Thanks for the offer of support. I did a body off rebuild 35 years ago, when I was 20, so I'm not a nube, though at 20 and cash strapped, some of my fixes involved blow torch, hacksaw, and bailing wire (or maybe re-purposed hangars, as bailing wire costs money). So I had it all apart at one point, and it was my daily driver for 3 years after that.
Then a series of unfortunate incidents caused me to split the block when I let it sit in the freezing weather during a radiator repair, so I replaced the block with an R16 block that I salvaged, and one of the big end bearing caps was a replacement that I don't think aligned correctly, so last I recall from 35 years ago was that oil pressure would drop way low during idle after it had warmed up. So today, I'll start with an engine rebuild and align-bore.
THe clutch pedal is seized. Dunno if it is the pedal assembly itself that has rusted, or if it is the cable, which was sticky back then. Brake pedal is all soft, so I don't know if it simply leaked all the fluid out, or if the lines are rotted through. Have not checked the radiator fluid, so I do not know if the transfer pipes are rusted out (I might just replace them with copper pipe while I have the engine out). I jury rigged an alternator from a '68 Pontiac, as it cost a lot less than a Renault alternator, which was special order back in 1985 .... I shudder to think if the electric windows still work. Yeah, this will be fun. Luckily, I'm retired and own a half decent machine shop with mills and lathes and welders, so I can fabricate stuff way better than I ever could when I last did this.
That said, in my retirement, I own the machine shop because I like to design and tinker and prototype, mostly competition trigger systems for target rifles, and then I do short run productions, and sell them to target shooters on the internet. After 30+ years of doing engineering and R&D work for a large corporation, I'm living the American Dream of being able to develop what I like, not what the corporation tells me to, and to chase the possibility of making money off it. I don't make money, but I lose a lot less than if I were playing golf, so it is still a good deal. Plus I cover the cost of having a machine shop that I can invent stuff in.
THe reason I am telling this is that if there is something that is a common problem to Europa owners, we might collectively come up with a better solution, and I might be able to help getting a custom development put together. I see there is someone developing a disk brake upgrade. While I do not have any experience in brakes, and would not want to try, that is the sort of scale of project that might be possible. As I said, I have CNC mills, I also do business with real machine shops who have laser cutters, EDM capabilities, sheet metal fabricators. Stuff isn't cheap, but if you make 20 or 30 of something, it is way cheaper than making one.
