Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[vvega]

ill be doing my normal hard days work tomorrow .. so 9 to 3 with a hour lunch

fuck i just love been me

[Esprit]

Oh and another little side I've been working on is replicating the escutcheon for the gearknob.

You'll have read a while back that I bought a new Lotus OEM gearknob for my car as I never really liked the aftermarket Momo one my car came with. I also bought a new escutcheon for the top of the gearknob. The goal was then to replicate this as precisely as possible but with the now correct 6-speed shift pattern.

Now, before anyone sends me images of OEM Honda K20 shift knobs etc, I know about them and I'm not interested. The aim here was to replicate the factory fit as close as possible, so you'd never know it wasn't exactly as it left Hethel.

I've found a couple of places that I'm sure can accurately replicate the badge for me, I just need now to communicate with them exactly what I want. So, a quick session on SolidWorks and I've managed to get it exactly right. I'll also be able to produce a DXF pattern for their printing so that all the detail's replicated, right down to the correct fonts.

In the photo below, you can see the SolidWorks model with an inset of the existing escutcheon photographed on my desk. Forgive the colour difference, the SolidWorks model's rendered under incandescent light. Click the image for supersizeme:

[Esprit]

Mid-week update. The sump is in with Kerry Holland at Top Gear Autotech to have the baffles welded in.... hoping to get it back today or tomorrow.

Sadly won't get to work on it over the weekend since I'm working away this weekend. Might ask the boss to have some of Monday off so that I can get a few hours in on the car as I don't really like letting a week go past without doing something on it.

Slightly more motivated to push on with it now than I have been the last 8 months or so... feels like I'm getting somewhere now!

[lowlancer]

From someone with no project, I say damn you for making me wish I did have something cool to work on. Dig your clean approach and high standards

[Esprit]

Why thankyou.

Having my own Lotus is a dream I've had since I was four. When I got my Elise I'd planned on keeping that one but unfortunately the emissions law change meant I had to sell it as I REALLY wanted an S1 Exige and had to get one in before the regulations changeover. After missing the Elise so badly I just decided that I'd do my very best to make this the perfect car for me... something I could be proud to stick my name to.

Of course it makes little sense to do everything so obsessively, but I guess I get some kind of perverted pleasure out of it

[Esprit]

awesome work again!

Also tell the dude with the the gen 1 gonda racecar to join OS/post up a project thread/ I heart that stz was my first car etc.

If you mosey over to NZHondas.com and look in the "build threads" section you'll see one there by a bloke called "lotusboy". I think he covers off that amongst some of his other oldschool Honda stuff there (Gen 1 Ballade Sports CR-X + E-AT Civic etc). That 1st Gen Civic has a City Turbo engine in it

[Raizer]

I know I have told you in person already, but this this is/is going to be epically clean!

/If it was me temptation would have already got the better of me and I would be doing all I could to get it going asap and take it for a burn with no rear clam etc lol

[Esprit]

Right, well things have gone a little pear shaped project at work so I'm doing 55 hour weeks in the office, then backing that up with another 30 hours during the weekend on site. Doing this for the next three weeks or so, so I've fcuk all time to spend on the car.

Tonight though, I managed to spend a couple hours in the garage and got my nice new DVA baffled sump bolted back onto the car and the exhaust manifold back on. I went back into work to shorten down a couple of shiny new bolts for engine mounts and am just waiting for some POR15 to dry before I bolt them back on the car.

A bit gutted at the moment as I'm really motivated to spend hours in the garage but just can't thanks to work Will see if I can take a day or two off during the week next week to rest up and get some stuff done, but I'm not holding my breath

[Esprit]

Right well currently up to twentysomething days at work without a day off. Averaging almost 12 hour days over that period too so I've been fookin' knackered and progress on the car has been sloooow.

Tonight however I sat down with a wee dram of Glenfiddich and set about trying to nut out the cooling circuit.

For those who don't know (mainly the non-lotus forums I cross-post this blog on) the RoverK has a bit of a reputation for chewing head gaskets.

This is a pretty well-understood problem which stems mainly from four items:

1. Poor or inconsistent bonding of the elastomeric seals on the OEM head gasket.

2. The cast iron liners sinking into the block or being low from factory due to poor process control

3. OEM plastic head dowels which can allow head-shuffle, especially in high-revving engines that suffer from the Rover's inherent imbalances.

4. Thermal shock caused by a quirk of the original Rover cooling system in the larger capacity K series engines whereby the enlarged radiators needed to cool the larger engines can intermittently overcool the engine during heat-up. Especially on Elises/Exiges which have an even larger radiator than normal and a larger capacity coolant circuit.

Now points 1, 2 and 3 have all been comprehensively eliminated during this build so naturally I want to eliminate #4.

My car already has a remote thermostat kit added which was an earlier attempt to address the issue using the best knowledge of the time. This involved removing the OEM thermostat and inserting an in-line one elsewhere in the circuit. However, there are drawbacks with this as well so I'm installing a PRRT (Pressure Releif Remote Thermostat) kit on the car, which is the current best-practice and should result in more reliable, consistent cooling.

This should also completely eliminate any risk of the head gasket remaining a weakness in the car. At this point I'd like to say that in my 5 years of Lotus ownership I've never had any head gasket or cooling issues, but it can't hurt to adopt the latest wisdom on the subject can it?

So, anyway, I bought a PRRT kit from Eliseparts which uses the current Rover PRRT as well as all the piping required to replumb the coolant circuit so that it works as Rover intended.

This can be seen below:

When installing this kit you also need to remove the OEM thermostat, which my car already has had done. However I also now need to remove the aftermarket thermostat fitted, and for that I currently have a call in to Lotus to price up a genuine replacement hose. Hopefully it's not heart-attackingly expensive, otherwise I'll remove the old thermostat and have to make up an adaptor to re-make the original hose.

The other complication with this is that I also have to plumb in the MOCAL oil/water oil cooler for the gearbox. So after an evening of studying the coolant circuit to try to find out where it goes, then trying to find out where the best place to locate it is, I think I've found a solution.

In the following photo, I shall remove the section of hose highlighted in yellow, and the oil cooler will sit in here. This is on the water pump inlet and it will get full coolant flow whatever the coolant temperature.

I measured it up and it should fit like a glove! Result!

If I can get the OEM hose from Lotus to reinstate the hacked-about part of the coolant circuit, this should actually be pretty quick and easy to do.... not bad considering it was a job I've been quietly dreading! Another new thing learned!

Right, off to bed. Another day of work awaits!

[Esprit]

Just an update. Engine outlet hose / heater takeoff hose from Lotus through Bell & Colvill is £52 + £5 P&P. So that's about $125NZ all up.

While that's a little on the pricey side, it's not really a lot more than buying a similarly complex hose though a motor factors over here (like Repco) or buying one through any of the mainstream manufacturers. Last time I replaced a radiator hose (which was far simpler) on my old Mitsubishi Mirage it was about $80... so I'm happy with the price.

So it's ordered and should be here in a week or two. Hopefully by that time work's quietened down a little and I can cover off on the coolant system. Then I've just got the oil plumbing to complete (which I've already basically planned out) then it's pretty much down to sensors and wiring.... then it'll be time to fire the beast up! (Aiming for July for first-start at this rate)

[Esprit]

Well, the long hours at work continue so there's not been a lot of time to work on the car.

As reported last update, I've got a new engine outlet hose coming from Lotus via Bell & Colvill so that should be here in another week or so. Once that arrives I can plumb up the engine coolant circuit and plumb in the gearbox oil cooler.

Also I've been working on mounting the oil thermostat for the engine oil cooler. This isn't an easy task as things are pretty cramped in that part of the engine bay. Taking inspiration from Mike's Elise (build thread on http://www.scottishelises.com) I'm going to mount the thermostat underneath the chassis alongside the fuel tank. It fits neatly in here but is a bit of a squeeze.

Mike simply drilled into the chassis and inserted a couple of rivnuts and then used spacer washers to clear the stat over the brake hardline that runs through the cavity. However, given that this is directly into the right hand main frame member I'm reluctant to drill any holes in here. There are already factory holes along this rail but none I can use in this immediate area. This does make life a little difficult, but I'm designing up an alloy bracket that will pick up on the two bolts that mount the right hand side of the fuel tank. It'll have to be cantilevered which isn't ideal, but with some suitably placed folds, I'm sure the bracket can be made more than stiff enough.

Mounting the oil stat in this fashion will look very neat and will have the advantage of being fully reversable should I decide to relocate it or delete it at a later stage.

I've got a bracket designed up in SolidWorks but It's a prick of a thing to measure up accurately so I'll probably get one lasercut and CNC folded first to use as a hackabout before refining the design into a finished design. When finished and anodised, I'm pretty confident of being able to get the bracket down to 120g or so, so it's not adding a lot of weight.

Fingers crossed I can get all this done over the next couple of weeks so I can finish plumbing the oil lines as well as the coolant. At that point I'll fill the engine up with oil and coolant, prime all the lines and get it spinning over to raise some oil pressure. It's still a month or two away from firing up but it'll mean I can check for leaks as well as having an engine I can spin over every week or two to just ensure that come first start-up, everything's got a semi-decent oil film over it and there should be the least possible risk of oil starvation. Fingers crossed.

[Esprit]

Right well got the oil stat bracket finished tonight and have sent it out for manufacture. I'll get it back in a week or so and will hack it around until I've got it fitting right then will make a Rev.2 version which should be a bit more elegant and I know will fit perfectly first time around.

I could have made a pattern from SolidWorks in cardboard and gone from there but at the moment I honestly cannot be arsed. I'll get the bracket lasered and folded and at least I know it'll be consistent with the finished article when I get that made.

The prototype bracket can be seen in SolidWorks here:

The oil stat I've roughly mocked up to show it fitted in place:

And here you can see it in place superimposed over a photo of the area where it goes (bracket shown transparent so that you can see the brake line running underneath):

As you can see it picks up on the fuel tank mounting bolts. The stat will be bolted to the bracket using its own hanger.

In the last picture the two 45 degree fittings are going towards the cooler in the front of the car, the other fittings skirt into the engine bay and will hook up to the engine.

[Esprit]

Right, first day off in over a month today so I did some pottering in the garage this afternoon.

I'm shaping up to get the coolant circuit built, so part of that was to get the gearbox oil cooler cleaned up and ready for mounting.

I thought I'd test out the gearbox oil pump before cleaning it up it, just to be sure. It powered up just fine but didn't sound quite right, it sounded a bit rattly. I then pulled the pump unit off the end so I could figure out if it was the pump or the motor making the noise and it turned out to be the motor.

I stripped it down to investigate and the motor's clearly had some water in it at some stage and the tail bearing is a bit knackered, so I'll need to replace it. There's also a stripped thread in the housing that'll need re-tapping. The rest of the innards should clean up just fine though.

Exploded diagram shown below:

The concerning bit though was the fan unit on the end of the pump motor. The rattling I could hear was the remnants of a couple of the fan blades rattling around inside the end cage. At some point in the past I reckon something's gotten caught in it or someone's been a little strong-handed installing it as they've all lost their tips by the looks of it. The photos below show what I mean:

The upshot of it is that I'm going to hold fire rebuilding the pump and get in touch with MOCAL and see if they can supply a new fan for the motor. If not, I'll have to weigh up whether to just reassemble it as is (it should work okay still broken) or whether a new pump is required. Bit of a setback but I don't really need the pump for a while yet so this can go on the back burner.

The next task is to get busy with the autosol and clean up the Laminova oil cooler in prep for mounting it on the car.

[Esprit]

More work this evening.

Cleaned up the gearbox oil cooler. Peeled the MOCAL decals off because they were a bit ratty, got it all buffed up with some Autosol and about 2 hours of elbow grease. Should look good in place

Also pulled the header tank off this evening as it was looking a bit yellow and had a bit of coolant residue and accumulated gunk on the inside.

These two photos were taken after a wash in a sinkful of soapy water, still not very clean:

But then after running it through the dishwasher then soaking it in Marine Clean for a couple of hours followed by a wipe-out (or as best as I could do) it's come up as clean as a whistle. Almost as good as new!

[Esprit]

Well, I got the PRRT kit fitted today, slotted in rather nicely no problems. I'm just trying to decide now where to put the Laminova cooler for the box. The position I originally intended it in is a little more cramped than I thought and is a little higher than I'd like it and I'm wondering if it'd not be better in the radiator return line down the bottom. I've got the question out with a couple of learned minds and once I've heard their opinion on the matter I'll get the Stanley knife out, cut the hoses and insert the cooler, before tightening all the clamps and considering the job a carrot.

Here's a couple of pics of the PRRT sitting buried amongst the mass of wires, tubes etc:

I also took the opportunity while the other half of the garage was empty to snap a couple of general pics of the car to show general progress....

[Esprit]

An up and down day working on the car today. Ultimately frustrating in the end though...

All started well, with a couple of care packages arriving from the UK for me.

The first was from Lotus via Bell & Colvill, a new engine coolant outlet / heater take-off hose to replace the one that was hacked about to fit the old remote thermostat. I decided to fit a new OEM hose to just save the untidiness and hassle of reinstating the original hose with a plumbed in T-piece:

Also had another box arrive from Demon Tweeks. This contained a bunch of hoses and fittings etc I need to complete much of the oil plumbing, as well as my shiny new STACK Lambda gauge! It was deja vu for me with the lambda gauge as this is my second!

I bought one last year, and was after a white-faced one (to match all the other instruments). STACK offered white-face options of pretty much all of their gauges but when I enquired about the lambda they said they only offered it in black. I enquired as to whether they had any plans to release a white-face option for the lambda gauge and they stated "no, unless there's significant customer demand, we have no plans to produce one".... So I said "fine, in that case I'll take a black one if there's no other option".

Imagine my annoyance then when I got my Demon Tweeks and Merlin Motorsport catalogues a couple of months back to see them boldly proclaiming "NEW FOR 2010, STACK LAMBDA WHITE-FACE OPTION"......... BOLLOCKS!

I've spent the last couple of months umming and aahing whether to get the white one and I wasn't going to, but my OCD got the better of me.... so it's out with the old:

And in with the new!... An expensive way to satisfy my obsessions!

So, so far so good.

Got home from the gym tonight and hunkered down in the garage amidst blustery, cold and stormy conditions outside to get the new coolant hose fitted. It took about 1.5 hours to get the old hose off.... if you ever have to replace a coolant hose on a Lotus Type 111 chassis... pay someone to do it. It's buried down inside one of the main longitudinal chassis members and loosening the hose clamp requires 3 wrists, tiny fingers and JUST the right length of spanner.

Finally got the old hose off and slotted the new one into place.... bugger. as the next photo shows, while the main line of the hose mates up to where it should just fine, the heater take-off is a good inch and a half or more short.

I've tried sliding the hoses along and I can't get it to fit without heavily bending things around, which just isn't right. I've also checked the Lotus parts catalogue to make sure I ordered the right part, and it seems to check out. Quizzically though, the remnants of the old hose I pulled off has a different part number stamped on it that I can't seem to track down in any of the catalogues... it SHOULD be the same part though, so I don't know what's going on there.... I suspect the one I have might have just been trimmed too short?

Anyway, I've contacted Bell & Colvill and the guys there are usually more than helpful in sorting these sorts of issues out... it's just a pain in the arse that I'm halfway around the world and rectifying these things tends to be a little more hassle than would otherwise be... oh well, that's just life's little challenges I suppose!

[Esprit]

Well, I took some time out this weekend to go down and visit my folks. The last days of Autumn passed with a vengeance and despite planning a weekend driving some nice roads, I spent most of it sat in front of the heater just trying to unwind and take a brief respite from the insane work hours lately.

On Monday I returned to Auckland via a trackday at Taupo, in lovely fine weather. Spent the day tutoring my father on track-driving in his completely bog-standard S1. Having not got the chance to just jump into my own Lotus and go for a drive when I feel in the mood, I honestly forget just what a joy to drive these cars are. So much competence, so much entertainment! Even with 118bhp at the flywheel and on questionable rubber, it sure brought a smile to my face in the biggest way! 118bhp is still enough to get a bit of smoke coming off the rears in a drift!

Sadly the day ended badly when my father ran wide coming out of a corner and hit a ripple-strip a little harder than he'd intended. This sheared the stock toelink outer joint and it was all over from there. A pretty innocent spin ensued but when we limped the car to the side of the track and inspected the damage, the toe-link has punched one of the MMC brake discs HARD, bending the link in half and literally shattering the disc. It's also done a bit of superficial damage to the wheel spokes. Uprating the toe links was something we had in the works, but sadly we obviously didn't get to it soon enough! Oh well, live and learn... we'll have her back up and running in a few weeks better than before! I guess driving it like I did in the picture above was probably part of the root cause!

Right, so back onto matters Exige!

The lovely lads at Bell & Colvill Lotus parts department have sorted me out with a replacement coolant hose. This time we're hoping it's the right one (the non-aircon version). It seems that I'm not the first person to get caught out by this typo in the parts catalogue, but hopefully after reading this thread it might stop more people falling into the same trap and having to lash-up a solution.

Back at work today and I was greeted by the sight of the oil stat mount bracket prototype back from our sheetmetal fabricators. This is the one I designed up a week or two back.

Now this one is just a prototype. I'm intending to hack it about to get it fitting and to mount the oil stat to it, before using it as a template to make the final one, which will be lighter and better finished.

The very good news is that I just trial-fitted it on the car and bar a couple of small areas where I'm going to have to shave some ally off the bracket it fits exactly as intended! It clears everything around there and is immensely stiff, despite being not exactly the ideal way of mounting the oil stat. So rapt!

Here you can see the bottom of the chassis rail and fuel tank, where the bracket will sit:

And here is the same area with the bracket bolted in:

The oil stat will attach to this, most likely either with rivnuts or I'll design in a pressed-in clip design to pick up on the body of the stat. Will look very swish when finished, fully functional and will mean I've not had to drill any holes in my baby. Result!

[Esprit]

A busy night in front of the PC tonight!

I've been figuring out this oil stat bracket as I really want to get this mounted on in the next couple of weeks.

I'd shaved the old bracket and got it fitting and satisfied myself that it was strong and stiff enough to do the job. I then grabbed the oil stat to see how I could fit it on. The stat is shown below (without fittings):

Originally I was going to use the supplied mount (gold passivated bracket with slot in it in the photo) and just rivnut it to the bracket I'm making. However, I figured I could do things a bit more intelligently with my bracket and pick up directly on the lugs on the side of the body just like the supplied bracket does. This makes the mounting a little more low profile and tidy. I also had to model in the heater pipe that runs down the sill as this was limiting the available space to mount the oil stat.

The completed bracket design can be seen here:

And with the stat mounted on:

I'm pretty confident that this will work out okay. I'll get it fabbed up in the next week or so and then test fit it and fettle where necessary. It'll then go in to get black-anodised to make it look all swish and it'll be ready to bolt on. I'll be able to trim the oil hose at that point and fit the fittings and then run the link lines from the stat to the oil feed take-off at the engine. It's dragged out a bit but I'll be happy with the result in the end if it works how I plan.

In other news, my replacement coolant outlet / heater feed hose turned up from Bell & Colvill today and I'm pleased to report it's the right one! Or at least I think it is, I've not fitted it yet but it looks exactly like I was expecting it to with a much longer heater feed. If any of you Type 111 owners out there are wanting to order this part the CORRECT Lotus part number is A111K0022F, NOT A111K0029F as reported in the Lotus Parts Manual.

It should look like this:

and NOT this:

Thanks to the guys at Bell & Colvill who were quick in getting me a replacement and to anyone who helped get to the bottom of this mystery!

Long weekend this weekend so will be plenty of garage time ahead methinks!

[Esprit]

Okay, well it's a bank holiday weekend this weekend so that's three days of tinkering time!

Saturday I had an epic sleep-in followed by some time in the garage this afternoon.

Firstly I got the new engine coolant outlet / heater feed hose installed. Just to prove it's the right one here you can see it installed and connected to the heater feed line:

The other job for the day was finishing up the PRRT installation and installing the gearbox cooler. This all went pretty smoothly and it's now all completed. Here you can see the gearbox cooler in place, tidily located just in front of the gearbox by the inertia switch in the engine bay:

This means that the engine coolant circuit is now COMPLETE and the engine is ready to be filled with coolant (although this won't happen for some time). Tomorrow's job will involve a little POR15ing of some little bits of miscellaneous bracketry and I might look at trying to complete the manifold heatshield. Stay tuned

[lowlancer]

You post at some fucked up times

Good to see you got heater hose sorted. Any idea when you can look at starting it?