Paul picked up the chassis and other big bits at the powder coaters. As usual, it turned out real nice. They plug up the holes that bolts go through with some rubber plugs so when they do the powder coating, the paint doesn't get where it is not needed. It's a pain if they don't plug the holes because the powder coat paint is thick and tough. You end up drilling out the holes just to get the dried powder coated paint out.
I took the chassis up North to our Lake house because I already had enough to do in Des Plaines finishing up some items on the 1965 Elan that I was putting on ebay. I placed the Europa chassis on top of the old bedroom chest of drawers as a sort of work bench/assembly table. Worked out real good because I can place all the readied chassis parts inside the drawers, right where I will need them. Scott Sherwan came up one weekend in November to help take out the piers and boat lift. I showed him and Paul my set up and Scott, who is an avid woodworker was immediate fascinated with the bench/cabinet. It was a hand me down from a friend of a friend that we brought in when we were trying to fill up our newly acquired lake house 6 years ago. Even though the dresser was covered in a heavy coat of ugly black paint, Scot recognized the quality workmanship and started investigating the inside of the drawers and the manufacturer's sticker on the back of the cabinet. It was well built but alas, it was not something for me to take to the PBS Antique's Road show, just a good quality 1950's cabinet - no big deal. Darn.
Carl Sarro had brought his Europa axles to one of the Lotus Corps meetings for show and tell. Carl was working on some noise coming out of the back of his pristine original "TC Special". After looking at his axle splines and comparing them with mine, I could see I that had a problem. What I thought were supposed to be pointy splines, were supposed to be square edged splines. I went back and looked at mine and then conversed with Paul who had and extra axle shaft left over from his S2 Europa project. Now both Carl and Rich had told me that the TC axles were bigger than the Renault S2 axles, but I measured them several times over and they looked to be the same. So I took the axles apart and put together the best parts from all the pieces. I will just have to make sure there is no wiggle or jiggle when I start assembling the rear hub stuff. Yes, that's technical talk.
R.D. enterprises has monthly specials every month (imagine that) one month he featured new rubber heater hoses. These are about 5/8 diameter but they have special bends in them so you can't just replace them with straight hose. So I had picked up a pair and those happened to be the first parts to go back onto the Europa. Finally, we are putting things back together! Couple little new hose clamps and a little tightening with the screwdriver and those things should be in place for the next 33 years or so. That's how old the original ones lasted. Nearly impossible to replace once the car is all back together without pulling the engine/trans, so I hope they are good forever. I took a look at my tally and found that I had spent only a total of 186 hours to get to the point where I am finally putting things back together. Not bad.
Next parts to focus on were the front arms. I had bought and installed all new bushings for the upper and lower arms but now as I offered up the parts (an English saying Greg Zelazek is fond of) I noticed that the upper and lower shafts were of slightly different diameter. The upper shaft diameter was .502 and fit just fine through the chassis and the upper arms. The lower shaft was .507 however, just enough so it still fit through the chassis, but not through the new bushings. That 5 thou of an inch was enough to stop the assembly progress. But I had learned long ago that when you reach a road block in a restoration, you write down what needs to happen, put it aside and move onto something else. That something else that weekend ending up being a walk across our frozen lake with Sue and a sack-o-beers. Yes, that is one of the many things where we are quite compatible.
On our next trip up to the lake, I brought along a half inch adjustable hand reamer borrowed from Paul. If there is ever Armageddon, I am heading over to Paul's garage because he has everything you could possibly need for any situation. He's got spares for his spares. It took a while to figure out how the adjustment worked but in a few minutes I was reaming the .502 diameter bushings out to .507. Doesn't sound like much but those babies are tough. Plus, the inner race is just kind of melted into the rubber so if you are overly aggressive (who, me?) you end up with the inner race just spinning inside the rubber part and no metal gets reamed out. So you have to be pretty patient, and you have to have good strong wrists. All those years of 12 oz. curls I'm sure helped there. But in the end I did end up cheating a bit and using my Dewalt electric drill on a real, real, slow, slow speed and gently honed out the bushings until they all fit just so! 4 bushings - 2 hours. Not ready to go into mass production at that rate. No matter - it's done. What's next?
When installing the shafts and arms, you want to lubricate all the surface areas so they continue to be moist and allow movement for years to come. Otherwise all you have is the rubber twisting and they will wear out in about 5 years or 5000 miles, which ever comes first. Axle grease is my choice of lubricant here as oil will eventually wear out and disappear.
Back in Des Plaines, I had the Europa body stored on a couple old milk crates underneath the back porch. I had it wrapped up with a couple tarps held on with bungee cords to keep the elements and critters out. As the cold winter wind blew one day, I found out that Europas may be very aero-dynamic from the front, but not from the sides. As the cold front from the North came through one night, I heard a ka-whunk. (ç= does not pass spell check) The next morning I found that the Europa had taken flight and was now partially into my neighbor's yard. At least it didn't knock the legs of the porch out on its short trip. Since it was just a bare shell, I was able to swing it back onto the crates by myself. I did some creative strapping of the bungee cords onto the milk crates so hopefully it won't take flight again. At worst it will walk itself off the concrete into the yard. I want to avoid those Ka-whunks. Those usually have to be fixed up later.
