Esprit

Well, got it out on track at Hampton Downs this weekend for its first track shakedown, which was brilliant. The good news is that the car ran okay and didn't blow up and nothing fell off, so I'm happy about that.

Here are a phew photos Nikki took of the car in the pits to prove I was there!

I ran 3 sessions on track, a total of about 40 laps. During this time I was driving pretty conservatively, keeping one eye on the temperatures and pressures and just getting back into the groove. Best time I think was 1:19.5, which was monumentally slow, about a second adrift of my best time in my old Elise (Which has about 135bhp and semi-slicks).

First impressions of the car are pretty good, the handling is pretty close, the stability in the fast corners is astounding and the car is brilliant under brakes. Getting the car turned into some of the slower hairpin bends proved a bit tricky, but I think this was much more due to my driving being rubbish than anything else.

The tyres are a bit past their best age-wise (they were one trackday old when I pulled the car to bits, so are now probably harder than they should be) but I was obviously not working them very hard since they don't appear to have gummed up like they usually do.... this means I've probably got the ability to push a lot harder.

The engine, well.... it's slow... very very slow. I had the rev-limiter set at 6,000RPM, which I think is just too low to get into the torque band. Every gear change felt very abrupt as it would drop back to about under 5000 or so, and the torque-hole was noticeable.

On one lap, the blue S2 you can see in the photos, which is fairly mild (about 130-140bhp at most) just walked away from me up the hill, despite me having a faster corner exit... so it's definitely a bit on the sluggish side. Terminal velocity on the front straight was about 170km/h which is certainly no faster than I managed in my old Elise.

I'll analyse the datalogs tonight and overlay my best Elise lap and my best Exige lap to look at the differences, but I'm very hopeful that once the engine has its final tune on it and has the whole rev range available, it'll be a very different engine.

I've got some video to come in the next day or so as well.

The engine also drank a fair bit of oil as well. Over the 40 laps or so, the dipstick went from just under the full mark, to about halfway down.... so about 500mL. I don't think this is much to worry about at this stage, there aren't any signs of leakage that I can see (undertrays coming off tonight to see in detail). I'll also check the catch can to see if anything/how much has been spat out the breather. Oil temps maxed at about 110 degrees, so things weren't getting overly hot.

I don't THINK it's got glazed bores, after a very heavy run, when idling in the pits, I could see the breather was puffing some small wisps of oil vapour, but certainly it wasn't anything heavy, and there was no pressure behind it when blocked with a thumb.

I think it's just more that the engine is still fresh and still running mineral oil, resulting in oil evaporation when hot. At least that's what I'm hoping.

In any case, with 400+ miles now up on the clock, 300+ of those being fast road and track miles, I think the engine is now sufficiently run in. I'll be booking the car in at GDS to get the oil changed over to Motul 300V competition, and then we'll strap it back down to the dyno and tune it right up to 8500. We'll also get it a road-tune so that its part-throttle behaviour is ironed out as much as we can. It'll certainly be interesting to see what numbers it makes because right now it doesn't feel as quick as it should.

The gearbox seems to have come good, it's no longer rattly and it shifts pretty well on track. The 5th/6th synchros can feel weak, but if you shift it quick it seems to snick in more like a dog box... actually rather nice to use on track.

I'll post the video later, and perhaps the datalog analysis if I can get it up online.

Well, all back on the road now and ready for tomorrow's trackday at Hampton Downs.

took it for a squirt up Domain Drive yesterday and she's very good in the tight stuff... going to be brilliant to get it on track so I can figure out what the on-limit balance is like and adjust as necessary. Will have the cam in the car, so will have some footage.

I'm still on the run-in tune and on mineral oil, rev-limited to 6000 now, although might open that up to 6500 on the track (I'm mapped up to just shy of 7000, so it's fine from a tune point of view).

That'll men I'm missing about 35bhp on where I'll finally be, but it should be enough to find out what I need to about brakes/handling.

After the trackday, if everything's still in one piece with no problems, I'll book in with GDS and arrange to get some Motul 300V competition synthetic in it, get it back on the dyno and also road-tuned.... I've a couple of rough spots as the engine loosens up that need a bit of ironing out, but on the whole, I think the mapping is pretty close.

Fingers crossed for a trouble free run at the Downs tomorrow.

Arsebiscuits. Not a good day today. Ken replaced the CV boot today, and I got the car home this evening. I've been under the car swapping out the LDS-type gear oil for the new Redline MT90 that's going in and there's more grease sprayed around the engine bay. It would appear that the tie-bands on the new CV boot isn't anywhere near tight enough... in fact I can pop the boot off the joint altogether with my fingers.

In addition, my speedo is no longer working, and it looks like the connector wasn't disconnected when they released the suspension arm to pull out the joint and the connector pins are pretty well mangled so I'll need to get Glenn to rewire it.

Thankfully I still have a speedometer readout on the Motec MDD to use when driving in the meantime.

Back to Ken first thing in the morning to have the CV repacked and new band clamps installed on the boot..... arrrgh, bloody teething problems.

Not a good day at all

Well, the run-in continues. I've got almost 300 miles up on the engine now after runs out in the Waitakeres and down the East Coast to Kaiaua. The handling is fantastic and I really can't wait to get it on track.

The engine is doing all I expect of it at the moment, and given that it's limited to 5500, it's very very strong.

I pulled the engine undertray off this mornign as I planned to drop and replace the gearbox oil with some new Redline MT90 as this is better suited to the box than the Motul LSD oil I was running and unfortunately I've found that the L/H inner CV boot has spat all its grease out everywhere.

I expected to see it torn asunder, but all I can see is a very small cut, near the band clamp. I'm assuming this is probably my fault and I may have damaged it when pulling and reinstalling the engine the second time around. As such, I'm going to try to get the car into Ken's ASAP and I'll get him to replace the boot and grease as well as the box oil.

Hopefully this can happen pretty quickly as I want to get the car back on the dyno and tuned up ready for the track.

The good news is that the rest of the engine and box seems to be pretty oil-tight at this stage, with no evidence of leaks, although there's that much grease been thrown about that I won't be able to tell for sure until I get everything cleaned up and run in some more.

This is just one of those little teething issues you get with jobs like this I guess. If this is the extent of my woes, then I'll be happy.

Oh, and just as an aside, the Motec M800 seems to be managing things very well. The cold-start needs a little work and part throttle isn't perfect yet, but we'll nail that on the road tune. Other than that it does a remarkable job of making the engine seem almost boring. On the old Lotus computer it used to fart and bang and generally misbehave... the Motec seems to remove all of this and you get the feeling it's finding it all a bit too easy.

I'm sure some of the old naughtiness will come back once we've the full-noise tune on... and maybe we can engineer in a bit of naughtiness on the overrun, just for fun... we'll see

Went for my first proper drive in the car last night. Took it home from work, out to Toni's place out west. From there I headed out into the Waitakere ranges and put about 80 miles on the car over tome twisty, empty roads. Still got the rev-limiter at 5500RPM which really kills the fun as soon as it gets going, but even so, in a straight line it feels just about as quick as it used to be. With another 3000RPM to play with, it should be manic!

The gearbox is just magic, the ratios suit it perfectly. I'm managing to beat the synchros in the high gears from time to time though, but a bit of research shows that the gear oil I chose for the box is all wrong so that's likely to be the culprit (It's friction-modified for LSD, which I don't need as the ATB diff is sealed.... this makes the synchros not work as they should). I will have some Redline MT90 here for the box by the end of today which will go in next week ready for the dyno/track.

All temps and pressures seem perfect. Oil got to 90 degrees at its hottest in the sump and after the cooler was a good bit cooler. Gearbox oil peaked at around 70 degrees. Water temperature sits at 84 degrees and gets up to about 86 when pressing on and peaks at 90 when cruising after pushing on, which is all spot on.

I've got the gearbox cooler set to come on when the oil hits 115 degrees and only when the engine RPM is above 3000 RPM. I've set the engine cooling fan to come on at 94 degrees and to switch off at 88. These will get tweaked once I've some data at the track about how the car behaves under load.

I'm also going to re-programme the shift light to come on in a different sequence and colours since my colour-blindness has trouble telling some of the colours apart... I just want to make it a bit more intuitive to me.

Handling wise, the car is AMAZING. I've had a little advice from the guru Chris Randall about how to set the car up for me, and I'm running a fairly track-biased set-up. It's not QUITE as aggressive as I can go, but perhaps an 8 out of 10 on a sliding Road-to-track scale.

I expected the car to be pretty rubbish on bumpy, camber-changing roads, but it was MUCH better than expected. The car can carry just as much cross-country pace on the Nitron NTR/Eibach combo as it ever did on the Lotus/Koni LSS setup. Under severe bumps you can feel a slight unsettling of the car, but no more than it used to.

The body and roll control is far superior and you seem to be able to enter corners more aggressively without having to worry about managing the weight transfer as much as I used to. It used to be a car you had to drive into a corner thoughtfully, planning your way through it with how the car would pitch and roll, and how those movements would affect the car through the corner. While you still have to worry about the weight transfer, the scale is much more subtle, more progressive and you can be a little more deliberate with your inputs.

Too early to tell on the LSD thus far, but certainly it doesn't seem to have introduced any understeer that I could tell. The one time I did manage to get on the power early enough, to spin an inside wheel with an open differential, it seemed to hook up well, even tightening its line ever so slightly.... so encouraging early signs.

I took these same roads about 18 months ago in the GTi6, and I questioned the need to have a Lotus, the Peugeot being nearly as fast and nearly as much fun... While I stand by those comments, the Lotus is just on an entirely new level aurally... it raises the bar substantially.

I've got my long-suffering girlfriend's birthday late this week and over the weekend, so nothing much will happen on the car until Monday, but next week I'll be racking up some more run-in miles, getting the gear oil changed and getting the car back to GDS for an oil change (Motul 300V Competition in place of the Motul 4T Mineral oil it currently runs), a full dyno tune and road-tune hopefully before Sat 12th when it'll see its first track shakedown at Hampton Downs.

Given my initial impressions on the road, I'm very much looking forward to testing at the track as it promises to be nothing short of awesome.

Knowing my luck.....

Well, it's taken me three years to get here, but I've made it!

All road legal!

Obviously the build continues as I've a lot of finishing to do, but this is a HUGE step, a day where ALL the letters are red

I should also add that the big goal this summer was to get the car finished, and it's now the first day of Autumn.... so yeah,I fail... but better late than never?

Another good day today! Clamshell refitted, and the car is all back together bar the undertrays. I've left these off as I plan to take it for a geo tomorrow to get the toe sorted and to see where the camber/caster's at.

I took it for a 20 minute drive around suburbia and it's now completely rattle free, which is great. Water temperature is rock solid at 82-84 degrees, oil temp sits around 70-75 degrees and the oil pressure varies from around 70psi at cold to 55psi hot.

No signs yet of any leaks, but I'll check in the morning once it's sat overnight. So far it seems to be oiltight... touch wood!

The other job I got done today while putting the rear bodywork back together was to install a new length of ducting for the alternator. This ducts cool air from the right-hand side vent over the alternator as this sits close to the exhaust. This was standard on Exiges and my original one had literally fallen to pieces.

Job's a carrot!

So, hopefully geo tomorrow, then begins the arduous task of racking up another 400 run-in miles or so before we feed it some good oil and send it back to the dyno and give it a road tune.... then it's off to the track

Oh, and some before/during/after pics of the engine hoist-in thanks to Nikki

(I'm the muppet in the yellow JEG's cap, James is the guy helping me wrestle with the K)

She runs again! No gearbox rattle either.... great success!

I will leave it overnight now to check for leaks etc, a little more tidying in the morning before the clam goes back on. I've still got to do a little more bleeding on the coolant too, as I suspect I've still got some air in the system.... but we're on our way

Well when you have mates around helping you bolt stuff in, it's rude to feed them substandard beer

oh yeah i know what the rev limiter is, this was a seemingly odd system, that when the 2zz is on its power cams, the ecu wont let the engine rev under 6200 when shifting gears or letting off the gas, thus switching to econo-cam mode. and to me this sounds about as desirable as a throttle jamming on mid turn, but logically thinking, its a sports car and it must work to a certain degree.

Aah, I think you misunderstand... I think he was just saying that when you're going flat out and shifting at redline, you don't drop off the high cam in the higher gear... there's no system to keep the revs up

A successful evening's work tonight.

I started off by doing a job I'd missed first time around and figured that now was a good time to do it. Lubricating the rose joints on the rear toe links. Getting grease to these under the dust covers isn't easy, so thankfully having a sister who's a vet and can get me giant needles, I ground the tip off the needle to blunt it and it worked rather well for injecting the grease into the joints. Top job!

Then SELOCers James and Nikki came around to say hello and to lend a hand hoisting the engine in. Another friend, Brad, turned up shortly thereafter and between all of us the engine was in in about 30 minutes. Another hour and the driveshafts were in, the engine mounts were bolted in, the hubs were reassembled and the clutch slave was half-reinstalled. A successful night's work!

Back into it early tomorrow to begin the long task of hooking everything back up, adding oil and water etc., bleeding and getting the thing running.

By tomorrow, night, hopefully I'll have the engine running and have the car test-driven to check that all is well. Hopefully that leaves Sunday for reinstalling the bodywork, interior, undertrays etc.... Game on!

The rev-limiter is just a set point in the ECU whereby fuel is cut and the engine will not rev past. On a programmable ECU like the Motec in my car, you can set this to be whatever you like it to be.

Yeah mine's one of the earlier, lighter, more powerful Rover-engined cars.

The S2 Exige has the VVTL-i Toyota engine that switches to a high-lift camshaft profile above about 6000RPM. Mine's the same, only it's in high-lift configuration from 0RPM upwards

Engine and gearbox are back as one tonight!

Took a bit of struggling and swearing to do it singlehandedly but now the donk is ready to drop back in. Just need an extra pair of hands tomorrow night or Saturday to help guide the engine back in the hole and get it bolted back up to the mounts. From that point on I've got several hours of hooking everything back up, re-running wiring and then adding fluids/bleeding etc, and she should be a runner again.

As motivation, I've uploaded this little clip to youtube. It was taken last Thursday when I was trying to diagnose the rattle, and is just me driving and giving it a little squirt. rev limiter cuts in at about 5650RPM so it's only just getting interesting by the time it does, but she seems to go as well as she used to, even with the foreshortened rev range.

The camera doesn't pick up the engine noise that well and seems to pick up more background noise than anything else, but hey... it still sounds nice!

Just a quickie update on the run.

The gearbox came apart this morning and Ken focussed his attention on the reverse gear shift mechanism, as I suspected this was the cause of the issue. He was quickly able to discover that the gearbox had been assembled missing a single ballbearing detent on the reverse lockout mechanism, meaning that (as I suspected) the reverse idler was moving into contact with the input shaft under LH cornering loads. A cheap, quick fix and hopefully the source of the noise.

There was no evident damage caused by this rattle in the gearbox. As I suspected the contact was very light and sounded worse than it was. Still, it's better not happening at all, so I'm happy.

Will work on getting the engine and box bolted back together in the next couple of days and hopefully have the engine hoisted and bolted back in the car by the weekend. Then it should be about a day's work to get everything hooked back up, refilled, bled and fired up.

I'll do a few test-drives around the neighbourhood with the body off to check for leaks and rattles before the bodywork is reinstated. By mid next week I hope to be in a position to take the car for a WOF.

Also, some of the international readers might like to know that yesterday's earthquake in Christchurch is about 900km South of where I am in Auckland. We didn't even feel it up here, so, me and the car is completely fine. Obviously, everyone in New Zealand is preoccupied with our Cantabrian brothers and sisters, and it's at times like these where one's own troubles fade into somewhat less significance.

Onwards and upwards!

Another long evening in the garage and the juggernaut rolls onward.... I got the sump removed this evening and spent a couple of hours cleaning up the flanges before resealing them with Loctite 518. The sump was then re-torqued in place and is ready to go again.

The flywheel and clutch have also been reinstalled and torqued along with the manifold.

I also went around the engine and re-torqued everything as per factory spec.

So that's the engine finished and ready to go back in. Tomorrow the attention turns to the gearbox. I'm dropping it off to Ken at KW in the morning and he'll strip it down tomorrow afternoon... fingers crossed, by Wednesday we'll have it on the mend and ready to mate to the engine again.... hopefully meaning that late this week we can hoist the whole lot back in the car and begin the long process of hooking everything up again and making it look tidy.

Well, after the recent setbacks, it's time to reinstate the characteristic British stiff upper lip and follow the motto:

This afternoon I rolled my sleeves up and got back into the garage and whipped the clutch and flywheel off the engine and proceeded to examine the crank seal. It didn't appear to be leaking too badly, maybe a slight weep, but certainly it didn't seem bad. I already had a spare one anyway so I decided to pull the old one (after a whole 15 miles of driving) and replace it... this time myself, so making sure that everything was scrupulously clean and just-right before reinstalling.

I degreased everything, removed all the old RTV and wiped everything down several times with acetone.

I made up a special tool to help me press the new seal in squarely and then lubed up the seal and the crank journal with fresh engine oil.

The seal was then dressed (as per the Rover manual) with Loctite 587 RTV before being inserted home:

Let's hope that third time's a charm eh?

Now, because the crank seal didn't seem to be leaking that much, I've also decided to pull the sump and clean everything up here too and re-do the sump-to-cradle seal. I did this before when I pulled the sump from the engine to insert the baffles, and there's a possibility that it might be leaking from here too... it's also a case of it being a lot easier to do with the engine out and the sump fully accessible.

So the oil got drained (I believe the 4th time, or the 5th time I've drained this engine... at least it'll be good and flushed of build debris now! I've also pulled the manifold off in preparation for dropping the sump.

So tomorrow's job will be to pull the sump and clean all this up immaculately and get it back in place with a fresh Loctite 510 seal in place.... hopefully this means the engine will stop weeping the good stuff.

Tomorrow's job is to see is I can order some fresh snap-rings and seals for the gearbox driveshafts..... I've had them in and out so much now that it's probably a good idea to replace these as a matter of good procedure.

I'll also talk to Ken at KW Historics in the morning. I had booked him in on Wednesday to pull my engine out, but since that's now out, I might enlist him to strip, inspect, repair and reassemble the gearbox... as I doubt I'll have much free time this week.

All going to plan, I might be able to book next weekend out to getting the engine back in the car, and hopefully this time in seven days I can post an update that the engine runs again... then I've just gotta reinstall the bodywork and get the bloody thing run in.... not before time!

Oh and just a quick thanks I missed off in my last update. Massive thanks to my friends Ian Wilson (for lending me his engine hoist) and Heath Simone (for donating muscle, beer and spanner time) this weekend... it's nice when fellow petrolheads help each other out at times like these... Cheers guys!

A rather heartbreaking day today... feels like a million steps back... car now looks like it did a year ago

Still, looking on the bright side, I found out the gearbox drain plug was stripped, so at least I can assume that that would have shaken loose at some point in the future and I'll never have a better chance to helicoil it than I do now.... still doesn't make looking at these photos any easier though

I'm off for a drink.

Well the guy I bought it off is a pretty respected name in Lotus circles and I know him personally.... if it turns out he sold me a pup, I'm sure the damage to his reputation would be worth a fair bit to him, given that I'm also pretty fondly thought of in Lotus circles.

The latest news is that I've confirmed that the noise is coming from inside the gearbox, it cannot be anything else.... so out it comes.

The gearbox was a used, rebuilt unit I bought from the UK. I suspect it was opened before it was sold to me and it's been reassembled incorrectly as it won't have been making these noises when it came out of the racer it was in. Not an intentional mistake by the seller I'll wager, but one that's going to cost me arms, legs and other appendages.

The transmission's not really the issue here. I'm sure that when I've stripped the trans, I can fix the idler with scrappy parts (or even cannibalise parts from my spare PG1 gearbox if I REALLY need to)... it's just that with the 6-speed box, it needs to come out with the engine complete (the 5-speed can be twisted and drop out the bottom). To get the engine out, the rear clam needs to come off (about an afternoon's work for two people in itself)... to get the rear clam off, the seats and the interior need to be removed..... so just getting the thing to a stage where I can take it to bits is a good day's work.

Well... I KNEW it was too fucking good to be true! The car's coming to bits again! F%^K!!!!!!!!!!!

I've done a few short drives with the car (still not road legal) to work out some small bugs, and one thing I noticed is that the car had a bit of a rattle when turning left.

It's a metallic rattle that increases with cornering load. Very hard to capture on camera, but here's a short clip here, you can hear it as I turn through the apex of the corner:

It sounds like gears skipping against each other, and it only happens when turning left. It's fine when straight or turning right.

Initially I thought it was the LSD just doing LSD-like things, buq the fine gents at Quaife confirmed that the diff should be silent.

My second guess was that the new Powerlite starter pinion was fouling the ring gear when turning left. I swapped back to the old starter and the noise remained.

I've checked EVERYTHING else, hubs, driveshafts, general engine bay, heatshields and there's nothing external I can find that is making the noise.

The rattle doesn't seem to be happening in neutral, with the car jacked up on the left side and running so that rules out it being anything internal to the engine.... so that only leaves the gearbox.

A bit of research on the standard Rover PG1 gearbox, I came across this little gem on Google: "Some gearboxes showed early problems but those should all have been repaired under warranty. A bunch of PG1 gearboxes had been assembled without the ball bearing and spring that locate the reverse idler gear. On left turns the idler gear can slide and catch on the top gear cog giving an horrible grinding noise. "

Now, the Quaife QKE4R box shares the PG1 reverse arrangement, so I imagine that either something is broken inside the box here or it's been incorrectly assembled last time and the reverse idler gear is sliding across and fouling during left hand turns.

On the PG1 box, this issue has been known and many owners just put up with it, it does no real damage and is barely noticeable in a normal car. In the Exige it's pretty intrusive, and given the vale of the gearbox, it's best to strip and rebuild the box..... especially since every time I turn left, the gearbox is essentially trying to find reverse gear! Not the sort of thing I want happening on a track at speed!

This means it has to come out.... with the engine... which means removing the engine cover.... and the rear bodywork.... which means removing the seats and the interior..... which, right now, is the world's biggest piss-off! To day I'm annoyed or disappointed right now is an understatement of the century. Most of the last fortnight's work in getting the body reattached is now for nothing and will have to be undone and re-done again.

On the plus side, I managed to finish up the front compartment and get the battery isolator mounted in place, which looks perfect.... but in the light of today's development, it doesn't really matter any more does it?

Anyone want to make me an offer for the car before I torch it?