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Christopher Herbert's 1989
Christopher Herbert from Concord, United States owns a 1989 Turbo in Black with a Beige interior.
Model:
Year: Colour: Interior: Driving Style: Miles per year: Owned Since: Purchase from: Private Serviced/parts at: Other Cars: Previous Lotus': Why an Esprit: Upgrades: None so far Problems: The car has been sitting for at least a year, Purchased the car from a Doctor that lives in Santa Cruz. When the Doctor last drove the Esprit He said it had a boost loss and thinks the Turbo is Blown or at least not operable.'
Info:
September 2017
After bringing my Esprit home, I very carefully took the exhaust manifold off, if anyone reading this is planning on replacing there exhaust manifold themselves, please feel free to email me as I have learned a lot thru this experience. I can definitely walk you thru the process. And you don’t have to pull the engine or remove any engine mounts! I had Comp Turbo in Southern California rebuild my Garett T3 Turbo, They did a beautiful job. After putting everything back together the car runs excellent. I was taking a bit of a gamble purchasing the car as the previous owner parked the car after loosing boost. The car sat in the Santa Cruz Mountains for at least a year, maybe longer. For those of you that have never been to the Santa Cruz Mountains in California, Its Redwood trees as far as you can see and always seems to get more rain than anywhere else in Northern California. So as I worked on the car I found little piles of dry redwood tree pine needles in the engine bay underneath the car and basically anywhere these little needles could find there way too.. Such a terrible fire hazard!The previous Owner covered the car with a tarp which may have helped to some degree but the carpets were soaked with water, headliner ruined I put a fan in the car and parked it in the hot California Summer sun for a couple days and dried it all out. Other things I have done to the car include repairing the front hood, it was coming apart in two pieces, took it off the car carefully marking exactly how it was mounted on the hinges with a white oil based pen, I picked up some very long reaching C clamps and ended up bonding it together with a 3M product that is made especially for adhering fiberglass panels (two part mix with the special 3M gun), after that I put a layer of fiberglass matting and resin etc on,, little sanding too smooth it out and painted, looks beautiful and now my front hood doesn’t wobble all over and nearly break every time I go under the front hood!, very gratifying repair.
I absolutely love working on my Lotus, I have spent many years working on British Motorcycles mainly for extra money and its refreshing to be working on such a wonderful car for myself. Part of the reason i wanted to fix up a neglected Lotus comes from a experience I had when I was a kid. My buddy Jason had purchased a salvaged title 1975 Porsche 911 Targa, The car had been stolen at one point and was side swiped in a Police chase situation. Jason’s Porsche had different color hood and front passenger side front panel, Holes from shoddy body work, it was a real Ugly Duckling.. this car was so beat up I would read peoples lips as we drove by saying “look how F*&ked Up that car is! it was basically a disgrace. So I agreed to help him do all the body work over Christmas vacation from High School. His Dad use to own a body shop and the new owner said We could use the shop and He would spray it when we had it all prepped, we spent days working on that car! finally it was sprayed white, Jason chose white as We knew with how beat up the car was white would be the most forgiving.. When the car was all done it truly looked like a $100,000 car it was so rewarding and it wasn't even my car! We drove it to a party and all of our friends didn’t believe it was the same car,, they actually argued with us.. “Come on,, what gives, who's car is that? We actually left the party with our friends thinking we were pulling some fantastic prank driving someone else car!
My Esprit came with locked brake calipers, I purchased new rotors from my local Orielly’s auto parts store, (front 1984 Toyota Celica rotors), I also picked up a rebuild kit from Orielly’s. I purchased EBC yellow stuff brake pads on line. They absolutely give more braking power than the stock pads that came on the car, I highly recommend them if you don’t have deep pockets and cant really afford to go with the upgrade kit that has more pistons in the calipers. The stock brakes were down right scary! The storage area behind the engine looked terrible the carpet was worn and packed full of dirt. So i pulled all the carpet carefully saving the pieces to make patterns for new carpet, I used a high quality contact cement applying on the trunk surface and back side of the carpet. All the nuts and bolts holding the trunk floor in were rusty and broke off for the most part. So I carefully epoxy bolts from underneath so I could use wing nuts up top. I didn’t want to glue the trunk floor back in in a permanent fashion as I know that someday I will need to take that trunk floor out again. You need to do this to remove the exhaust manifold among other things. It of course all came out beautifully went with black industrial carpet rather than the stock gray color. The other thing I have done so far is replace the front headlights and repaired the headlight covers and painted them. I ordered my new head lights and mounting brackets from SJ Sports-cars, I try to order most of my parts from SJ Sports-cars even with shipping they cost significantly less than most of the Lotus Suppliers in the United States.
The other suppliers I can recommend are South West Lotus Centre and in the States R.D. Enterprises and JAE Racing . I currently have my Esprit at Dietsch Motorsports in San Mateo, I am having them replace the cam belt, I am going with the Gates Blue racing belt, supposed to be good for 100K miles. I am also having Dietsch Motorsports put in a green toothed 104 MOP pulley, Supplied by JAE Racing out of Santa Barbara. I have only had my Esprit for 6 months or so but it is absolutely exhilarating too drive, has tons of punch and has that indescribable magic to Her. I have owned a Porsche 911 that I did love and enjoyed driving very much I have also had the pleasure of driving Ferrari’s. I can’t say that any of these cars are better than the other just different in there own special way.
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