1993 Lotus Sport Monocoque

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It's Friday!! Hooray, able to have a post work play in the garage..anyway..

Brakes:
My Lotus came with front and rear Magura's. The British Eagle Lotus used the Magura's on the rear but XTR Cantis on the front. Not going to replicate that. The fork I have chosen will accomadate 4 bolt magura mounts (at the rear if that doesn't give the game away ). Anyway the current Magura's are silver which doesn't give much of a contrast, so want to go with black, then I saw these baby's



Magura HS33 Olympia Edition. Released in 2004 to mark the passing of the MK1 HS33's. I got really excited until I realised that they are as rare as the Lotus and I don't want to search for 7 years for them :roll:
You can buy a boxed set with the certificate, commemorative watch, gold braces etc from Germany for 280 Euros's, but....

1. Way out of my price range
2. Too nice to use
3. I only need the levers and the slaves


So I decided to do it myself..
Bought a black set from eBay so I don't have to strip to bare metal. Will strip the levers to have them nitrided and will see what Gil can come up with in terms of Gold Magura slide decals

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Those Olympics are sweet not seen those before. Good plan on black that’s going to look great.

Nice plan, quick question on the nitride. What level of prep do you need to get to?
Super fine finish? Or do the nitrideing people fine vapour blast the metal before coating?

Oh, and how does it stack up price wise, say compared to chrome?

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No idea yet on price. I will polish all the components before sending them. Some firms will prep for you, some won't. I need to have a phone conversation with them soon

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Had a little look down the seat tube today and to my delight there are tubes for all the cables routing glassed into the frame ..Phew...makes life so much easier




Decided to weigh the frame and with the magura cable and both gear cables still in, it weighs 2.1kg, so well sub 2kg without the cables


Just waiting for the epoxy filler to come so I can repair the various chips, then I need to find someone willing to paint it.

My whole bike, with no concessions to weight saving, comes in at 23.5lb. Not too shabby!

My_Teenage_Self":3bhmqutl said:

My whole bike, with no concessions to weight saving, comes in at 23.5lb. Not too shabby!

Click to expand...

In the MBI article C H-J said the frame weighed 3.75lb's naked which seems to be the case. Very happy about the cable routing though as makes life a whole lot easier (I have a modern internally routed bike which is a right pain to change cables on)

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The black epoxy filler arrived today so as promised a little tutorial on filling the holes. This is a method I used when repairing carbon kevlar kayaks seams which were usually gelcoat and very prone to chipping. I don't know if other people do it this way but it has served me well over the years. The Lotus has no carbon cracks so will not need any repair there (thankfully).



Epoxy filler, slightly thicker than resin and coloured. Much less liable to run than resin but still more fluid than standard polyester car body filler.

If you remember the chip on the headtube



Firstly I masked around the area, mixed up the filler (I did guesstimate amounts of filler to hardener because I was using so small amounts and blobbed it into the area and worked it in with a dental instrument.



Then to get a nice thin layer that covers the edges of the chip, I take some stiff polythene, cut it just larger than the masked area and place it over the resin



(I did trim this one smaller than shown before the next step)

Next step is to secure the polythene with masking tape so it follows the contour of the bike




Then gently smooth the polyethene to spread the resin. You can see there is a little air gap an the middle, as the resin starts to gel I then smooth again with my finger then use a hairdryer to provide a little heat to help accelerate setting.


Now I just have to wait 6 hours for the epoxy to cure enough. I will post more pictures once I have done so. Using this method makes the sanding afterwards a little easier as you have a smoother better contoured surface to start with.

Tidy

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Roll on 6 hours so we can see what it's like