Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[Guest Esprit]

I think the 'thing' that felt right about that house was probably the colossal garage!

There's no "probably" about it

Also, I liked the area, the rest of the house is lovely and it has a nice big, easy-care section... what's not to like?

[Guest k-trips]

The fact that you own it and not me..

Oh and it's in Auckland..

[Esprit]

Been busy with house/work stuff of late so not many miles put on the car.

I did, however, manage to track down the source of the grinding noise on the rear (I think) to a rear calliper bolt being sliiiiiightly too long and just touching the back of the brake disc when loaded up. A quick touch with the grinder sorted that out.

This last week, I got round to doing something I've been meaning to so for a while; resetting the ride-height and giving the car a full geo, as the handling suggested it wasn't ideal. I've had the rear suspension on and off a couple of times and while I had an alignment done not too long ago, it just didn't feel right.... so now that I have the garage space, out came the string!

As I suspected, it was a way out, so after several hours of setting up, measuring, adjusting, and repeating, I had it pretty damned close.

The reason for this? I'd been invited along to a trackday by my father as his group of mates was going to one with the Hawke's Bay Car Club at Taupo. My good friend Paul Aston was coming along too in my old Elise, so it was set to be a fun day.

After a foggy drive down, the day was just a perfect late Autumn day. Clear blue sky, little breeze and about 20 degrees. Lovely!

Paul and I were allocated into the fast road-car group, which put us out with a couple of 997 Turbos, a 996 Turbo S, an R8 V10, a couple of F430 Scuderias and a Ferrari F458, among others.

Despite being outgunned under power, SEXIGE acquitted herself well, clearly faster than everything else out there over a lap, even though sometimes the others were reluctant to let the little upstart past!

This was from the first session, and I've got more video to come, but this was the only one where I started from the rear of the group, in the others I tended to just lead out and leave the exotica behind. It's not every day you get the chance to dust off Scuds and 458s!

Managed to clock a high 1:42 laptime which isn't too bad... car has more in it though, especially since my rear tyres have long since given their best!

[Truenotch]

Awesome! Looks like it's going well apart from the lack of rear grip, and you're not afraid to push it... I reckon you need to have a go on slicks .

 

 

I would love to have a go at hassling those expensive cars on the racetrack too! Looks like it may have been a bit frustrating at times though? 

[My name is Russell]

Fun Fun Fun! Nice driving! 

[Esprit]

Wasn't too frustrating, later sessions I started more up the front so only had to deal with them when I came up to lap them That was the first run of the day, tyre pressures weren't right, and the track was cold and still a little damp. It does need more rear end grip though, I've a stiffer front ARB on the wishlist as I'm at maximum stiffness on the stock item and it's still unloading the inside rear too much.

It's a common thing with S1s though and more a case of too much front grip rather than not enough rear. I could run more camber on the rear for more grip on track, but it'd drive like arse on the road, and it is still a street car after all

[lowlancer]

Man you pedal that thing like a boss. Interesting to watch your lines vs the noobs in the fancy (er) cars.

[Esprit]

That was pretty rusty too. As evidenced by the number of mis-shifts and ham-fisted corrections. One of the sessions I managed to get it smoother and quicker, but it usually looks slower because I'm less busy at the wheel.

 

Good thing about the session was because there was little traffic out front I spent most of the afternoon experimenting with taming the oversteer with left-foot braking, which was surprisingly effective out of the slower corners. Needs some more work but I think there could be  half second or so in that in the long run once I figure out my technique for the car properly.

[Esprit]

Well it's been a couple of quiet months for the Lotus over here. I always use it little in the winter, and despite it being an unseasonably warm/dry one over here I've had a bunch of other things on my plate which have kept me otherwise occupied.

Now being a mortgage-slave, I can't really afford to abuse the Exige in the way I'd ideally like to, so I've decided that the Exige will become more of a toy than a track hack and will come out for the odd trackday here and there and also for some road fun. That way I can avoid breaking it and having to sell organs to get it fixed! However, I still have a track-fun itch that needs regular scratching so I've decided to go racing on the cheap, so a friend and I have decided to field a team for the 2kCup here in NZ (www.2kcup.com).

This is basically a class for cars valued and purchased for less than $2000, sub 2 litre standard, normally-aspirated road cars. The idea is to basically buy it and race it completely unmodified. Some small modifications are allowed, and any changes to the car are limited to swapping out factory-optioned bits. Engines must be 100% standard, rollcages and race-seats and harnesses etc are optional to try and keep costs down and the cars are all slow enough that they're not really needed anyway.

The sensible cars at the front of the field are SW20 MR2s and Honda Integra DC2s it would seem. Liking a challenge and to do things a bit differently, we decided to go completely left-field and contest it in a Mazda Lantis Type R... which is somewhat boat-like in comparison to the opposition! Our aim, however, is to have the best sounding car in the competition! Such a shame we have to run a stock exhaust system as it sounds hilarious with a straight-pipe!

When we picked her up, she smelled like an ashtray, had various bits spraypainted matte-black, had completely the wrong suspension fitted and even had the remnants of stockings stretched over the lights as makeshift-tints! Beautiful! We christened her "The Cockroach"





We set about tidying her up, getting it road-legal again (another series requirement) and sorting out the suspension:



We also dropped as much weight as we could legally do, by removing things such as the sunroof (as the Lantis-R was available without one), so I decided to turn my hand at making up a carbonfibre sunroof-patch by making up a fibreglass mould:



... and then using it to lay-up a carbon sandwich panel on top of, which turned out pretty passable for a $2k junker!



Initial track testing has shown that while we probably won't be in the hunt for the championship, we're about on the pace of the lead bunch and hopefully can have some good battles.... it's a laugh being on track and not having a care in the world about blowing it up or bending it! It means you can rag it mercilessly!

Of course, having the new garage makes it a hell of a lot easier to do this kind of project and not having to worry about storing the Lotus or having cars in the way of each other when you want to work on one or t'other is nice!

It's actually looking kind of emptyish at the moment as I've suddenly become the focal point for all my friends wanting to do jobs on their various machines!



Back in on SEXIGE, it's still running really well, although I've still got a weeping gearbox casing which will need sorting in the mid-term. Given that the box needs to come out, I've decided I'm going to save up and fit a lighter flywheel and twin-plate clutch since the engine in this kind of tune really deserves something a bit less ponderous than the standard setup, and because I've already had one single-plate clutch fail on me, my trust in it is a little dented. I'll get them sorted out and over here before I pull the box off and apart to get the porous casting sealed up, which should fix the leak. It's only an annoyance value as in traditional Lotus fashion, the leaks always make a hell of a lot of mess for very little oil!

The only other issue I've had recently is a case of running rich and a bit of a hot-starting issue where it's prone to flooding. After polling the sensors it seems that my TPS has gone, as last month I noticed it sitting at 14% throttle on idle, and while it's usually not that bad, a test drive today showed it to be sitting anywhere from 0.9% to 6.2%, which isn't right. I pulled the old one off and have a new one on the way to re-fit, which should hopefully save me the hassle in future of being stuck on a petrol-station forecort rapidly flattening my battery trying to fire it up!

TPS Removed:


And the offending item:


And the car as she sits now:




First day of spring here today so looking forward to putting some miles on her this summer and the odd track outing too

[Truenotch]

The cockroach was great fun to watch today! Time to start a thread for it? 

[Esprit]

Haha Glad you enjoyed seeing it! Maybe I will start a thread for the roach if I've got some free time... although obviously we can't mod it a whole hell of a lot!

[Esprit]

Well it's been a while since I've done a proper update.

Had the Exige out on track a few weeks back at the Club Lotus NZ twilight trackday at Hampton Downs. Had a couple of fun sessions, and despite me not driving it too hard and the brakes protesting a little (the discs are well due for replacement) it still managed to lap in the 1:14s easily, within a second or so of my best times.

On the way home the car started making a bit of a jangling sort of noise I knew all too well. I suspected that engine vibration had broken another manifold support bracket but inspection last weekend showed that the bolt that secures it to the block had come out and disappeared. It was about a 3 hour job to replace the bastard because it's probably one of the least accessible fasteners on the whole car! With only minimally skinned knuckles I managed to sort it.

With that fixed, I was going to take the car up to the "Caffeine and Classics" monthly meet up in Takapuna. On the way up there though, I noticed the slight grinding/rubbing noise I occasionally get from the left rear was back and probably worse than ever. Everything felt fine though but I decided to go home. It's one of those annoying problems that you can't replicate on the jack just by spinning the wheel but a half hour of rolling the car back and forth in the garage pointed to it being the left outer CV joint making a little noise.

The CV joints were one of the things I didn't do in the rebuild, I simply cleaned out and re-packed them with grease as well as cleaning up the salt corrosion and painting with POR15, so with all the track abuse I've given it,it made sense that one was likely to be on the way out.

So, with a new CV joint here from EliseParts, I got to fitting.

Here's the old CV off the car and on the bench:



I was going to paint the new CV as I did the old one, but given the car doesn't see a lot of the winter running these days, I figured it'd stay looking okay as it was. It doesn't match the other side now, but I'll probably replace the right hand CV too before long as preventative maintenance.

It all went nice and without a hitch really, which is nice. I thought I'd post up some photos of the wheel well area so y'all could see how the finishing job I did has held up over the last few years. While the car certainly isn't a daily driver it's certainly done a number of trips away and a dozen or so trackdays in the last couple of years, and it's been about 5 years since I did a lot of the initial work on the wishbones etc and they've held up really well I think!







Just need to give everything a quick spanner check and torque up before I take it out for a test drive in the morning. The Club Lotus Christmas Breakfast is on in the morning and the show/shine, so I might head along there to test it out