Where did you get the new chassis?
It seems the PPO, a Lotus dealer in the Chicago area, had collected and stripped several crashed Europas and had started repairing 4688R before he died. He had bought a new chassis, new front suspension arms, 4 new Spax shoxs, and had taken the fibreglass body off the chassis. The chassis was bent on the right front corner where the car was most badly damaged. The shell has been half stripped, so I got a whole collection of parts from a selection of crashed or scrapped TCS.
There are several missing bits such as the brake master cylinder, the brake pedal extension bar, and the aluminium cast spacer, the bracket which holds the rose joint on the gear change to the block/gearbox, those horrible O ring nut things on the gearbox holding the output shaft oil seals, the 5" bolt holding the alternator to the gearbox, lots of large suspension bolts, the 4 (?) nuts and bolts holding the body to the chassis, and no doubt more small items which I have yet to discover are not there.
So, in short, the new chassis came with the whole job lot in the 40ft container from Louisiana. It seems the widow of the PPO Lotus dealer moved to Houston, had all this stuff sitting in her garden, she sold the lot to a man in Louisiana before the local Houston Council scrapped the whole lot, the man in Louisiana didn't have the time or the resources to find the missing bits, clean up all the existing bits, and bolt it all together, so he sold the whole lot to me.
I am spending heaps of time with a rotary wire brush, a bench wire brush, a compressor, and heaps of primer and paint cleaning up every component, and screwing it all back together. Luckily I have 5 other cars so I know where everything should be, and what it should look like.
The mud dawbers in Louisiana had laid their eggs in all sorts of strange places. I have found two lumps of mud in the new chassis, 1 in the central black hole (when the chassis is separate from the shell, you can easily see into the hole and assemble the hand brake cables), and 1 in the rear box section to the right of the gearbox. The eggs seem to have hatched, so I should not suffer from wasps from Louisiana attacking me, with only a rotary wire brush to defend myself.
Next on the list is to assemble the front and rear suspension, and then move the shell about 50 yards, and put it on the newly painted and assembled chassis.
Then I cut the door hinge bars (about 1 hour for each of two ends, to two separate bars) and strip the shell for much fibreglass repair and painting.
Alex in Norfolk.