The "Will not modify" Cosmic EP3 - The modification diaries

[Kameleon]

So I've been meaning to post this for about two weeks however a recent new house and the barrage of renovation that is required (or the misses wants) has eaten lots of time, fortunately not so much that I haven't got the spanners dirty.

So my EP3 story starts probably 6 years back when my boss and regular squash partner rebelled against the Japanese car manufacturer we work for and bought a NHB 30th Type-R; loved the car, couldn't afford one, nor the insurance having got my licence late in life at the grand age of 24.

Fast forward to last August, the misses and I had a nice little maisonette in a small village in Surrey and I wanted a new (to me) car, she had already claimed the discounted lease car from work (GT86) so I set out to find myself an EP3; my only criteria was face-lift and Nighthawk black. The plan was to drive it about for a bit whilst I acquired, stripped and then converted at Lotus Elise to a Honda powered exige replica in her parents huge triple garage - lovely. He we come up against problem number 1, I had two weeks to find the car before I was car-less and that couldn't happen.

Every single car I found had either been tackily modified (and thus in my head, abused) or was crustier than a scabby donkey. With 3 days to go, a local garage advertised a clean, straight un-modified Cosmic grey face-lift for a little over 4k with a new clutch, new front tires (ditch finders) and a service. The deal was done and I drove home to start the hunt for a Lotus chassis.

Problem 2) Having recently sold a property and sitting on the money, the better-half pipes up that she would be happy to sell her property, pool our money and buy our own house. Originally this wasn't a problem, I thought I can have my own garage here, awesome, but alas no. Somehow we ended up buying a house that didn't have a garage and was over-budget meaning the Lotus fund was also wiped out.

So fast-forward to March, where the time in-between has been spent renovating the house and the EP3 has been my daily driver, needing nothing but fuel and all in all being quite fun. With the Lotus a long way off, I needed something to get busy with outside and set out to tidy up a few bits on the EP3 where age has got the better of it: Grill, battery bar, slam panel, milky lights etc. but I wasn't going to modify it, no point I said. Here's where problem 3 is found, this forum, after seeing what can be done I fancied getting involved, somehow managed to justify it all to myself and with excellent man-maths the misses too.

I've decided on the approach Handling > Brakes > Power with the odd misc. mod thrown in here and there.

So finally for this post a couple of pictures of it before the work begins, up to this point it was just a new skunk gear knob, re-trimmed steering wheel, aero-wipers, Heko deflectors and a HID kit (because even after polishing the lenses the light was still poor).

Now as you can see, I'm not really one for detailing; whilst some of you guys have immaculate cars which I aspire to, living in my little village, surrounded by country roads and a wet winter there isn't really any point, plus the time is better spent on getting things fixed / upgraded! Yay for mods (on a car that wasn't going to be modified).

 

[Kameleon]

So March see's the real work begin, staring with the collection of a JDM rear ARB advertised on another forum, collection from Basingstoke - £50. Luckily I was heading past there the coming weekend so grabbed it on the way. I also ordered Meyle HD drop links all round and polybushes for the rear ARB.

After settling on ABP's custom Eibach springs, a quick call to Dave there and the order went in - at this point I must say how helpful they have been with little questions that came up during fitting, I've since used them for the spacers I couldn't afford on the first order.

So first I took a measurement of the current ride height for reference.

Front:

Rear:

First job was to remove the OEM ARB, I found removing the OEM non-camber arm to hub bolt have my some more room. With a lot planned for the day, I was hoping for everything to come off easily however the first drop-link bolt soon put an end to that hope and it seized up after a few turns.

Just enough to get Mr. Angry (aka the grinder) in there and remove it!

The camber arms came off nicely

As did the top shock mounts

I had read some horror stories with the lower shock bolt shearing off, so it was soaked in Plus-Gas whilst I had a cuppa tea, thankfully they both came out quite easily.

So as the Saturday evening comes to a close I had the rear stripped down to where I needed it, the crusty fabric wheel arch liners were removed and I sprayed a nice coating of underseal / hammerite to protect the body work and left it overnight to dry.

Coming next - Rear end rebuild.

 

[Kameleon]

So as it turns out, even the OEM springs do not sit idle under much, if any compression so spring compressors were a waste of time!

Here's a handy tip for removing seized nuts from bolts (I also used this on the remaining drop link and later in the week, on the front's too). Firstly clean up any exposed thread with a wire burhs. Then heating the entire nut and thread with a heat gun (or blow torch if rubber components are not in the vicinity) and then spray any aerosol liquid onto the thread portion only. By heating it all, the metal expands and then by spraying a liquid that has turned to gas which is very cold, you shrink the bolt giving you a tiny but vital amount of seperation allowing the nut to be removed with little difficulty.

Anyway, with all parts cleaned up, the rear suspension rebuilt and the adjustable rear camber arms aligned with the OEM ones removed..

Every bolt that went back on the car was cleaned (thread) and copper slipped

And here we can see the car back on it's own rear wheels..

In my efforts to keep the rear camber arms the same length as the OEM ones to not destroy the current geo, I forgot to factor in the -30mm drop and so destroyed the geo! As you can see there's a fair amount of camber there - very McDonalds car-park-crew however I'll shortly be replacing all 4 tires with Eagle F1s and having a FRSU so I'll keep it for now!

So with the front still to do, disaster and my time was spent on the house thus I was driving to and from work (3 miles each way) on APB rear springs and OEM fronts for a week; I could already feel the difference in the rear, less roll and a much better ride so was looking forward to the front.

 

[Kameleon]

As pay-day loomed, I phoned APB again and ordered up 4 15mm Eibach system-4 spacers, I figured I would fit these and do the front springs / spacers over the bank holiday. In speaking to a friend at work that week, he mentioned he had an arch roller so one evening the rear arches were rolled which took about an hour each side, the following morning the spacers arrived

And were fitted onto the rear, ensuring all mated surfaces were smeared in copper grease

Fitted and torqued up to 108nm

as were the road wheels

The fronts were not very difficult nor exciting, which explains why I have no photos (or something!). My only tips are, remove the upper suspension central bolt first using the heat-gun / spray can tip above. I also fitted the eibach front camber bolts at the same time. Everything torqued up as per the Honda service manual and threads copper-slipped to help future work.

With the spacers fitted (and still with my McDonalds car park camber), you can see the wheels fill the arches much better and the drive is also far better than OEM, even without the geo being done. (yet)

After a little drive over every speed hump I could find to settle the suspension, here is the ride height with the springs fitted. It looks like I've lost 30mm from the front and about 35mm from the rear - nice!

I've also bought a spare set of front lower arms and hub assemblies to fit the castor correction bushes and new bearings to however after months of neglect and not missing a beat; after all the pampering these last couple of weeks, I've arrived to work this morning to a nasty smell and smoke coming from the offside rear caliper Although I am going to change the brakes for a front and rear BBK, that was a pay-day or 2 away as tires and geo were next, so I've had to spend the castor bush money on a reconditioned caliper (actually I bought both sides) and new brembo discs and pads from Euro Car Parts using a discount coupon I found online; also got free same day delivery and have just had a email at work saying something has arrived.

I guess that is this weekend's work taken care of at least, I've also ordered new anti-rattle shims, some Type-R decals and some stainless brake disc retaining bolts from eBay. Still deciding on what colour to paint the new calipers, I'm trying to talk myself out of the red, even though it will match the front brembos when I get them (Projekt-K), perhaps the hammered grey hammerite? Either way, it will not be wasted work as the rear big break kit is just new discs and spacers for the OEM calipers.

 

[TuckR]

Brilliant work so far mate, she's coming along nicely! You've obviously caught the bug as that's a lot of work for a car that you "will not modify." The man-maths comment tickled me :smt081

 

[Lewisgame]

Looking well. Never known someone to use so much copper grease!

 

[Marshall-EP3]

Looking good! Just did the all the springs, camber arms and camber bolts on mine.. And I was unlucky enough to snap the rear shock bolt..

Making me want to take it all off now and copper grease everything haha!