I would be interested in reading about your TX3 Simon.

I nearly bought one at the start of the year, but I could see it turning into another project, which I don't need at the moment ! (Although I am starting to regret passing it up now)

It had a microtech an exhaust and a pwr intercooler and went much better than i had imagined and it felt pretty nibble as well !

Cheers,
Damion.

Yeah the one I was looking at just had a gearbox built with the familia GTR internals.. I guess there is an expensive price to pay for traction haha.

I was looking for a non turbo one at one stage, but all of the cleanish ones were too dear for what I was willing to pay.

Just to reply to Carlo's post from last year: Ummmmm, nope!

Unfortunately it still looks the same. In the time spanning from my last post about the Mk1 up until now, I've moved house and now have a daughter, so not a lot has happened. But now it's time - no more work on the Laser, or the X Pack. My primary focus is on the Mk1, so hopefully updates will be a little more frequent. Fingers crossed!

Basically, seam welding continues, as does the buying of parts. I picked up a new round headlight front panel from SMCKA at Small Ford Sunday this year. The panel on my shell has a slight bend in the front left from what I can only imagine was a due to a minor impact at some point. The front left headlight surround has also been butchered at some point to fit a dodgy aftermarket front guard, so it just made sense to buy new given I also plan to fit round headlights.

I also picked up a pair of JFZ 4 pot calipers on eBay for an absolute bargain. Gotta love an auction that ends on Christmas day! They are HUGE! The pistons are 2 inches in diameter and I think I'm going to need a minimum rotor size of 290-300mm.

Here's a pic next to a standard sized CD case:







As they are at the moment, they necessitate a rotor width of at least 30mm, but the two caliper halves are fed via a solid crossover pipe. So basically they can be split, meaning I should be able to mill them down to suit whatever width rotor I want to use. But if not, they cost me next to nothing so it's no great loss.

I've also been informed that this arrived this morning:



You may have seen that I had already made my own 4 link boxes and brackets, but I ended up sending them up to a friend (Tanz) in Queensland, as I had planned to make up a new set that allowed for more adjustment. But, things change - I have a different job now, and unfortunately no longer have access to the sheet metal guillotine and folder that I used to make the first set. But given how much you can pick up a brand new complete kit for these days, it's really not worth the hassle. In fact, I don't think I could make it myself for what the kit owes me. Thanks to Paul (Mk1 Lotus) at Pozformance for all of his assistance.

Hopefully there will be more updates to follow shortly.

Good to see you have a bit of fire in the old belly again Simon. Love your work. Hope to see some substantial progress in the near future

Engine bay stripped:



There's a bit of work to do in the firewall/heater plenum area, but at least I can see what I'm dealing with now.



Mind you, it was a little alarming finding surface rust under the factory paint! Thankfully I had always intended to do a bare metal respray as the previous owner did a really bad job painting it white. This just gives me another reason to do it. Have a look at this:



[:u]

Simon,

what paint stripper did you use? It looks to have cleaned up nicely!

Cheers Anthony.

I just stripped my bonnet today with some bunnings stripper, The goo indeed ate through my dishwashing gloves too. My eyes stung a little too. took me two goes to get it clean. I used a rust converter after on all the surface rust.

Thanks mate!