Esprit

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.

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!

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

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