Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[Esprit]

Ok, so here it is... the big one! Yesterday my crate of goodies from DVA/VibrationFree touched down, bringing with it the lion's share of things I need for the engine rebuild.

This is really the unintended part of the rebuild since I'd not planned on touching the engine, but when it was clear that all was not well with my VHPD, I decided to rebuild it and rebuild it well. This is BY FAR the most expensive part of the project and what you're looking at in these photos represents many many thousands of dollars... but fingers crossed, the engine will come together, make good power and be pretty reliable with it Hats off to DVA and Steve Smith at VF as initial inspection shows that their work appears to be utterly, utterly first class. I would certainly not hesitate to use either of them again based on what I've seen thus far!

On with the porn... err I mean pics.

Full set new gaskets including MLS head gasket:

Mocal Oil thermostat. This will be plumbed in and prevent overcooling of the oil, which can happen on the Exige:

New Land Rover oil rail. This was replaced as a precaution as the current design is acknowledged to be superior to the early design already in my engine:

1 x set of new head bolts.... every time I see these I can't get over how long the f**kers are!:

Flywheel, clutch cover, front pulley and cam drive pulley, all balanced to the new bottom end as an assembly:

CRANKSHAFT! Brand new stock Rover item, tungsten-inserted to bring counterweights up to the correct weight for the pistons and conrods and then balanced with the bottom end as assembly:

Conrods, forged H-beam Arrow Precision rods.... it'll be a shame to put these things in my engine, they're such beautiful items they really should be framed and on the wall!

New cylinder liner, ready to go:

New Omega Pistons, with larger valve-pockets to clear the larger valves now in my head:

New Piper vernier cam pulleys.... finally, I won't have to put up with rubbish stock cam timing! These have also been balanced with the camshafts.

Shiny new Emerald K3 Programmable ECU:

And finally, the cylinder head. Fulley ported by Dave Andrews at DVAPower, Fire-rings tamped and skimmed, new colisbro valve guides, new, larger valves (over and above the large VHPD valve sizes). Cylinder head built with Piper ARK1444 Race cams (276 duration, 12.2mm lift!), new cam seals, stem seals, new dual valve springs with the stock solid lifters retained (about the only moving component in the engine that's NOT being replaced!).

Feast thine eyes!

Can ye say LIFT?!?!

Inlet and Exhaust ports... soooo gorgeous:

Also not shown are all new seals, bearings etc.

Things come to a grinding halt now as I'm skint (gee, I wonder why!). I'll be doing a few more things on the dash shortly, but that's about it. I will be getting my engine builder to dig out my block and get that cleaned up and ready to begin reassembly shortly. I'm off to the states again soon for work, so hopefully when I return I'll be able to push the "go" button on engine assembly. Thanks to the fact that I'll be paying someone to do much of the engine rebuild, hopefully it'll progress faster than the rest of this project... which has been glacial to date.

[Esprit]

Well this weekend I've been working away on the rear brakes. As always, turned out to be a MUCH longer job than I anticipated, as the brakes were much more corroded than I originally thought. I was hoping they'd largely clean up with some brake cleaner then just buff up... how wrong I was!!!

How they came off the car:

A good few hours elbow grease with the scotch brite and wire wheel followed by a nice vinegar bath for a few hours to strip back the worst of the corrosion:

After that, the castings came up largely clean. I was going to leave them bare, but realised they'd end up back at square 1 in about ten minutes so I gave them each a light coating of clear POR15. It's not a proper quality coating, but it'll do to keep the castings looking reasonably good. Certainly the bits you'll actually see when they're bolted on the car came up looking like brand new so I'm pretty happy and they're about as good as I could get them without doing what everyone else does and spraypainting them a colour. Trust me to do things the hard way!!

(flash makes them seem crappier than they really are)

[Esprit]

Right, well there's not been a lot of progress this last few weeks as I've spent most of them in Texas for work. Today was the first time I've spent on the car in what seems like forever!

Today I've rebuilt the brake callipers front and rear and they're now ready to bolt back on the car. No pics of this as there's not much to see. I've replaced the sliders and boots on the rear calliper (didn't fully strip it as it was in good nick and it's NOT a simple job) and the front callipers have been fully rebuilt with new pistons and seals.

I've also begun scrubbing up my front brake shields. Not sure yet whether I'm actually going to use them. They were pretty corroded, and I'm thinking of scrubbing them up a bit further and then re-anodising them... we'll see. Any SELOCers have any idea whether they're actually worth using or should I just leave them off?

The other thing that's arrived lately is my new Wideband O2 sensor/gauge/logger for the dash. This will enable me to keep an eye on the Air/Fuel as well as run closed-loop with the Emerald. I went for a Stack gauge as I've heard good things about them, it's just a shame they don't make this one in white-face to match the Oil gauge and the Stack dash.. oh well, I'm colourblind anyway

Of course, this has necessitated rethinking the dashboard gaugepod idea a bit, so thankfully I hadn't rushed ahead and made this up yet I'll kick things around in SolidWorks for a bit (see below, work in progress) and figure out how I want things to go and then will start shaping something up from there.

REALLY have to get into Forman Insulation place and sort out some insulation material for the firewall this week... going to have to sort that pronto, and I'll chase up KW and check that there's a rapidly-approaching spot for them to begin work on my engine!

Project SEXIGE... moving along with all the speed of a glacier!

[Black Francis]

lols u must get money hard

[Esprit]

Another day working on the brakes today and will have more progress by this evening/tomorrow.

In the meantime, I found this video of Mike Reed's Exige in the US lapping Summit Point Raceway. Mike's engine build was somewhat similar to mine, although he upped the compression ratio a little but went for slightly less extensive porting work and didn't go quite so OTT on the balancing. I'd hope to make pretty similar horsepower to his, and he just nudged 230bhp (199bhp ATW). Mike's car also runs the UCR (Ultra Close Ratio) box where as mine just runs the stock CR box. I have thought about swapping to a UCR gearset, but since I'll actually drive mine on the road (S1s are track-only in the states) his one can get away with the UCR box. Of course I might upgrade to a quaife 6-speed at some point, but that won't be part of this build.

Anyway, sit back and enjoy something pretty close to what I hope my car ends up going (and sounding) like!

[mikuni]

That sounds the business alright. Hard to guage how quick it is but it looks very sticky with good turn in. Going to be a heap of fun alright.

[Esprit]

Another Saturday and more progress! Although to be fair, I've had an absolute C**T of a day and yet another setback (see below)

On the bright side, the day went rather well as I managed to get all the brakes hung back on the car, all ready to go and the new braided brake lines (HEL lines with stainless ends to replace my rapidly dissolving Goodridge ones) and everything was looking tickety boo! (see pics).

The brakes look prety much like brand new on the car, which is what I was aiming for. Factory fresh!

I then started to bleed the brakes, starting by replacing all of the bleed nipples with new ones (The nipples were the last bit of the service kit I had to add). All went well until I got to the left front calliper where the nipple had seized solid into the calliper. I managed to get it out in the end but it damaged the calliper thread getting it out. I thought there was enough thread left to work, but during the bleeding of the brakes, the rest of the thread let go, fucking the calliper altogether.

Initially I thought it had been cross-threaded by the last monkey who changed the pads, but looking though the SELOC archives, I can see that it's a relatively common occurrence thanks to your f**king salted roads that just bloody ruin your cars.... to be honest, I can't believe how much damage it really does to a car. The differences between my old '98 NZ-new Elise and this '01 Exige (of similar mileages) are poles apart... I can't believe how badly the UK climate is on a car! But... I guess that's why I'm doing this project... when it's done it'll be better than a new one and all traces there were that it had ever been on a god-forsaken British road will have been erased!

I'll be taking the calliper into work to strip it down tomorrow, then around some machine shops early in the week. Fingers crossed I can find someone who can helicoil the thread for me and not completely write off the calliper.

*sigh*

[bubblegoose]

use a wurth timesert not a helicoil

then never take your car out on a wet day again, being a tight pom i understand your corrosion pain i used to wash my bikes off every time they get wet but the salt still had its evil way with them

oh and try and find some scotoil 365 to spray everywhere to stop the nastyness coming back

edit: my mates dad probably made your conrods

[Esprit]

use a wurth timesert not a helicoil

then never take your car out on a wet day again, being a tight pom i understand your corrosion pain i used to wash my bikes off every time they get wet but the salt still had its evil way with them

oh and try and find some scotoil 365 to spray everywhere to stop the nastyness coming back

edit: my mates dad probably made your conrods

What's the main advantage of a timesert over a helicoil? Thing is there's not a lot of meat in the calliper around the bleed nipple and I'm after the lowest profile solution possible In the end I'll take it around some shops and I'll probably have to use whatever they've got.... purchasing a helicoil set at $150 and doing it myself is bloody expensive given that I only want to fix one thread!

And yeah, salted roads suck arse

As for the conrods, if it was your mate's dad, give him a pat on the back from me... he did a wonderful job, whoever he was

[bubblegoose]

timesert is a solid threaded insert not a coil, just a personal preference really

the end flares out with the installation tool and locks the insert into place, the top is countersunk into the hole too keeping it all very tidy

[Snoozin]

Good stuff, George I'll be sitting it in the pits waiting for my turn at NIMM

Here's another example of a saltfucked UK car being rebuilt in NZ.... http://www.gtr.co.uk/forum/113131-rips- ... -borg.html

[Esprit]

Cheers

I read that GTR thread a week ago.... I shudder to think what that's costing given that it's a similar level of build to mine, on a much more complicated car and someone's being paid to do it..... full props to the owner for doing it though, as it'll be one helluva car when done!

[fuel]

yeah that's pretty extreme sending your pride and joy to half way around the world to do it - but I guess it makes sense to give it to someone who knows what they are doing. Must be giving us a good image though, sending their stuff to us because it's of quality work and competitively priced, even with the freight to and from the UK and Ireland etc.

[Esprit]

yeah that's pretty extreme sending your pride and joy to half way around the world to do it - but I guess it makes sense to give it to someone who knows what they are doing. Must be giving us a good image though, sending their stuff to us because it's of quality work and competitively priced, even with the freight to and from the UK and Ireland etc.

Yeah RIPS has a really good reputation in the UK... which is surprising because I know they have SOME (although not many) detractors here.

This is the same reason my cylinder head went back to the UK for work... the extra cost was more than worth it knowing that the job would be done right by someone who had done dozens (if not hundreds) of similar heads in the past.

[Esprit]

Little bit of midweek progress, just picked the brake shields up from the anodisers today, had them anodised black to try to tidy them up and they came out perfect... much better finish than paint

Bling bling.

[Esprit]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!!! FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE MAY '08 (that's almost 16 months) I HAVE AN EXIGE WITH BRAKES!!!!

Right, now that's the "stopping it" part sorted out, just the trivial matter of "making it go" to sort out now

[Esprit]

Right, well not a lot in the way of progress this weekend. Just got the oil cooler bolted back onto the crash structure. This involved a bit more work than expected as the front crossmember needed re-tapping as the threads were still pretty corroded even though I had the part blasted and re-plated.

I also turned up some custom stainless screws to bolt the oil cooler to the crossmember, just replicating the OEM Lotus screws in stainless. They have lower profile heads than stock bolts.... having a lathe just down the road at work comes in handy sometimes!

But, and this is BIG NEWS for me, THE CAR IS NOW ROLLING!!!!!! At about half past noon today, I dropped her off the axle stands and rolled her out of the garage for the first time since APRIL 2008!!!!! She then spent the afternoon basking in late-winter sunshine while I gave the garage a square-up that was MONTHS overdue... I can see the workbench again!

Obviously I've still a long way to go, but at times in the past year or more, I wondered if I'd ever even get this far since it seemed to get further and further away with every new bit of the car I began working on! At least now I can shuffle the car in and out if I need to work on it, which will make life a bit easier.

I'll shut up now and you can see my car, back on its wheels for the first time in so very very long..... I'd REALLY forgotten how low these things are!!!!!

And one final shot.... a clean garage is a functional garage! It's not looked like this in a LONG time.

[Esprit]

Well been off work sick today, so in between bouts of coughing my lungs up, I thought I'd start to tackle the making up of the firewall heatshield. The original item or material is not available from Lotus, so the guys here at Forman Insulation have sorted me out what appears to be about the closest thing that's possible. It seems to be a very similar type of material and will hopefully do the job.

Using the destroyed one I removed as a template, I carefully cut out a new one (although I won't mention that I initially cut one that was perfect, but a mirror-image of what I wanted!!!.... working on your car with a virus-affected brain is dangerous!

I've also kinda jostled it into place to see where it needs trimming and fettling.

It's going to need a bit more work and it's going to be a real pain in the ass to get in and get right. I think I'm going to remove the roof as I need to remove the rear window and surround to give better access at squeezing the heatshield in. This is the order it'll have been fitted in in the factory so I probably should take the extra couple hours to remove the roof to make a tidier job of things. I'm trying to make it look as good as I can, even though you won't be able to see much of it once the engine's back in and the rear clam is on.

[Esprit]

Well spent today being rather sick in bed. Managed to get out to the garage for half an hour and get the roof off and the back window out. This has allowed me to remove the rear window frame which gives me better access to the upper firewall. This'll make fitting the heatshield easier.... hopefully.

But yeah... visually a step backwards.

[Esprit]

Well another weekend and more progress, although admittedly slow as I've still been getting over the tail end of this flu. The engine block is being cleaned up as we speak and I should hopefully be due to start measuring up and pre-assembly stuff in the coming week or two (ABOUT BLOODY TIME!).

The significant progress came this weekend getting the firewall heatshield finished. This was a bigger task than it looked, and the real tricky bit was to get it looking tidy. It'd have been easy if I wasn't worried about a tidy looking job. Either way you'll barely see it when the engine's in, but it's nice to know that it's done nicely.

Now, the first thing I did was to turn up a small plug to fill the drilled-out corrosion hole in the firewall. I was going to use a rubber body plug to do it (blanking grommet) but since I didn't have one and I had some UHMWPE bar stock and a lathe, I figured I'd make me one.

15 minutes with the lathe and I had one turned up, got it so that it was a nice snug press-fit in the hole, then a dab of contact adhesive to make double sure it wasn't going anywhere and voilà! no more hole in the firewall

Then the nerve-wracking bit came, the time to stick on the firewall heat shield I'd painstakingly cut out. This was V3, as I bollocksed up the first one, and the second one was fitted and removed several times to get the shape just right. The third was my good one after I'd had plenty of practice at cutting the stuff right.

It's not 100% perfect but it's about 99% there. Either way it's certainly a better fit than the OEM one that was on there, so I'm happy with that. I just hope now that the material is up to the task as it'll be a clam-off and engine-out job to sort if it's not. It's certainly the closest stuff I could find to original though, so it shouldn't be an issue.

On balance I think it's a success