Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[Esprit]

Went up to visit Glenn at GDS last night and see progress on my car.

Things are starting to look pretty good, we went through what's been done and what's to be done, and it's going to come out really tidily.

The exhaust fits back where it should, which is good so I can get the flexi re-coated.

Now for the pics

As she sits now with the engine bay wiring removed:

The interior of the car. Note the dash has been removed and this is enabling us to run the looms up into the dash to control the Motec MDD and SLM as well as the various comms/signals I'm taking up to the dash. The loom up to the dash will run alongside (and in addition to) the factory loom.

The new chassis loom will also connect to the factory loom here for conveying things like the tacho signal, STACK water temperature, brake light signals etc. These connections are made at the rear bulkhead and integrate seamlessly with the existing vehicle loom, allowing me to interchange the factory wiring back.

Here you can see the rear bulkhead area with the section of the chassis loom removed. The plugs where the new section of chassis loom connects to the existing chassis loom can be seen at the bottom of the image just right of centre:

This area will be filled with this loom This will connect the ECU to the main chassis loom and the engine loom. It also handles some transitory wiring from the dash out to the engine bay:

The plugs to the ECU are top right. The tee-off to the left connects to the existing loom and also has the second line up to the dash for the extra stuff (comms, MDD, SLM and inputs). The four other offshoots go to (in order from top to bottom):

- To a connector to the relays on the rear bulkhead

- To the main 46-pin multi connector through the rear bulkhead to the engine bay (OEM ITT-Cannon Lotus type).

- To the 6-pin Deutsch Autosport connector through the rear bulkhead (carrying separate REF/SYNC signals from the engine. Separated to maximise signal clarity and minimise interference)

- To the 26 pin Deutsch Autosport connector through the rear bulkhead to the engine bay (Carrying peripheral connections to the rear clamshell loom and sensors on the LHS of the engine bay. This includes all the rear lights, rear alarm switch, LHS wheel speed sensor for dash, rollover / inertia switch and BARO/MAP sensors). This connector also has some spare pins carrying extra terminations from the ECU which will allow us to upgrade easier in the future if we want to add extra sensors outputs to the engine bay.

Obviously this loom is still a work in progress and will look a lot tidier when finished and terminated.

This is the factory wiring which has been removed:

The upper loom is what came off the interior of the car and what is being replaced by the new loom shown. The lower loom is the engine bay loom, of which the replacement will be constructed next week.

This final photo shows the Motec M800 mocked up in place on the rear bulkhead:

This photo was taken to allow me to design up a new bracket to mount it in the right place. This mount has been fabricated and is currently out for anodising.

So yeah... not a huge amount of visual progress, but to do it all the right way and in such a tidy and integrated manner takes the time. I'm happy to say that Glenn's treating my car with exactly the same obsessive nature that I'd treat it if I was capable of doing such wiring work myself! Because I'm colour-blind, I like to leave this stuff to the pros

[Esprit]

Right, well an update since there hasn't been one for a while.

The car's still up with Glenn at GDS Automotive and progress has been steady this past few weeks.... it's also been very expensive.... doing things this way and to this level is NOT cheap, but should result in the most reliable, best solution.

I went up and saw the car tonight and wiring/installation/programming is now almost finished. Progress will probably halt now for a few weeks while my bank balance takes a couple of deep breaths before we work on sparking it up and bolting it to the dyno.

The good news is that the car cranks and all of the sensors seem to talk to each other and this should hopefully mean painless and swift progress when the time comes to get it running. I will probably have to take a day off work to go up when we fire up so that I can be there to help troubleshoot and to take some video for y'all.

For now, please enjoy some photos of the wiring progress to date:

Motec M800 in place with new wiring inside. These splice into the OEM harness in a completely unpluggable/reversible fashion. All wiring sleeved in Raychem boots and Raychem DR25 motorsport heatshrink. Loom junctions and plugs all Deutsch Mini-DTM.

Close-up of the break-out Y going into the ECU.

Another close-up of the main ECU section of the loom.

Interior shot of the main 48-pin ITT Cannon connector with the 6-pin Deutsch Autoport connector (for REF/SYNC Crank/Cam signals) above and the OEM starter wiring below.

Shot of the dash from the passengers side showing comms wiring and Motec MDD and Motec SLM all wired in. Fascias and finishing to be done after we've actually got the engine running and basemapped.

Engine bay side of the ITT Cannon 48-pin connectos and the 6-pin Deutsch Autosport Connector and associated wiring. Special note to Papa Hayce to check out the quality of those break-outs!

Shot looking back towards the above photo from above the camshaft. The cam SYNC sensor is in the foreground. The dangling Bosch connector is the one for the coil pack, temporarily disconnected for cranking.

Looking down the LHS of the engine bay at the 26-pin Deutsch Autosport Connector. This connector handles the connections to the rear light loom, the rear alarm switch, the inertia switch, chassis earths, gearbox cooler pump, speed sensors and gearbox temp sender. It also has some spare wiring built in for future expansion if needed.

Injector wiring.

Mini-DTM connector poking out hole. To be connected to switch sitting on top of dash. To be used as fan override switch.

Dash view from driver's side showing Motec MDD lit up and polling sensors.

Still a lot of finishing to go but we've broken the back of it now.... we're getting close to finished!

[Esprit]

Well good news and bad now. The good news is that the car's completely finished (from a wiring and "making the engine work" perspective). All sensors have been calibrated and we've managed to integrate and test everything and get it all working, which is great news. The dash is all back together as well.

The bad news is that we can't seem to get a spark out of it. Glenn then decided to do a check and it appears that he made an error of assumption about the coil.

The coil on the Exige/340R/EspritV8 Twin Turbo is a General Motors item as used on cars like the 2L Vauxhall Frontera (and others):

We assumed that this coil had built-in ignitors as the car has no remote ignitors. We've since found that this coil doesn't have ignitors, and that the Esprit V8/VHPD ECU from Lotus has the ignitors built into the ECU.

The M800 requires ignitors to be used, and so we've two options. Wire in some ignitors in the loom, or swap the coil out for one with built-in ignitors.

The second option is the most desirable since it should be easiest and cheapest to implement, we've just got to track down a coil that will fit that has in-built ignitors.

This new coil can be either a 4-post wasted-spark (3-wire) setup or a 4-post sequential (5-wire) coil as we've wired the car for both if needs be.

The solution we're currently considering is the coil from the Version 6 Subaru Impreza WRX/STi (and also Legacy single-turbo) Model years '98-'00.

We're open to other solutions though if anyone has any. Ideally we'd find a coil pack identical to the original one but with built in ignitors.

This will slow things up a little bit, but I'm sure we'll find a suitable solution in the end.

Other than that, we've just got to pour some petrol in, check for leaks and twist the key!

[Esprit]

Well I popped up to see the car on Friday night and it's looking brilliant. We've just got to sort this coil issue out before getting the car running.

The Subaru coil I spoke about a bit earlier has been delivered and bench tested and will do the job just fine. It's a little bigger and a little lighter than the old one, but fits in the hole just fine.

The old GM coil was bolted to the head using the bracket shown here:

This is a simple bit of 3mm aluminium angle, which also grounds the coil to the head. It mounts by only two of its four holes.

The new coil can be seen here:

Although lighter, this coil is slightly larger and carries its mass a bit further out than the old coil. Also, the way around it's going to be mounted to the head, just the one bolt hole will be available if we mount it using a similar style bracket.

As such, I thought I'd design up a new mount that picks up on all three of the mount holes in the new Subaru coil pack.

After designing up a simple fold bracket, I was a bit concerned about the strength of it, so I decided to make it out of thinner, lighter material and fold in some gussets that'll brace the bracket once the coil is bolted on.

This will be anodised black (because I like it) and should do the trick very nicely. Looks nice too

The coil-and-bracket assembly weighs exactly the same as what's come off so mission accomplished

The new Magnecor plug-leads I've got have enough length in them to be re-terminated to suit the new coil too.

I'll send it off for manufacture tonight, and should have it anodised and ready to bolt on the car by next Monday or Tuesday. I've got some exhaust bits out getting ceramic-coated right now and once these are done and bolted on, the car will be dyno-ready!

[KKtrips]

Thats gunna look might sexy mate.. Your cad(?) skills are totally awesome..

[Bullitt]

cad(?)

Solidworks

Holes remind me of Uncle Jake

[My name is Russell]

CAD covers everything Computer Aided Design so you were good as correct KK

looking good Esprit! wish my loom was that lush!

"winter refresh" is oh so close

[Esprit]

Right, well a small, and a bit of a frustrating update today. I've been waiting the past week and a half for the coil bracket to be made. This needs to be here to allow us to bolt the coil onto the engine in its final resting place, make up the plug leads, then we can put some petrol in the thing and crank it over to see what happens.

This bracket finally turned up this morning and it's perfect in every way..... except they folded it inside out! The fabricators obviously didn't read my drawing properly and they've got the folds the wrong way around and made me a perfect mirror image of the part I need! As such the one I've now got is useless!

They're getting their finger out to get me a new one ASAP but it's all delay.

In the meantime, I'm going to try to use the one they've supplied and hack it about to get the coil mounted fairly close to where it's going to go, because I'm buggered if I'm waiting until after Christmas to fire the damn thing up.

I've spoken to Glenn and organised to head up for the evening after work tomorrow. Fingers crossed I'll be able to get a makeshift bracket done up by then, so I can head up with a jerrycan of fresh petrol, some spare oil, spare coolant and a video camera and hopefully we'll be able to fire the old girl back into life for the first time since Easter '08.

[KKtrips]

Bet you are fizzing at the earballs right now and are ready to explode with anticipation..

Ace work my man - ACE!!

[Esprit]

Yeah, I was gutted when I found out that the bracket was made wrong and gutted when I couldn't get up there tonight (I even went for a 10km run at 6am this morning so I could skip my evening gym session to get up to see the car!) But we're close now. I've still got a lot of finishing bits to do before the car goes back on the road (I don't think it'll be WOF'd and REG'd until mid-late January), but I've really got to push on and get the car to a point where the engine's running, else it'll sit and languish over the Christmas break.

At least if the engine's running, I'll be EXTREMELY motivated to finish off the rest as fast as possible to get out there and go for a skid.

[10Speed]

will you bring this to the OS nats track day?

(boldly assuming we'll have one next year)

[My name is Russell]

will you bring this to the OS nats track day?

(boldly assuming we'll have one next year)

Hope we do! It's the reason i started my escort build two years ago

[Vintage Grumble]

I heard there wont be an OS one this year, but there may be a motorkhana at nats.

Lovely wiring BTW, its good to know theres still auto sparkies with skills/who care. (theres none around here, thats for sure)

Skids seem like the perfect thing to do apon completion, I look forward to the video.

[Esprit]

I may very well bring it along just to stick out like a sore thumb at an oldschool meet

[Testament]

will you bring this to the OS nats track day?

(boldly assuming we'll have one next year)

Hope we do! It's the reason i started my escort build two years ago

There isn't a trackday at the nats this time - doesn't mean an OS trackday won't be run at some point though. I would think most people will be keen to goggle this awesome thing regardless.

[Esprit]

Three words: IT F**KING RUNS!!!!!!!

Got up to GDS tonight about 5:30 after work. We got to work mounting the coil on the engine. Used the bracket hacked up a little and mounted upside down and on spacers. It worked well enough. New one will look much better and won't foul things like the wrongly-made one will.

Plug leads were then made up to fit the new coil:

All that was left then was to pour in 20L of 98-octane.....

Got the fuel pressure up, checked for leaks (there were none) and we finally cranked it over.

The next couple of hours were frustrating. We could get nothing out of the car apart from a flattened battery and a few VERY loud pops and bangs out of the headers.

We ended up tracing this to an incorrect CRIP (crank index position) angle. The Motec documentation said this was supposed to be 20 degrees, but after messing about with a timing light etc, we found that 678 degrees was the magic number.

This meant that we were able to crank her some more and finally, after two years and nine months, she burst into life! Video to follow...

[Akaname]

Gratz bro

[Esprit]

And... as if by magic, here's the video of the first start!

It's actually a slight lie. The first start-up was pretty hectic and only lasted 30 seconds or so.... much like when I lost my virginity... but I managed to record the second time we fired her up.

The engine is only running with the manifold at this stage (uncapped headers) so is EXTREMELY loud... the camera mic really didn't do that justice!

Glenn's just busy checking all the numbers and making some initial tweaks here to make sure everything's in the green.

She's an angry, ANGRY little engine!

Due to the exhaust being incomplete, we couldn't get stable lambda readings so after this video, we stopped to fit the exhaust system.... video to follow...

[Esprit]

With the exhaust system fitted, we could get some sensible readings out of the lambda sensor and begin to start mapping idle and tweaking things. The car also sounds a lot better with the exhaust fitted..... but still nicely grumpy!

During this time, the coolant system managed to bleed itself through (after I'd bled it as much as possible on the starter). It's not drinking any more coolant and the temps are very stable at 82-84 degrees. Fans cut in and out as they should. Oil pressure is good and oil level is spot on.

The engine sounds great, cranks freely with no undue noises or warning signs, which is VERY pleasing, and a great relief!

After a couple of small sessions like this, we called it a night. We've got about 16 minutes of engine running under our belts, so the cams should be nice and bedded in. Will sort out tomorrow exactly when we can get the car onto the dyno to get the base-mapping done under load

[KKtrips]

HOLY SMOKES MAN That is choicer than choice!! - Congrats I bet you feel like a Dad with his first newborn..

So much win on this morning Old School catch up..