Esprit

Heath, no... if we buy it back, the brakes will be spare for dad's next Lotus.

Besides, on your car the brakes would be useless... they'd melt.

You saw it on Turners? Wow, that was quick, we've not even been told it's written off yet (although undoubtedly will be). It's not economical to repair by a long way and we suspect a bit of chassis damage, which would mean a new chassis needs to be ordered (you can't repair the chassis or suspension pick-ups on them at all).

And yeah, I do a bit of writing for G-Force. I'll be covering the Exige rebuild in every issue and afterwards as I use it. It's just a ragular column on what the car's like to live with etc. I'll be writing other stuff for them too

Thankfully, he's mobile in his brace. The halo keeps his head still relative to his torso. He can live a pretty normal life for the next three months other than not being able to do anything too vigorous, work or drive. He is very active so he's going to have to throttle back a bit but I'm sure he will find things to keep himself occupied.

Near as we can tell Dad wasn't sitting centrally in his seat when it happened, his head was rotated like he was looking around or something. If he'd realised he was about to be hit and had sat central in his seat he'd have walked away with not even a scratch, like his passenger.

The gash you can see in the photo below is dad's scalp literally splitting open from the force of his skull (now not attached to the rest of his body) trying to tear out of his head.

A very nasty accident indeed.

The good news is that the doctors down in Christchurch and the national spinal unit at Burwood have done a fantastic job and he'll be coming home today. 3 months in a halo/brace ahead now, but he should eventually make a full recovery.

Traction is nasty. He's currently got a "halo", which is a large metal ring which is screwed into his skull. There's then weight/pulleys trying to pull his head off. This keeps the vertebrae straight and helps it to heal right. This halo will stay on his head for 2-3 months, bracing his neck and keeping it straight and stopping him from damaging his spinal column.

PROJECT ON HOLD UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE:

Hi all, just putting this up here as I'm going to have to call a halt to things for a week or seven.

My father was involved in a massive accident in his Elise today, where he was hit behind while stationary by a Porsche after stopping to avoid some horses that had escaped onto the road. He has a broken neck and is very lucky to be alive. He's not paralysed but it's a miracle that he's not. He's not quite out of the woods yet, but he's been in surgery and is now in traction, where he will be for a few months at least.

Obviously the Elise is worse for wear, how bad we're unsure but it doesn't really matter... with what's gone on in my project lately and now with my father coming to grief, I'm not really feeling very Lotusy right now.... I'm sure I'll be back on the horse soon enough, but for now I have other things that need my urgent attention.

Cheers and drive safe everyone!

Right, well I'm organising the cylinder head inspection/rebuild today, but I thought I'd take the chance to post up a photo from the weekend.

As part of the E-Type's 50th anniversary celebrations this year, the Jaguar Drivers' club held a little shindig at Taupo on the weekend. My father and I were in attendance with his immaculate S1 3.8L roadster.

As well as driving some nice open roads, we were also treated to some parade laps at Taupo motorsport park. While it was pretty hard to misbehave when following a pace-car in single-file, I did manage to get the old girl sideways once or twice

It was nice to get away from Auckland and the Lotus for a few days, but I'll admit that after having such fun in the Jag, I'm almost tempted to get one for myself now!

Thing is, at the moment, there's nothing I can really point to that indicates something's been put together wrong... There's no smoking gun, it's just not working as it should and there appears to be more than one issue here.... either way, I think the only person that'll be accountable here is me and my wallet

That's just the head gasket sitting up that makes it look like the liner has moved. Also, I know not to move the engine fullstop.

Having said that, the bottom end is coming to bits anyway. The engine was already drinking oil at higher RPM (witness the amount of carbon on the pistons!) so something's amiss down there.

For the cost of it, I'm thinking new liners and rings will be the way to go, I suspect something's not right with them, and given that it's coming to bits, for the few hundred extra that liners and rings cost, doing those and new bearings is a worthwhile insurance policy.

Cunt's fucked and it needs fixing.... thank god it's winter and I wouldn't have been using the car anyway.

Right, well after a number of delays on the sodding car we're back on deck again.

In stripping the thing down, it's become clear that the heatshield I've got on the firewall is struggling where it sits behind the manifold heatshield. Being about 10mm thick, it touches this heatshield and has promptly delaminated and is on the way to melting.

This is precisely what happened to the OEM heatshield and why I pulled that off in the first place (although the OEM shield was way further along the degradation path). Given that the car's already half in bits again, I figure that I'll figure out a better solution while the engine stuff happens. Rear clam will come off again shortly (it's already unbolted), the roof will come off and the firewall will be stripped and re-lined in another product or products... with more of an emphasis on heat protection than sound absorption, since I can handle some noise, but can't handle the car burning to the ground.

Onto the engine, I FINALLY managed to get the cylinder head off tonight.

The good news is that there doesn't seem to have been any valve to piston contact and the bores look good. The valves all appear to be in good nick, with no OBVIOUS damage, but this is only after a cursory inspection.

Given that I've come this far, I've decided that I'll strip the bottom end as well. I'd HATE to just rebuild the head and then find out there was another issue like a cracked ring that the valve issue was masking.... it might be a bit over-cautious, but I figure the engine's 2/3 stripped and going to be out of the car so what the hell?

I also have a weeping driveshaft seal that's come about from all the engine in/out business so we'll replace that at the same time.

So here you can see the head as it came out. The suspect #4 inlet valves are at top right.

The remaining images are of the bottom end. #4 cylinder at left.

Still a bit over the whole thing to be honest. Running out of space to do things where I am, so it's all cramped... I'm completely out of enthusiasm for the project at the moment, and really hating every minute I spend on the car right now. I've been here before though, and I know it'll pass, but I'm struggling right now.

Having spent an awesomely fun weekend thraping around with my father in his E-Type Jag, I'm almost tempted to sell the Lotus and start looking for a nice Jaaaaaaaaaaag.

Well, last night I did a little more on the car.

Made up some brackets and bought a shiny new digital DTI (I've been looking for an excuse for a while) and got to work checking the cam timing.

This was to see whether the problem was caused by improperly set cam timing or a cambelt jumping a tooth or slipping on the verniers.

With the exception of a few hundredths of millimetres though, everything seemed pretty close to being on, so it's unlikely that it's bent a valve through touching a piston unless something's let go on the bottom end.

Tomorrow I whip the head off and begin the open-heart surgery.

Tonight I got back into the garage again for another couple of hours slog on the sodding car. Got a bunch of trim removed in the engine bay and the undertrays as well as a couple of litres of coolant drained off in preparation for pulling the head.

I got the inlet manifold removed as well... everything looks to be in order so far as I can tell...

Tomorrow I might make up some brackets to allow me to check the valve timing before I go about pulling everything apart... and might buy me some decent DTI gauges as I could do with some and I'll need some to set the cams up at the conclusion of the job.

Ho hum.

Well tonight I finally plucked up the courage to get back out in the garage. I got the cam cover off and set about checking the valve clearances. I was expecting that this would have shown whether some of the clearances were either very low, perhaps indicating a recessed valve seat or failing valve, or a very high value indicating a bent valve.

Based on the figures that Dave Andrews gave me, most of the valves were in spec. Of the ones that were out of spec, they were only just out and some of these were on the best-sealing cylinders... in short, I've yet to stumble across a "smoking gun" so to speak.

So I'm not sure what more I can really find out without taking the head off... which will probably get tackled this coming weekend.

Hehe cheers. Had a look tonight, update to follow. Nothing really of note, just deepens the mystery even further :/

Aah no, all solid lifters.

hlas?

KK you're right, those are the inlets and exhausts in that order.

In the end, we have to dismantle the engine to some degree so I'll check it at each stage as I go until a problem becomes apparent. Won't be happening the next couple of weeks though, I've a girlfriend I've got to make up some time with... kept promising her that all the recent garage-time was the final push to get the car finished... which has turned out to be an unintentional lie.

This must be so frustrating - I feel your pain budd..

Firstly I doubt it would be a bent valve (just cos it seems unlikely on only one cylinder considering the engine is still running fine)

Have you checked the cam to shim clearances?

If it is hoooge then obviously the valve is being held open against its will - I would suspect it could be the valve guide has moved in the head and holding the valve open or something has got caught under the valve seat..

If it is tight it will be valve recession - which could be attributed to the seat moving or the valve stem stretching..

My best guess considering the timing of the incident (when the engine was at full snot and maximum heat was soaked into the engine) is the valve guide was not a tight enough fit and has moved in the head and subsequently holding the valve open..

You should be able to somewhat confirm this by pulling the inlet manifold off and having a good look at your valves and guides through the inlet ports..

Thanks for the suggestions KK, ones worth checking out. Valve stretch is unlikely given the low RPM involved, but it's possible. The valve guides were all new colisbro guides, so they SHOULD be fine, but it's possible that they've moved, but that's something that's worth checking out. As you say there's probably a logical and easy regime of inspection I can do before the head comes off, which will include looking down into #4, and whipping the inlet manifold off to have a looksee.

It's definitely a problem that's obviously started off okay but has gotten worse, either progressively or suddenly.... the dyno doesn't lie. The weird thing is that it seems to have happened to more than one valve on #4, which points to bent valves in some fashion, but that doesn't really add up either. As always, this car keeps me guessing... it's nothing if not a challenge, albeit a sodding expensive one.

Cheers guys. And Ryan... I'll cut off my balls before I stick a K20 in this car. The scope of this build was and still is no engine swaps

Bucket over shim, yeah.... not likely to be clearance given that it was obviously okay, and now it's not... if it was like that from the start then yeah, I'd agree.

We'll find out in the end though, I'm sure.

Brad... at Hampton Downs the other week, at 6000RPM the car was making a massive 122bhp.... after each gearchange at 4800RPM it was making about 95. No wonder the car was slow as all hell.

Well today marks a bit of a turning point in the project, and sadly not a turning point for the better.... in fact it's probably been the worst day possible. After today, I think I'm going to park the project for 6 months or so and forget about it. I'm just over it.

Got the car up to GDS this morning and we set about changing the oil and filter in preparation to get on the dyno.

The plan was to first get the car through a base-run up to 7000RPM to see where it sat compared to the last run we had on it before Christmas.... this is where things started to go wrong.

The pre-Christmas run showed the engine making a pretty healthy 196bhp at the flywheel at 7000RPM with the power rising sharply at the rev-limit. This suggested that the engine was in good shape and should have been on track to make somewhere around the 225bhp mark.

Today showed a different story. We got about 4 power runs on the dyno and they all showed a quizzically low 152bhp at 7000RPM. Extending the rev limit to 8000 showed a complete flattening off of the power and despite some fettling we were only able to squeeze a miserable 172bhp out of it at 8000RPM before the clutch hose shat itself.

Now the clutch hose is one of the very few things that hasn't been replaced or refreshed in the build, and it took us a few hours to sort it out. It leaked from corrosion on the hose fitting at the slave cylinder end, and we had to end up re-plumbing it in -4 line and stainless fittings.

On the bright side, it was fortunate that we found this out on the dyno and not on the road, where it'd have left me stranded.

Back to the case of the missing horsepower, we turned our attention to figuring out where it went. A leakdown test on cylinders 1-4 showed leakdowns of 10%, 4%, 6% and 40% respectively... cylinder four being the weak link. Further examination revealed that it seemed to be leaking slightly past the exhaust valve and heavily at the inlet valve...

The hopeful side of me was hoping that there was an innocent explanation for this, but if we make the assumption that the compression was fine before (you can hear it in the early vids spinning over evenly) and now compression is uneven and this is the reason it's down on power, it seems that there's little in the way of "simple" things this can be.

We checked the adjustable pulleys and these didn't APPEAR to have slipped. In any case, if they had, I would have expected the same valve damage on all cylinders. Given that it's only on #4, it would seem that either the valves have somehow bent (bear in mind that the engine's spent most of its life so far with a 5500RPM rev limit, and latterly a 6000RPM limit, and seen 7000RPM only twice, briefly, so it's not from an over-rev). It would then appear that perhaps the engine has ingested something, or perhaps there's something else amiss that's causing it.

Either way, it's fucked and it's got to come apart.

Driving it home tonight, it's a real shame. The car, running on basically three cylinders and making about 170bhp seems MASSIVELY fast, it's a real hoot..... but it's not healthy and it's cool to think that with 225bhp the car would be genuinely supercar fast. Right now though I'm not sure I'll ever get to see it through. I've had enough and I'm closing the book on the Exige project for a while. I've other things in life I've neglected for far too long for the sake of this bloody car.... time to re-prioritise.

Off to GDS at sparrow''s fart to get the oil changed and we will bolt her to the dyno and see what she'll do. Will also probably do a bit of a road tune as well to make sure we've dotted all the Is and crossed all the Ts in terms of part-throttle mapping.

There shouldn't be too much work to do though, the best thing about the MoTeC thus far has been how driveable and well-behaved the car is... far more docile than factory spec even though it's in considerably higher fettle... Although I'm sure a lot of that is down to Glenn's deft touch in tuning too.

Well, a little more info on the car this weekend.

After discussion with Glenn, and making a plan for the dyno tune on Wednesday, it appears the car might not be in poor health as we suspected.

Tonight I've been examining datalogs and it would appear that the car maybe isn't as slow as we thought it was. The Exige was very stark in how slow it was up the main straight at Hampton Downs, but reviewing, in detail this isn't the whole story.

It is obvious that with the rev-limit set at 6000, when I'm changing gears it's dropping into a particularly deep torque-hole at about 4600RPM or so. We knew this would be the case and would peg the car back a massive amount, even if it was starting to get into its stride at about 5500RPM.

There's also an aggravating factor here too; the track. At Hampton Downs, the exit from the final corner up the main straight is up quite a steep hill. I come out of the sweeper in fourth gear and am changing into fifth just before the start of the upwards gradient... this drops the car into the torque hole just as it's beginning the climb, which exacerbates the issue. Examining the datalogs between my old Elise (135bhp or so) and the Exige along the flat, it appears that the Exige is roughly on the same pace... so although it's not lightning quick, it's not as slow as I thought.

On Glenn's recommendation, I've now upped the rev-limit to 7000, which is where we've mapped it to on the dyno. He suggested doing a couple of quick squirts through the gears to see what it felt like.

Well, I'm happy to report that it feels like a VERY different car with another 1000RPM added on! A couple of quick squirts up the motorway on-ramp near the port makes for a VERY, VERY quick car. The gearchanges are very different too, you can feel them become much smoother and you don't feel the car jerk as it falls off the torque-curve.... it then picks up from the next gear so much quicker.

The datalogs also show it to be a fair bit quicker through the gears than the Elise with a 7000RPM limit on... so logic would follow that it's going to be even better with an 8500RPM limit.

So, we're off to the dyno on Wednesday, we'll get some fresh oil in it, and run it on the dyno. We'll also play around a little with the cam timing on the dyno to see if a little advance or retard makes a difference throughout the rev range..... stay tuned.

Well, as promised, here's some video of the car on track. Please forgive it being horrendously slow, and the shocking driving. There's a break in the middle where I slowed right down for about 5 laps to cool everything back off before getting back on it again.

I think I did about 25 laps of varying pace and then another 15 or so slow laps inbetween times to let everything cool down nice and gently.

It's certainly easier to keep some load on the engine on track than it is on the road, and given that I wasn't chasing laptimes, it was pretty easy to drive with one eye on the gauges when you know where the corners are going

I compared my datalogs as well between my fastest lap on the weekend in the Exige with my fastest lap a year ago in Paul's (my old) Elise. The Elise was slower through each corner, although was slightly better under brakes... this is just due to me not being used to the brakes on the Exige yet as they're a little devoid of feel (tiny bit of air still in the system I think). The Elise however, despite only having 132bhp just walks away from the Exige on the straights, especially on the uphill sections... it really was obvious!

The Exige makes more noise and feels faster, but the Elise just has area under the torque curve that the Exige can't match when it's hamstrung to 6000RPM.

I'm going to rack up another 150 or so road miles during this week and we'll head back to the dyno next Wednesday to wring what we can from this engine so that I can finally start to exploit what seems to be a very responsive, well-set-up chassis.... the Exige has a poise and stability (and just overall grip) that the Elise can't hope to match... now it just needs the balls to go with it!