Robinson at JAE send me the S4 adjustable front suspension parts and have his welder make me up some customized, shortened, adjustable links for the rear. The rears took a while, and I decided to get new tires, and have the fronts installed and limit my use of the car until the rears were in as well, to preserve the tires. Unfortunately, JAE did not send all the needed adjuster parts for the fronts, so they were installed in a non-standard, but nevertheless workable way. This will have to be corrected at the next alignment.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 1/03 | 50,488 | Four new Dunlop SP Sport 8000 ZR15 tires |
| 3/03 | n/a | Installed S4S adjustable front upper links |
It was about this time that the starter drive began to fail. I was able to get the car started but only in an embarrassing, noisy way. Proto I got the car to a local electrics rebuild shop.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 5/03 | 50,711 | Repaired starter drive |
The next month, the new rear suspension parts were finally ready to be installed. In the meanwhile, the weather was turning warm again, and I decided the A/C was simply not as cold as it should be. A previous owner had refurbished it but I neverthless was suspicious. I determined from the watchglass that the system was not filled with enough R12. After considering the option of an R34a conversion, I decided to stay with the original R12 if possible. It turned out my suspension mechanic had some R12 left in his shop, and a friend with the equipment to recharge me. My goodness is the A/C cold now!
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 6/03 | 50,736 | Installed custom shortened S4S adjustable rear upper links |
| 6/03 | 50,736 | Recharged AC w/R12 & checked for leaks |
About this time, things were really working, and the car was getting a lot of use. I even was confident enough to valet park it at the airport. Unfortunately, the valet couldn't figure out that there were separate door and ignition keys, and broke off the original ignition key trying to unlock the door. Doh! It took a few phone calls to find the right blank number (off of a Toyota, it turns out) to make me a new key. But I got a new pair of keys in the bargain.
After a few months more driving, I concluded I still wasn't seeing the ECON light as often as I should. I purchased and wired in a duty cycle regulator to monitor all of the activity of the Bosch ECU. This lead me to the conclusion that throttle position switch was likely bad, so I got a new one. It did not fix the problem, which I then decided was probably attributable to the speed sensing relay - which was one of the relays under the trunk floor instead of in the relay box where it belonged, as discussed above. I decided to leave it for now.
One last emerging issue in this time frame, was a disconnected connector in the driver's power mirror, which took about ten minutes to re-seat.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 6/03 | n/a | New ignition keys |
| 7/03 | 51,485 | Oil and Filter |
| 8/03 | n/a | New throttle position switch |
| 8/03 | n/a | Tightened loose DS power mirror connector |
While the car was running very well, the missing ECON mode and the general difficulties with Bosch (not to mention the misplaced relays, etc.) were wearing on me. The more I understood the Bosch system through the readouts of my duty cycle meter, the less I liked it; it was primitive and could not be adjusted. It clearly was only approximating correct fuelling of the car. Having come to that epiphany, I started negotiation with John Welch at WC Engineering in Chicago to do a complete fuel system upgrade to S4S specifications (without the chargecooling radiator). I decided to go with a GM injection system so my car would be as much like a later Esprit as possible. John Welch's upgrade involved a lot of replacements and repairs, some of which were not expected! For starters, he determined my turbocharger had a bad oil leak, and that my valves were not making solid closure and so the engine had poor compression in two cylinders. So what was going to be a fuel system upgrade started with a turbo rebuild, head rebuild and valve replacement. After he got the engine to solid compression and leakdown numbers, he launched into the fuel system upgrade. This proceeded as planned, with the exception that the Lotus/GM drawing for the locations of the slots in the flywheel turned out to be incorrect(!) So my flywheel was machined with slots in the wrong places. I wound up with a brand new flywheel. I also had John finally deal with the troubling fan connector, and some other small stuff that I hadn't got to...
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| Winter 2003-2004 | n/a | WC Engineering Fuel System upgrade, plus the following:
Turbo rebuild Replace valves & smooth head Redo valve shims New flywheel Timing Belt replaced Replaced head gasket and valve cover gasket Replaced oil in transaxle with MT-90 Replace cooling fan connector and DFO miswire 70-90 degree thermostat change Investigated washer fluid disconnection |
When the car came back, it was running great! So smooth and powerful right up the redline. So tractable at the low end. John Welch is to be commended! I treated myself to an MP3 player head unit, which has been a great enhancement to roadgoing entertainment.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 7/04 | n/a | Installed Blaupunkt Monte Carlo radio-CD-MP3 player |
Alas, however, John's work was not exactly perfect. When my battery died unexpectedly, I determined that John, for everything he'd done right, had not tightened down the alternator mountings enough. That was easily fixed, and the battery voltage was immediately back where it should be.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 9/04 | n/a | Tightened alternator mounts & grounding connections left loose during fuel system upgrade |
I then finished the keyless entry installation, and replace the courtesy light switches to get all of the cabin courtesy light functions working:
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 9/04 | n/a | Installed keyless entry receiver and connected to door lock actuators |
| 10/04 | n/a | Replaced driver's and passenger's courtesy light switches and adjusted on/off switch at courtesy light. |
Unfortunately, the battery never really came back from the discharging it took through the Summer, and when When winter came, it died and needed replacement. Another entry.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 12/04 | n/a | New battery. |
This was the first winter I was driving the car a lot. I decided after a good bit of driving that the heater was not keeping me as warm as it should. (This falls in the category of "this can't be normal!" since one doesn't know what is "normal"). After some phone calls to JAE and John Welch and some investigation, I learned that John had not connected the vacuum line from the vacuum pump to the air handler in the front of the car. He had assumed that the air handler tapped into the brake vacuum circuit which connects in right at the pump. Well, no harm done; I reconnected the vacuum line and I had heat!
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 1/05 | n/a | Reconnected vacuum line to air handler unit. |
Just about simultaneously with the heater issue, I developed an idle issue that was really mysterious because its symptoms mixed with the vacuum line attachment. Ultimately, John Welch took the car back and played with it until he determined the problem was a sticky idle air control valve, which managed to stick and unstick in maddening ways that made it very hard to determine what was going on. John put a working IAC valve in the car and everything was working great! April of 2004 the car was tested for emissions and came back with MC, CO and NO readings well below the limits. Running right!
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 4/05 | ~57,000 | Replaced Idle Air Control Valve. |
In the early Summer of 2005, I started to experience more vaccum-related issues. Having learned from the above experiences, it didn't take me too long to figure out that this time the problem was no vacuum from the vacuum pump. An investigation revealed that the vacuum pump mounting had come loose so the belt was no longer turning the pump. With the car on the lift, tightening a few screws fixed the problem. While under the car, I noticed the absence of the undertray. I ordered one to be installed the next time the car was in the air....
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 6/05 | n/a | Remount of vacuum pump. |
Then came a long period of uneventful running of the car. The only notable events were the battery going dead in the winter of 2005-2006 due to too much snow and too little driving. I had the alternator checked and it was strong, but not running long enough to keep the battery in charge. I determined to keep the battery on a trickle charger, and eventually figure out a way to trickle charge during inactive periods.
In October of 2006 the fuel pumps began to run intermittently causing engine trouble. Some inspection revealed a poor connection at a connector in the fuel pump wiring. (This was original 1986 wiring, not John Welch's work.) A re-crimp and the problem was solved.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 10/06 | 61,600 | Recrimp of fuel pump wiring. |
I then had another long period of trouble free running. The next major event came in January of 2007 when I decided that the car had a bit too much of the eau-de-Lotus (raw gasoline) scent. I had the fuel lines inspected with a sniffer and this revealed a pinhole leak in a fuel return hose, which was replaced. Unfortunately I forgot about the undertray installation, which would have to wait for another day.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 1/07 | 62,286 | Replace leaking fuel line. |
In the Summer of 2007, I concluded that the car was slowly staining the garage floor and decided it was time to get back to the garage for a diagnosis, to install the undertray, and to replace the transmission gear oil (which had never been done since I had owned the car). The leak source was found to be the filler plug, and some seals in the area of the transmission and engine block. A wide sweep of seals and mounts were replaced. At the same time, the rear brakes were given a look over - and a complete rebuild. Further evaluation of the fuel pump connections indicated that a more complete rewiring was in order, which was also done. I also had a cigarette lighter plug wired into the glove compartment, suitable for powering the radar detector and connecting to a wintertime trickle charger. Finally, the elusive undertray installation was completed. Unfortunately, a few of the undertray connectors were forgotten at the garage. The undertray was solid, but the connectors would have to be installed another day. It's a marathon, not a sprint, right?
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 7/07 | 63,785 | Reseal engine and transmission. Replacement of gear oil. Complete rear brake job. Replacement of fuel pump connections. Cigarette lighter plug for trickle charging. Undertray installation. |
After this service I experienced another long period of over a year and nearly 4,000 miles of strong running operation, during which the car was a near-daily driver. I built a trickly charger which was readily connected to the cigarette lighter plug and this worked well through the winter keeping my battery charged. However, in the Spring of of 2009, the car again developed some oil leakage, this time readily attributable to the cam tower seals. Furthermore, it became apparent that the motor mounts were coming loose and should be replaced. I took the car to my trusted mechanics at Kennedy Motors and they replaced the motor & transmission mounts, and also re-sealed the cam towers. There was also leakage at the turbo oil return so this was re-sealed. Furthermore, in the process of removing the cam tower, they also discovered a loose shim collet on one of the exhaust valves. This is apparently a known problem with some of the collets. The collet was replaced and the others inspected. The most important change was the motor mounts, which tightened up the entire drive train, and the shifter linkage. Soo much better! Once again, knowing what is normal is so important to car maintenance....
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 4/09 | 67,315 | Replace motor mounts. Reseal of cam towers and re-gasket turbo oil return line. Replace valve shim collet. |
About this same time, I came across the perfect upgrade for the car to allow me to have GPS navigation and stop envying my wife's new car - the Smartmirror. I purchased a Smartmirror from Escort, and at the same time, purchased a JVC El Kameleon head unit that plays back DVD's, iPod music and iPod video, satellite radio, MP3 CD's - everything. The Smartmirror allows you to choose whether to view navigation screens, video from the JVC head unit, or even a backup camera! I'm still noodling on how to install the backup camera, but I did get all of the other functions working.
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 5/09 | n/a | JVC DVD-CD-iPod-MP3-Sirius head unit, and Smartmirror. |
After the Smartmirror went in, I had a trouble free Summer, until a freak event in August - the cigarette lighter plug I'd had installed in 2007 developed a short, and unfortunately, the circuit was not fused! Smoke started billowing into the cabin and I pulled over and went running for the battery compartment to disconnect the battery. As it turns out, by the time I'd made it to the battery, the short had burned itself out. But in my panic I had pulled the redone fuel pump connections from the battery -- I assumed were the cigarette lighter connections. That mistake cost me a tow to the garage. The cigarette lighter socket was replaced, this time with a fused model, and the fuel pumps re-connected. Back on the road again....
| Date | Mileage | Service |
| 8/09 | ~69,000 | Replace cigarette lighter and reconnect fuel pumps. |
So, what is wrong with the car?
1. Windshield washer: During some previous owner's tenure, the washer fluid outlet fell down into the area behind the dash and needs to be pulled out and screwed back down. The entire dash needs to come out to get at it. John Welch tells me it is a multi-hour job, which is obviously why it hasn't been done. Maybe if I can get an endoscope I can pull it out myself someday.
2. Aftermarket door lock actuators: The door lock on the passenger side has a sticky point, which is not a problem with the key, but does obstruct the automatic actuator I installed. It needs to be pulled and lubricated or diagnosed. At the same time I need to investigate the connections on the door lock actuators to get them both working properly.
3. Recirculate: In my investigation of the heat issue, I learned that there is, was and never has been a vacuum line connected to the recirculate system. When I connected it, I found out why -- there is a vacuum leak in that part of the system. I'm guessing the diaphragm is failed. So for right now I have no recirculate (i.e., less than effective defrost and no max AC) until I diagnose the problem.
4. The door seals are failing pretty badly. I had attempted a repair when I first got the car but that was only a stopgap. I had JAE ship replacements in the Summer of 2009, but they turned out to be sized for a Lotus Excel/Eclat rather than an Esprit. Jeff at JAE is still trying to track down seals of the right size for me.
5. Backup camera: Someday I will figure out how to install the backup camera and wire the Smartmirror so that the backup camera activates with the reverse lights.
6. AC recharge: I don't think the AC is as cold as it once was. It may be due for another R12 charge. It has been over 6 years since I had it recharged....
7. Speedometer calibration: It is no longer possible to get z rated tires for 15 inch rims that have the correct OD for the 1986 Turbo Esprit. The tires on the car are about 8% smaller than original. This means the speedometer reads about 8% high. This could be fixed by new wheels and tires, or by recalibrating the speedometer. Or one can just know that the speedo reads high, which is what I do.