G'day Len,
Yeah its been a while, summers always busy at work. Festival season is over now and the weathers cooling so its about time to get back into it. The heat gets to me the older I get. I usually have a melt down or two over summer and swear next year I'll get an inside job, haha nah never...
The rest of the fleets been keeping me busy too, still tinkering with tune on the RS, few shows in the TD, just been through the underside with lanolin ready to put it away for winter and the TE50 has been to a track day and a couple of boofhead powercruise/ roll race events.
In between I found a local Mk1 guru with a shed load of parts, picked up a few odds and sods like the correct bucket seats (others were mk2) trim bits and the one piece of chrome trim I was missing. The posties been busy too delivering rubbers and the like. Hopefully there will be some progress on the actual car in the coming weeks.
Cheers Drew

I haven't forgotten about our chat about painting Drew; just haven't done any painting yet because some dumb $#!t decided to ram the back of the van while it was stopped at an intersection (must have been a real important text message he was reading/sending). The clown tried to buy us off with a $200 payment to keep it out of the hands of the insurers; like that was ever going to happen given labour rates today. He even had the nerve to say he was being generous, and accused us of trying to take advantage of the situation! So no painting until we get that fixed, which is at least a month or so away. In the meantime, hang in there and try and get some well deserved rest between all those other projects you are running.

Bummer mate not the news I wanted to hear. Hold your ground and get it fixed properly at they're expense.
Plenty of time before I paint it and decide whether I'm going to do it myself but still keen to see how you guys do it and get a few tips.
Cheers Drew

And to add insult to injury, another idiot side-swiped the missus last night. Got the whole thing on camera, but the cops won't lay charges. So not only is there never a cop around when you need one, but they aren't interested in charging people who break the road rules and cause extensive damage even when the evidence is handed to them on the proverbial silver platter. Oh, and after refusing his offer to "fix" the car himself (as the whole side has been wiped out), he tried to get us to say it was his other (insured) vehicle he was driving. Nothing like a little fraud to make the day more interesting.
 
Sorry Drew; I went a little off topic there!

Still plugging away at the car... Haven't done much to the body of late, been wet and cold so I've been inside prepping parts and ordering goodies.
Found a radio, set about cleaning it up and fitting it. Bonus it works too From my reference photo the facia should have been painted silver, in prepping I stripped the old paint with thinners to found that its chrome underneath and in pretty good condition so just gave it a buff and its getting left that way. Got some knobs for it that a very close to the missing originals so happy with that. Found a picture of an un-molested dash so made the bits and welded it all back together. Took a fair bit of plug welding and grinding, I think who ever fitted the CD player was blind and did it with a blunt axe.

 
The heater box had to come out to fit the radio so the cores been tested and the louvres have been re foamed. Gauges had to come out too, the temp gauge whilst a Smiths unit was the wrong one so I dug the original out of a box of bits. It tested up ok with the multimeter so not sure why it was changed, keeping the other one just in case.
 
Busy collecting parts too, finally got the opening quarter window rubbers, found a good steering wheel then a centre. GT side badges came from Yesterford, rear has been polished and painted.

Repro dash top came from Team Deville in the uk. Its a fibre glass knock off but after a test fit you'd never know and its half the price of having one redone . Only one problem though, it has no mounting bolts, not a problem to epoxy some on but wtf? how'd they forget that?


Ordering some door trims and seat covers from Aldridge at the moment so there should be a big parcel arriving soon...
Cheers Drew

Hi Drew,
Good to see that  you've been able to get in and do a bit, maybe with the dash top they expected that you would glue it in place and never touch it again? I got fibreglass repro C pillar trims but they didn't come with mounting lugs, I will have to glass some in to fit them. The shot of your dash is handy, I made up a template to fit my GT gauges into the switch panel in the RS , a bit different than the original in the pic but might change it to the same setup. Cheers, Len

Hey Whooligan, not having many problems finding parts for the MK1's in Australia, theres a real underground following (in Perth anyway) I'm turning up to places to find GT's, GT500's and Lotus cars tucked in peoples garages, even saw an early pre airfow A-frame Lotus.
 
I've been wanting to make a start on the engine bay but it was soon apparent I'd have to re-assemble the whole lot and sort a few issues before I break out the welder.
Engine and box went back in and then I started on wiring. The front loom, firewall forward was a mess so I though I'd start again and hide it all. The car came with a couple of spare looms so I salvaged all the wire and used the correct colour/trace on most of the circuits. The whole lot cost me under $200 with the isolator, ripcord, fuses, fusable link, solder, heat shrink etc. It all now runs down the chassis rail and through the crossmember so it's all pretty much invisible. The pic shown is the engine with all of its wires attached, pretty happy with it. The next pic is my 'swiss cheese' inner guards, plenty of plug welding to do.

 
The battery is in the boot and has a nice sealed box so thats where it will stay. For a bit of extra security after adding the fuses I've installed an battery isolator in the back and rip cord within easy reach of the driver. The bracket under the dash will be painted in the interior colour and I might put a decal on it for some bling. Its verge side pick up at the moment so an old bike lost its life to supply the cable guides for the remote shut off.

Thats it for now, I need to get the battery cable cut and some new ends fitted to finish off the isolator then tie up a few loose ends and I'll be ready to test it all. Then pull it all back a part again, haha oh the joys...
Cheers Drew
 

Neat work, Drew.  Bit more of that " re-purposing " stuff going on....  Len

Gee Drew, judging by your last photo, your vise sure had had a tough life!

Haha it's waste not want not around here guys. On a budget with this one so making the most of what is around. If only that vice could tell a story, his mate the bench grinder doesn't look much better either