Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[Esprit]

Well very little to show, but more progress today. Got some miscellaneous bits and pieces POR15'd in both black and clear depending on component. This is pretty time consuming, literally waiting for paint to dry!

Spent some time this afternoon bolting the clutch slave reinforcement bracket back on and I've found I'm a couple of fasteners short so that'll have to wait for later in the week.

Had planned on spending this evening in the garage but ended up spending the evening with a lovely young lady so didn't get as much done on the car as I'd intended, but can't have everything! Will probably do a little more after the gym tomorrow, hopefully with the right fasteners to finish off the slave support bracket then I can put on the now-drying backstay bracket for the MAP and BARO sensors.

[Esprit]

You post at some fucked up times

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

Haha yeah, I'm a night owl... and often I'm up during the British morning to search for and post up technical info.

As for engine start, I'm hopefully only a couple of weeks away from being able to seal up the oil system and crank the engine to raise oil pressure. Will fill with coolant too to check for leaks.

Then the wiring starts and I think I'll enlist (pay for) some help on this as it's the sort of thing that'll take me WEEEEKS to do just on my own. A skilled person should be able to cover some of it off pretty quickly working full-time on it so we'll see how I go. Will cross that bridge when the time comes.

As soon as the sensors are on and it's wired, it's time to crank her for real and see if she sparks up.

[Esprit]

Right, well it's been a distracted weekend this weekend. I've been feeling a little under the weather, as well as it being very cold and miserable here in Auckland. Not exactly the sort of conditions conducive to lying on a cold concrete garage floor under the Exige!

Also being Le Mans weekend, I've stayed close to the web feed

I have managed to get a fair bit done nonetheless.... all little bits that needed to be done.

The refurbished clutch slave cylinder reinforcement bracket is now fully installed. I've also reinstalled the mount on the rollcage backstay for the sensors and non-existant vacuum reservoir for the air intake resonator gubbins. I've also managed to re-mount the MAP and BARO sensors onto this and plumb them in.

I've replumbed all of the vacuum lines in fresh, black silicone rubber, replacing all of the old blue silicone tube that had begin to discolour and go a bit gummy. Hopefully this will ensure against vacuum leaks when it comes time to fire the beast up as well as tidying things up in the engine bay a little.

The other task for the weekend was to start sorting out the speed sensors on each of the rear wheels. The aluminium brackets for these were corroded similar to the way the front uprights originally were. These got a 24 hour hot vinegar bath before getting scrubbed up with scotch brite. These then got some buffing with some autosol to just brighten them a bit and they've come out pretty well:

Next weekend I've got a couple more minor steel bits to POR15 and fasteners to renew but I should be able to get these bolted on.

Also, during this week my new oil stat bracket should show up, so I should be able to do the final test mount on this and get the oil lines cut and terminated prior to removing it to get it anodised.

Getting closer now to the point where I can think about sensors and wiring... scary!

[Esprit]

Apologies for the lack of updates lately. I've been pretty busy with a few bits and pieces this last week or so and have been getting a bit behind.

Progress has been made though. My final oil stat bracket turned up today, and I thought it turned out pretty good!

The oil stat simply clips into this bracket thusly:

Then came the test fit! I was expecting it to be a right bastard to fit, but aside from having to file one of the holes about 2mm out, it fitted in the space EXACTLY! RESULT!!! (Ignore the dirty bits in the following pics, I've yet to clean here so it won't look this rubbish for long!)

So satisfied that it's worked out so well, it's a really tidy solution to the issue and I should now be able to terminate the oil lines

The bracket itself will now be sent off to get anodised black before it comes back for its final fit. It's always nice when bits you design work exactly as intended and look good in the process. Pretty chuffed right now.

I've also pulled the gearbox linkage apart as a couple of the plated steel bits on there are a bit rusty. I'm going to clean these up and either replate or POR15.

Had a bag of goodies arrive from EliseParts too. This includes a new gear linkage kit, expansion tank cap and a clutch slave cylinder. The old slave could do with a clean up and I decided it was less hassle buying a new one.

Shortest day today so we're now gonna be on the run to spring... better shake a leg!

[Esprit]

Right, a couple of hours out pottering in the garage tonight. I've spent the evening acid-etching and POR15ing some miscellaneous little brackets as well as the bellcrank and mount for the gearbox shift linkage. No photos of these since they're currently out in the garage drying.

These will be nice and cured in time for Saturday when they'll get fitted on the car along with a new EliseParts rose-jointed shift linkage, all shiny, new and snickety-snick!

The other thing that happened today is I picked up my oil stat bracket from the good gentlemen at Anodising Industries. As ever they made a very very nice job of anodising it and making it look lovely. I'll almost be sorry to hide this work of art underneath the fuel tank shear panel!

Still, I've got some satisfaction in knowing that even the bits that can't be seen look better than you'd find on most cars

[Esprit]

Right, well this weekend's progress!

Got the linkages for the gearbox (which had been soaking in vinegar for a few days to de-rust) cleaned off and POR15'd:

These were then rebuilt with a new rose-jointed linkage kit from EliseParts. The car already had a rose-joint kit on it but looking at the rust on some of the components I decided to just throw a new one on anyway. It took an hour or two to get the linkage adjusted to allow me to select all 6 gears as well as reverse, but it's there now and I've scope for a little more adjustment in future if I decide reverse selection is a little stubborn. Given that the linkage / gear lever was only ever designed for a three-width gate, not a four-width as in the 6-speed box, I think it's pushing the limits of its geometry. I certainly don't want reverse selection to be too easy though, I've got nightmares about shifting from 5th to reverse in anger, although after playing about this should be almost impossible in practice.

The weekend's other task was to FINALLY get the oil stat mounted and plumbed in. This involved trimming the lines I'd run 6 months ago to length, terminating them with fittings and then mounting the stat and my bracket in place. Terminating the lines was very tricky to do in the confines of the sill, but I managed it anyway with a bit of elbow grease!

Everything went together very smoothly and I'm very proud the mounting of this has proved so successful! It looks like it's meant to be there and the oil lines are clear of everything. I'll wrap them in spiral-flex to protect them before sealing it all up, but they should be just fine.

Beholdeth!

I've still go to run the catenary lines from the stat to the engine, but this will be much easier as these lines are removable and I can measure/terminate them on the workbench. I'm just trying to figure out where I want to position the oil temperature sender before doing these since I'm not yet sure whether I need to incorporate a fitting in the lines themselves to allow temperature measurement in one of the lines. Bit of a bugger as it'd have been nice to seal that job up this weekend.

Still, the hard bit of that job's now done and, touch wood, it should be plain sailing from here to get the oil circuit finished up and get some oil in the engine! I'll then be able to prime and crank the system to see if I can raise oil pressure!

[KKtrips]

I don't know these quaife gearboxes.

But most gearboxes I have had experience have a lockout detent that prevents engaging reverse without going through the centre of the neutral gate first. (which is generally where the gearstick rests when out of gear)

Hope that improves your confidence..

PS - looks sharp

[Esprit]

I don't know these quaife gearboxes.

But most gearboxes I have had experience have a lockout detent that prevents engaging reverse without going through the centre of the neutral gate first. (which is generally where the gearstick rests when out of gear)

Hope that improves your confidence..

PS - looks sharp

This gearbox doesn't have one as such. Because it's a 6-speed, the reverse gear is in a 4th plane, instead of the 3rd plane as it is with a 5-speed (which would need a detent).

Generally, factory 6-speeds (like in my GTi6) lock this 4th plane out with a detent, usually a button or pull-up on the gearlever. However, on the Quaife, there's just a strong spring-out on the 4th plane and you have to pretty deliberately pull it over to get it in. I shouldn't imagine it's the sort of thing I could do unless I was REALLY trying

[KKtrips]

Makes sense..

I thought they would have a detent for the reverse lockout. Normally they are internal on the selector forks inside the gearbox rather than a gated lockout on the gearlever.. but I spose Quaifes are designed for motorsprt/rallying etc so having the traditional protection may be a hindrance when in a rush..

[Esprit]

Apologies for the delay in updating. Between being busy at work and actually having a social life of late, I've not been spending as much time on the Exige as I should.

Managed to steal a couple hours in the garage tonight and I've made up the oil catenary lines from the engine to the oil thermostat.

All fits like a glove, and looks nice and tidy

It'll all come off this weekend and I'll get some sheathing over the oil lines to protect them from any chafing. They're not touching anything, but this will just ensure that they stay in good order when in service.

My attention now moves to the oil pump for the gearbox. I really need to figure out whether I'm going to repair the MOCAL pump I've got, or find a better alternative. I'd love to find something a little more compact. Once that's sorted the plumbing will FINALLY be complete and the sensors and wiring can begin!

[Esprit]

Well a bit more news on the Exige. I've been working with Merlin Motorsports in the UK to come up with a solution for the oil circulation through the gearbox cooler.

I've decided to ditch the MOCAL oil pump the gearbox came with as it's a bit of a behemoth and is way overspecced for the circulation needs of the gearbox. I'm instead using a small VDO oil pump that's used as an OEM oil cooler circulation on some of the BMW M cars. This uses a push-fit oil system since it's low pressure so I'm gonna have to re-jig some of the fittings and hose to make it work, but I'll come up with a solution.

Will be hopefully placing an order in the next few days for some more bits and pieces and will spend this weekend just bolting some more bits back on the car.

[Truenotch]

IS the VDO spendy? I'm looking for a small pump to take care of my diff cooling needs.

[Esprit]

IS the VDO spendy? I'm looking for a small pump to take care of my diff cooling needs.

It's about £160 plus freight so not cheap, but pretty similarly priced to alternatives

[bubblegoose]

IS the VDO spendy? I'm looking for a small pump to take care of my diff cooling needs.

weld heapsa cooling fins on the diff?

[Esprit]

Yes yes, I know, I've been slack lately on the Exige but at the moment things have been a little disrupted with family stuff and the girlfriend suffering through some family turmoil of her own.

Dutifully I've been stealing an hour here and there to do some work on the car, although there's SFA to actually show for it as it's mainly organisational stuff.

I've almost finalised a list of hose, fittings, pump etc to get from Merlin Motorsports to allow me to finish plumbing up the oil-side of the gearbox cooler. I've also begun to plan out where the various sensors are going to go on the engine and how I'm going to route some of the wiring.

Obviously there's not a lot I can show you here, some papers with measurements and thread sizes on it is all I've got to show for several hours work... frustrating but essential nonetheless.

A little sub project I've been working on this weekend though is a little take-off adaptor I plan to bolt in between the fuel supply line (after the filter) and the fuel rail. I spent this week searching for longer screws (2-start special thermoplastic tapping screws) to no avail so I had to change the design from my initial plan just a bit to use the existing screws.

This adaptor will allow me to fit a fuel pressure sensor into the system, which will then be datalogged by the ECU. This is because the stock Lotus fuel pump will be running pretty close to its limit with the sort of power I'll be making. I could run a larger capacity aftermarket pump, but since the stock pump is a submersible 2-stage pump and the only available substitutes are single-stage (with their associated fuel starvation issues) there's no easy upgrade. If I did want to upgrade, I'd have to make up a surge tank and run two pumps (lift and pressure).

By datalogging the fuel pressure, I can see if the stock pump is handling the increased load and I should be able to programme into the ECU a safe-mode ("limp-home") to save the engine from potentially leaning out if fuel pressure begins to drop away. Of course I'll also be logging Wideband O2 as well, but this will be a belt-and braces type solution which will keep me informed as to whether the stock Lotus pump is being overwhelmed or not.

Here you can see the take-off I've designed in SolidWorks:

It'll be milled from billet Ally and anodised black. It'll have a Viton O-ring inserted around the groove closest to the "camera" in the screengrab.

This then bolts together as seen below. The yellow part is the fuel feed line from the fuel filter, with the block on the right being the boss on the end of the VHPD fuel rail.

Once it's all together and anodised, it should look a little like this:

Currently on the agenda is to get an order placed for the gearbox oil pump gubbins and also design up a gear-plate to allow me to mount the Link G4 Xtreme ECU and my little homebuilt adaptor box all neatly on the firewall using the mounting studs that Lotus put there for the stock VHPD ECU. This'll just prevent me having to drill any extra holes and will make on-bench preassembly a little easier when it comes time to bolt it all in.

Tally Ho!

[Esprit]

Well it's been a lovely weekend here weather-wise. Bracing, yet sunny... which signals that winter's past the halfway point and reminds me that spring is just around the corner. Spurred on by this, I've had a busy week with the car... only a little progress but many hours have been spent.

First thing I've done is junked last week's idea of mounting the fuel pressure takeoff on the fuel rail. On advice that pressure sensors don't generally like vibration, it was a safer bet to mount this sensor back on the chassis. The most logical place to do this is on the downstream side of the fuel filter (item 7 in the following image):

Now, this proved a little hard since the fitting involved was a M14 x 1.5 concave flare fitting, which isn't the most common. I could convert from it to -JIC/-AN easily enough, but then converting back to M14 concave flare thereafter to match up with the OEM tubing was proving a nightmare to sort out.

Thankfully, the guys at Russell fittings in the US have just the trick as they sell -AN to SAE push-fit fitting adaptors meaning that instead of inserting something between the fuel filter and item #7 in the above image, I could simply make up a piece to replace item #7 altogether.

One quick e-mail to the wonderful guys Jegs High Performance (www.jegs.com) in the states, and a few days later, I had the setup sitting on my desk at work:

This will enable me to mount a pressure sensor (1/8" NPT) into the fuel line and datalog what the fuel pressure is doing within the Link G4.

The above setup still requires a male/male M14 x 1.5 to -6JIC adaptor, but that's coming next week along with a big bunch of fittings I'm getting from Merlin Motorsport in the UK (www.merlinmotorsport.co.uk). From here is coming my new gearbox cooler pump, fuel pressure sensor and all the hose and fittings I should need to finish most of the car off.

Much of this weekend has been spent generating this shopping list of fittings and figuring out where everything's going to go.

Also I've been doing a bit more work on the plug for the dashboard gauge pod. This is now ready for final priming and sanding and will get a topcoat and waxing prior to me taking moulds off it.

Once all my fittings and hose arrives, I'll be able to get the engine and box all sealed up. Then the wiring begins!

Oh and one other job is that I've managed to relocate the reverse light switch from the PG1 box across to the Quaife box... hopefully it works.

[Esprit]

Right, well another sunny winter's day in the garage!

I'm currently waiting for some stuff to turn up from Blighty to allow me to finish the plumbing, so today I tackled another one of those tasks I've been putting off for a while..... cleaning the underfloor!

I'd previously (about 18 months ago!) cleaned up the underfloor beneath the battery/heater compartment up front. I did this when cleaning up around the front crash structure. I've also got new engine front and rear undertrays ready to bolt on when the car's mobile again, so these parts of the underside will look shiny and new again. Today I set about cleaning up the bit in the middle as well as beneath the sills.

This was all coated with 9 years (ok, the car's only really been actually on the road for about 4) of road grime, scuffs and a little bit of spot-corrosion on the aluminium where stone / gravel impacts have gone through the anodising. This is all natural wear and tear type stuff but could easily be cleaned back to near-new condition, whereby it can be periodically cleaned and protected by application of ACF50.

First was cleaning all the grime off the undersills. Here's a dirty one, as seen beneath the oil thermostat I recently installed:

And here's a clean one I've prepared earlier.... much better:

That was the easy part, the hard part was cleaning up the large expanse of aluminium underfloor. In the end, some alkalai wash to remove as much dirt as possible, some CRC to help degrease and a large amount of Autosol to buff the accumulated crud off was used. All this required a LOT of elbow grease!

I managed to get about halfway through before I ran out of Autosol, so guess what I'm doing tomorrow after a quick trip down to Repco to get some more?!?!

The following pics show the current state of the underfloor, with the cleaned section being closer to the camera and the still dirty section furthest away.

Mmmmm clean

[ThePog]

You must be gagging for this to be finished before summer...

Keep up the awesome posts, I for one really enjoy seeing a project done by someone prepared to put serious time, money and enthusiasm into it.

[Esprit]

Oh it's a non-negotiable it will be finished before summer. This is the third winter I've worked through on it, it was meant to be ready for the first summer, missed that thanks to rebuilding the engine... then just doing too much on the car resulted in it missing the second summer too.... it WON'T miss the third. Got to push hard now, but hoping to be able to get the engine started and running in September.

[Esprit]

A clean chassis is a happy chassis!

But by Christ what a horrible job, took ages and now I ache! Definitely the sort of job I'm glad is out of the way