Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[Esprit]

Well another busy weekend in the garage. Still waiting on a couple of sensors from Merlin Motorsport in the UK, should be here this week, which will enable me to get the car lubed and primed.

Should be leaving for wiring next weekend

So, this weekend... I finally got the brakes bled. This turned out to be a mission and a half because there was a big bunch of air in the system we couldn't shift, and the crappy single-man brake bleeder I got did nothing but waste good fluid and draw air back into the system.

On Saturday I bought a good vacuum/pressure kit and with the help of my friend Heath, we managed to do a combination of vac-bleeding along with the conventional pump method and got a shedload of air out. It's all feeling pretty good now, but will probably bleed them some more before it hits the street, just to be sure the brakes are 100%.

I also got the front undertray fitted. This is the new one I designed up and I managed to get one of the holes in the wrong place, so had to drill another. Once that was all sorted, I managed to get it in place, which has also stiffened up the front clam, since this bolts to this tray on the underside.

Today was spent mainly watching Bathurst, but I got into the garage this evening and got the ECU mounting plate bolted in:

The ECU and header box will go here, and this plate just enables the whole lot to be bolted in and removed as a unit.

The next thing for tonight was to get the battery in place. I went into work and made up a jumper harness to allow me to connect the charger easily. Since the battery is only good for about two weeks of "standby" this just enables me to easily hook up the charger if the car's going to be standing for more than a week.

Then began the tricky exercise of getting the battery hooked up. I've test-fitted the battery in place before with my new design mount and knew that it was going to be tricky to get all the wires to reach and get the terminals connected... this proved to be the case!

Still, after a bit of struggling, I got the battery in and carefully connected. The earthing strap in the front compartment is a bit of a stretch, but everything on the positive side fits just fine. I will probably add some rubber anti-chafing strip onto the bracket though just to minimise the chance of cable wear where the cables run close.

I think what I will probably do is wire in a strap from the negative terminal on the battery to an isolator shutoff on the rad surround. With the battery lying down like this it's really about a 30 minute job to disconnect the earth if you want to de-power the vehicle to work on it. If I put on an isolator shutoff, it'll extend the earth strap that's a stretch right now, and enable me a quick and easy way to kill the power for maintenance purposes.

The good thing is that it works, and when bolted in the battery will NOT move.

That meant I was also able to do something I've wanted to do since I took it to bits at Easter '08..... run some electrons through the old girl!.... she's finally awake again!

As you can see the dash powered up, showing the correct mileage (not a guarantee since the STACKs have been known to do weird things when de-powered for a long time). Everything I was able to test (lights, alarm etc) all seemed to work just as they did the day I decommissioned her. I was even able to get the starter motor to kick.

This is all fantastic news as it means that there's no problems to fix here prior to wiring, apart from perhaps making up a bracket to fit a shutoff in the front compartment.

We're getting very very close now... I can taste it! It's gonna be a busy week and a very exciting journey north next weekend!

[Dell'orto]

Awesome

[Esprit]

Another little update for a Tuesday night.

Got the remaining sensors on my desk today, so these were fitted, meaning the car's now all ready for oil.

The running-in oil I've got on order should be in my hands tomorrow so we'll be lubing her up

Tonight I also got the car filled with coolant. I followed the filling/bleeding instructions in the manual and have bled it as much as I can without the engine running. Still, I managed to get about 8.3L into the coolant circuit, which is supposed to have a nominal capacity of about 8L so there can't be a LOT of air left in there. It'll be a busy time the first few minutes of engine running, monitoring all the pressures and temperatures and keeping some load on the car right from the start so it's nice to know I'll not be having to bleed litres and litres of air pockets out of the coolant circuit!

I've also begun mapping out the pins on the spare hazard light switch I've bought to replace the blank switch to the right of the steering wheel (next to the headlamp/sidelight/hazard/fog switches. I'm going to be using this as a manual radiator fan override switch. Instead of using the switch to directly ground the relay (as others have wired), I'm simply going to wire the switch to one of the spare digital inputs on the M800. Given that the M800 is controlling the fan with engine temp, I'll just programme the switch input to override this and manually trigger the fan. I will also be getting the Motec SLM shift light (still to purchase) to display a momentary warning every time the fan cuts in, as this is one thing I like to know.... on the Elise you could hear it come on, and could be satisfied it was doing its job when things get hot... the Exige is far too noisy for this and so having a visual cue is a useful thing

[KKtrips]

I can't remember on the Exige's if it is the same as an MGF cooling system setup - on MGF's there are about 3-5 bleed ports for the coolant - one hidden up under the master cylinder/steering rack area IIRC (its been nearly 6 years since I last worked on MGF's - thank christ)

If you are running it up around early December (10-12th) I am in Auckland that weekend and will offer you my assistance to monitor/bleed and run etc..

[Esprit]

Yeah there's a couple of bleed points and managed to get steady coolant dribbling out of these. Hopefully by Dec 10-12 the engine will have seen its first trackday!

[Truenotch]

If they're anything like an aw11 you'll need to bleeed, bleed and re-bleed until you're 100% sure there's no air left.

[Esprit]

Oh yeah I will. I have bled the Elise before and it is an iterative process!

[Esprit]

Another successful milestone tonight... The engine has turned for the first time and it appears we now have oil pressure!

Finally got my running in oil today. I got 10L of the stuff. The first 5L will suffice for the 5-6 hours of dyno work and getting the basetune done. I'll then give it an oil and filter change prior to running about 500 miles of run-in on the road.

The engine will then be flushed and filled with Motul 300V competition before heading back to the dyno for the power tune.

I started by whipping out the spark plugs and I poured about 4L into the engine and got the dipstick up to over the full mark. I'd read/heard that priming K-series engines can sometimes be a nightmare... the dry oil pump is a bitch to get started. My solution was to borrow a nitrogen bottle from work and a low pressure regulator. I figured that if I blocked off the breather hose and put about 2psi pressure down the dipstick tube, this should be enough to force the oil up the pick-up tube and into the oil pump. This way I wouldn't have to crank it for hours to get the pump to draw.

This worked a treat and it took only two cranks of about 20 seconds to get oil into the pump. I left the oil pressure takeoff hose end loose so that oil could bleed down this into the sensor tee, and to verify I was getting an oil feed.

I re-checked the oil level and it had dropped to about 15% on the dipstick so the rest of the 5L pack was added which brought it up to full again. The fact that there was no puddle of oil underneath the car, and about a litre of oil was missing, this showed that the oil had obviously circulated around to the oil cooler and into the filter.

Now that it's primed, when cranking it takes about 10-15 seconds for oil pressure to build enough for the oil light to turn off. Continuing cranking obviously builds up a bit of oil pressure since when cranking stops, it takes about 45 seconds to a minute for the oil light to come back on again, showing that there's enough pressure being generated to take a while to bleed-down again (on cold oil).

Also, when the cranking is stopped, in the silence you can press your ear up to the sump and hear the oil drizzling back in from the head.

It's also reassuring that over the first 30 seconds of cranking, the engine seemed to slowly pick up cranking pace, I imagine as oil began to hit the main and big end bearings. Very reassuring.

In other news, I also had these two bits arrive from Bell & Colvill today. It's a new bracket for the alternator heatshield to replace the broken and missing one that was on the car, and a new alternator ventilation trunking since the old lot was knackered.

So... the engine seems to be holding fluids without leaking, and seems to make decent oil pressure on the starter.... all in all a VERY successful day.... and another step closer to getting her up and running.

Time to organise transport for Saturday to get the old girl up to GDS for wiring etc

Game on!

[mixmasterlex]

So close.... I bet you can taste the fumes already...

[KKtrips]

I am sure you have already thought of this and dismissed it but if you start with a new Link from scratch is there a base chart/graph to run the motor? (keep in mind I've never had any experience with running an aftermarket computer)

I was just thinking if you are keeping the original loom and plug is there any reason why you can't fire the engine up on the factory computer and get the running in process done through that? Then after running it in you take it to the Dyno with the Link computer and get it tuned from there.

[Esprit]

I am close.... I can definitely see the finish line now

As for the ECU question. Given the headwork, cams and valves I'm now running, the original ECU would not run the engine at all, the engine is now far beyond what the stock ECU could handle. If it ran it at all, it'd run so poorly and would probably overfuel it badly.

Now I'm running the Motec, it should fire up pretty easily, and since my ECU installer has a dyno in the workshop it'll be no worries to get the thing tuned pretty quickly. The advantage of Motec is how quickly you can get the basetune sorted, it's all so easy.

[KKtrips]

Can't wait to see videos of dyno runs and pictures of dyno sheets

[Esprit]

HEhe yeah, you and me both... hearing this engine at full-chat is something I've wanted to do for a looong time:)

[Esprit]

After getting the car primed for oil on Thursday night, I had a good think and decided that the fact that it took 10-15 seconds of cranking to raise oil pressure wasn't quite right.

After sleeping on it, I awoke with the epiphany that the oil cooler was now a dead-leg (thanks to the oil thermostat and the oil being cold) and this was full of air.

This meant, during cranking the oil was travelling up both cooler lines and compressing the air within. The oil cooler was then acting like an air receiver and buffering the pressure.

This would remain this way until the oil got hot, the thermostat closed and the air was forced out... not exactly what you want when the engine is under load!... so, I invited the girlfriend around for a romantic evening of bleeding the oil cooler.

With me laying under the car and her cranking the engine over on the starter, I managed to purge all the air out... or at least as much of it as I could...... not before getting a face full of oil though!

After cleaning up the ensuing mess, I now get oil pressure after about 1-2 seconds of cranking... which is something I'm much happier with. There's probably still the odd air bubble in there but it'll be impossible to bleed it any better than I already have.

The car was then put back onto its wheels and back rolling again.

Saturday morning dawned and the car was rolled out of the garage. I got out the microfibres and the quick-detailer and got to work removing the thick layer of dust that's been gathering on the car for the last two years.

Then thanks to the wonderful help of Tim, Al and Brent (thanks guys!) the car was loaded up on the trailer and headed up north to see Glenn at GDS Automotive.

The car is now sitting comfortably on stands up at his workshop where it'll live for the next 3-4 weeks or so.

We had a lengthy discussion about which direction to take about the wiring and work will begin on this later in the week.

In the meantime, I'll be kept busy sourcing bits and pieces for it and keeping the project on-track with all the bits it'll need bolted on before we fire up the mighty K-VHPD again

[Esprit]

Well, I'm off on 5 days holiday down at my parents' place tomorrow morning. first break I've had from work since March so I'm looking well forward to it!

The good thing is that with the car at GDS, all is not idle while I'm away and Glenn will hopefully get a day or so on the car over this period.

In the meantime I've been chasing down supply of some of the less-standard connectors on the Exige loom. Most of them are pretty standard Bosch or Delco ones, but there's a few that have been harder to track down. Thankfully I think I've got a supply of them, and they're now winging their way over from the UK (through RS Components) and should be here before the end of next week. Fingers crossed this will complete all of the connectors we'll need to start the new engine loom, meaning Glenn will really be able to get into his stride with the wiring.

I've also just placed my second order for MoTeC stuff, which should complete the suite on the car. Along with some boring connectors and comms stuff to get everything talking to everything else, I've just ordered the following components:

MoTeC SLM Shift Light Module:

MoTeC MDD Mini Digital Display:

The MDD will be mounted in the radio slot where I was going to mount the gauges. The MDD has multiple screens that can be used to display pretty much any parameter from the ECU (from oil pressure to lambda to throttle percentage, to current gear, to RPM) as well as being able to display laptiming parameters if I should choose to expand it to do as such.

The MDD is the sort of display that many racers (single seaters and LMPs) mount on the steering wheel itself where dash space is limited. I could have gone the whole hog and gotten a full datalogging dash, but I don't have the need for this and I don't want to replace the OEM STACK dash as this is one of the things I love most about the interior.

The SLM will be mounted atop the steering column cowl and will perform primary function as a shift light. I had intended on getting a similar stand-alone shift-light like the SHIFT-i that others have used successfully in the past. The HUGE advantage for me with the SLM though is that it is programmable and operates through CANBus (not just a tacho signal) and can be programmed to display warning sequences for any chosen parameter (i.e. it will operate as a warning light as a preference to a shift light in a warning situation).

For example, I could have the outer two lights flash blue when the oil temperature is below 70 degrees and the engine speed is above 4000RPM, and then flash red when the engine is above 1500RPM and the oil is above 130 degrees. I can also have ALL the lights flash red when the oil pressure is below a certain value and the engine speed is above 1500RPM. I can also programme other lights to flash certain colours for things like the gearbox oil being too cold/hot, or when the engine cooling fan cuts in or when the gearbox cooler pump is running.

This ability was a huge boon for me as it means I can have warnings for whatever I want to, right in front of me without having to clutter the dashboard up with gauges left right and centre. They're only a dumb warning, but I'll have the MDD in the dash that I'll be able to check to see the actual parameter values.

Should hopefully work a treat!

[Esprit]

Well it's been a little while with no progress so I thought I should pop in an update.

Very little has actually happened with the car, Glenn has been busy clearing the jobs ahead of mine and now he's got a clear run at it so starting Monday, he'll be getting his head into the job, mapping out the wiring and working out how he's going to splice the new loom seamlessly and reversibly into the car's loom.

Had a meeting with him today where we formulated a plan of attack, agreed some details and made a plan for the coming week where I'm away with work.

I also took up a bunch more connectors etc that I've had come in from RS Components and they all fit just as they should, which is a big bonus and a load off my mind. There's a few bits to come in, which should be waiting for me to take up to him next weekend which should be the full compliment of connectors for the job... it's been a mission getting hold of them all to allow us to use all the OEM sensors etc, but it'll be worth it in the end for it'll make the job a lot tidier in the end.

Just to add some photos, my MDD and SLM arrived from Motec, and next weekend's (or perhaps sometime this week's) job will be to figure out how to integrate this into the dash. It should be pretty easy to do... fingers crossed.

So all going to plan, by next weekend, Glenn should have a wiring diagram for how the car's going to go and have traced all the necessary wiring. The following week he'll be laying wires and should be able to have most of the new loom built. This should be completed midway through the week following (say the 17th or 18th of November) and the car should be ready to talk to the ECU by then, which means we're frightfully close to that all-important first start I'll be taking along the handycam!

In the meantime, I've got some work to do finding someone who can screenprint some very small things for me (badges/logos etc) for some of the custom work and I'm also going to enlist some help to get the exhaust flexi replaced and re-welded and re-coated.

I'm also going to have to decide what to do about the heat shield under the boot floor. Whether to repair the old shield or make an entirely new one. That's SLIGHTLY less pressing as I don't need it before we hit the dyno, but will need that sorted before I get the car back on the street properly..... busy busy!

[lowlancer]

If you ever come near Hamilton, please take me for a burn in this. Such good entertainment

[Esprit]

I'm sure I'll be passing through the Tron sometime when the car's done

[Esprit]

Well, I've been working away down in Blenheim this week and am due back on Friday. I'm pleased to report that progress on the Exige has been very positive since I've been away. The engine loom has been removed and is on the bench, and the sectons of the chassis loom we're splitting out have been cut from the car and re-terminated. This means that the OEM loom can be put back at any time if the car is ever to return to standard with a stock Lotus EFI ECU. This can now be put inside a box to be stored in case it's ever required again.

The good news is that this means the chassis is now ready to accapt the new wiring, which will eventually power the car. The planning for this is in the advanced stages and we're not far from a point where the new loom can be laid. We've also started the programming on the ECU for controlling some of the peripherals.

By the end of next week, much of the wiring should hopefully be in the car

[Esprit]

Well I'm afraid another boring update on "project SEXIGE".... in that I've no pictures to show you but progress has been ongoing.

Last weekend I got my new exhaust flexi welded in by Sean (NZHondas user "nocert") which will be hung on the car tomorrow night to check the fit etc.

I've redesigned the ECU mount for the Motec as we've worked out where we want it to go for the wiring etc. I've also designed up a couple of small ally bits for mounting of connectors etc. These will arrive in the next day or two, before heading out for anodising next week.

The news from GDS is good, the new looms have all been laid Now comes the process of getting it all in place and making it look tidy and complete. I'm heading up to GDS tomorrow night to take a look and take a few bits and pieces up (switches and the like).

Currently we're still on target to be ready for an engine start possibly by the end of next week or next weekend... all going to plan