Esprit's '01 Exige Over-winter refresh

[Esprit]

Right, been a busy week, sadly not on car stuff. Health is STILL rubbish so I'm not fancying spending all weekend in a cold garage. Might spend a bit of time thinking/designing up the battery mount and also might spend some time in the office doing a bit more designwork on the dash pod.

Had the oil unions arrive. These things are like gold dust (and certainly no cheaper than gold dust!) Finding BSP oil unions in aluminium proved to be the devil's own job. Nobody in New Zealand could help me, and it took the wonderful guys at Merlin Motorsport, UK to help me out again. The Aeroquip socketless hose for these is in transit from the UK as well as I could get it from there for just over half the price the local suppliers wanted! Talk about ripoffs!

Anyway, they'll look bling once fitted I'm sure

[thminiman]

did you try Fragola/Parker Enzed?

[Esprit]

did you try Fragola/Parker Enzed?

Yeah, they could only do them in plated steel... DO. NOT. WANT.

[rot808]

you should really paint everything matt black before you assemble otherwise you're just going to have to take it all apart to do it.

see always thinking

[Requiemk]

this man makes a point

[Testament]

did you try Fragola/Parker Enzed?

Yeah, they could only do them in plated steel... DO. NOT. WANT.

is that just the BSP they could only do in plated steel?

[Esprit]

did you try Fragola/Parker Enzed?

Yeah, they could only do them in plated steel... DO. NOT. WANT.

is that just the BSP they could only do in plated steel?

Yup, BSP stuff tends to be more for hydraulic applications I understand so they tend to do them in steel. If I was doing the car in JIS/UNC it'd be fine, but since it's BSP from factory, I'll keep it factory spec.

As for painting it matt black, I'll just go over everything with a rattlecan when it's together... Matt Black always looks best with overspray

[Esprit]

Well today, I picked up a seemingly completely unrelated part for the project. It's the ECU out of a '96 BMW E36 318i.

Just so happens that the Bosch/DME ECU from the E36 shares the same connector as the Lotus Esprit V8 / Lotus Exige S1 ECU, so this is very helpful.

The BMW ECU will be cracked open and the connector will be desoldered from the board. I'll then make up an adaptor loom to go from the stock plug on my Exige loom to the Emerald ECU connector. This will enable me to hook up the emerald without having to cut my OEM loom (which will be handy should I ever decide to go back to running the original engine/ECU combo in the future. It also means that I'll be able to do the bulk of the soldering from the comfort of my workbench instead of crouched inside the cabin, all cramped up. Win/Win!

The donor ECU cost me $50, or about 20 quid for those of you reading in Blighty.

[Esprit]

Well the last few days I've been looking at how to tackle the mounting of the lightweight battery I'll be running. This battery is SUBSTANTIALLY smaller than the OE spec item and weighs in at under 5kg, substantially lighter than the >13kg OE item.

Now, I ran this same battery to great effect in my old Elise and I mounted it standing up. I made up a moulded fibreglass cap, which I then mounted to the OE washer bottle/battery mount to hold it in place. This worked well, and held it pretty securely, but the battery was able to move via flexing of the mount and cap and I thought that if I ever entered any motorsport events here, they might potentially have an issue with it (battery mounts in NZ motorsport are for some reason super-heavily scrutinised compared to the UK it seems from what I've seen some of the Brits get away with!).

So, after looking at the problem on the weekend, I've hatched a plan to mount the battery lying down. This has two benefits... it's more stable, and it gets the centre of gravity lower. The battery is an AGM (Absorbed Glass Mat) version and is valve regulated (VRLA) so needs no venting and can be mounted in any orientation except inverted.

I measured up the front compartment and the original bracketry and I'm about halfway through the design of the new bracket. This can be seen in red, with the existing car/bracket shown in blue. I've still some work to do on it, so it's by no means finished, but it shows the direction I'm heading in.

The aim is to make a nice, stiff, motorsport compliant bracket that attaches to the OEM washer bottle mount / battery mount that weighs as little as possible.... I reckon it'll be possible to keep it down to about 200-250g when done.

[bubblegoose]

how much does a battery of such lightness cost ones self? and whats its cca?

[Esprit]

how much does a battery of such lightness cost ones self? and whats its cca?

These batteries cost about 90 bucks (cheaper than the stock item at 130!). Available from any batterytown agent. They're not CCA rated as only car batteries are rated this way and this isn't a car battery. I wouldn't use one of these to crank anything other than a small engine. I'd also not use one in a car with a lot of accessories.

My car has only a fan blower, headlights, alarm/immobiliser and a cigarette lighter, nothing else electric.

I'd also not use one where the battery is situated in the engine bay as the AGM cell architecture doesn't like high ambient temperatures... I'm fortunate in that my battery sits up front.

In my experience the battery will last about 1-2 weeks with the alarm armed before cranking becomes very sluggish. However, I wire on a connector harness to it and run that up to just underneath the front access hatch, I then plug it into a cyclic charger (about $150 from repco) to continually charge/cycle the battery and keep it in good health whenever the car's not going to be used for more than a week. If using it every weekend, then it generally seems to last pretty well so long as the car gets a good run to charge it. The one I put in my last Elise is still going strong after 3.5 years, the new owner really rates it

*edit* This battery is rated at 18Ah, which I calculated was about the smallest you could practically go to without it starting to become a little borderline for usage and reliability. Of course you could step up a size or two (look up SLA/AGM cells on batterytown.co.nz) and have a more robust battery, but of course you begin to lessen the weight advantage.

[Esprit]

Well, a busy day today, centred around replacing the oil cooler lines between the engine bay and the oil cooler up front.

I got a supply of 7 metres of Aeroquip AQP socketless hose from the UK for the job, which should have been plenty.

Now, a bit of background on the oil cooler, recapping some stuff a few pages back. I made the call to replace the oil cooler lines as I found the rubber on the original ones was beginning to perish. I figured it was good insurance and a good thing to do while the clams were off and the engine was out.

I also made the decision to plumb in an oil thermostat since the bottom end bearing damage seemed to be partially symptomatic of the engine being run too hard on cold oil, most likely caused by over-cooling of the oil. A MOCAL oil thermostat and all Aluminium MOCAL 1/2"BSP fittings were drafted in from the UK for the job.

So today, I started off by cutting the end-fittings off the old hose to enable me to pull the hose through. The initial plan was to pull the hose from back to the front so that I could terminate the ends at the front and have a loop at the back to use when I decided to position the oil stat. This proved to be fruitless though since the oil hose goes through an "S" bend just behind the front wheel-arch, making it more difficult to pull this way.

So after a few attempts, I tried from the front to the back and this was much more successful. The new hose was duct-taped to the old hose and the old hose was used to pull the new hose through. It was at this point that I realised I might have short-ordered the hose a little because it didn't look like I had a huge abundance! Anyway, it turned out that I've got enough to get back as far as the oil stat (yet to be located, but will probably be near the fuel tank or up against the engine bay bulkhead). This is okay though since it's all I need until I get the engine anyway. I'll just have to make a second order to run the catenary section from the stat to the engine. Annoying, but not a train smash.

Here's the old hose and fittings removed and ready for the bin:

Anyway, the R/H front wheel-arch liner was installed to check the length I needed to leave (the oil cooler lines pass through loops on top of the wheel arch) before slicing the hose loop up front and trimming the hose to length. The following pic shows me how much hose I had spare! (Oily hand gives scale):

Once this was done, it was simply a matter of warming up the hose to make fitting insertion easy, lubing up the hose and fittings with fresh oil and pushing them in... a bit of brute strength and they were done. All that was left to do was to connect them up to the already-installed oil cooler. Job's a carrot!

This is also pretty exciting since it's really the last thing I need to do before the front end goes back on. The battery mount is all measured up, so hopefully it won't be too much longer (next weekend maybe) and I can fit the front clamshell and free up some space in my bedroom! (I've been sleeping next to my clam for 18 months now!)

Anyway, on with the pics!

R/H fitting connected to oil cooler:

L/H fitting connected to oil cooler:

General view of the oil cooler in place with the lines run... everything looking nice and clean... just like a new car!:

New oil cooler lines running over the R/H inner wheel arch to check the line-lengths.

Floating ends of the new oil cooler lines sitting in the vacant engine bay:

All in all a successful day and just sitting back now for a cruisy evening with a couple of Beck's and maybe a wee dram of Glenfiddich

[bubblegoose]

My car has only a fan blower, headlights, alarm/immobiliser and a cigarette lighter, nothing else electric.

i got lights, a coil and a fuel pump and will also be getting plugged into an optimate charger when not in use

thats pretty cheap cheers for the info

[Esprit]

Well a bit of progress for a Wednesday.

Today I did one of those little jobs that doesn't really fit in anywhere. The rear inner arch liner had a small hole where the tyre had managed to rub through at some point. Now they're prone to do this anyway, so any repair was probably only going to be temporary, but I thought for the $40 it would cost to patch it up (~17 quid for the poms), I figured why not. The first couple of pics show the pre-repaired state and the last one shows the repair. It's not pretty, but it's an inner wheel arch and other than perhaps giving it a buff up with some emery it can stay ugly for all I care

Other big news today is that I went to see my engine and the build-up is underway! The block has been cleaned up and the liners dry-fitted to check the stand-proud. They're at about 4 thou, which is about right for the MLS gasket to do its job and the crankshaft is about to be test-fitted and plastigauged to check it's all sitting how it should. I meant to get some pics but clean forgot!

Things are coming along nicely at the moment, which makes a lovely change!

[Esprit]

Right, well a perplexing and frustrating day today. Today's mission was to clean up the front end a bit more so that perhaps tomorrow I could get the front clamshell on the car, ready to bolt it on next week when my new fasteners arrive. This is going to be a HUGE milestone for me

Anyway, I decided to replace a few of the fasteners around the radiator mount and shroud as some of them were looking rather brown and fuzzy.

It shortly became apparent that it would be best to pull the radiator out and just replace the lot of them.

So the radiator came out:

Upon seeing the corrosion on the rad, and knowing the bad things most people say about the original plastic-ended radiator, I'm now thinking that it may be worth replacing this with a ProAlloy radiator as people seem to rate them extremely highly. Now, this would normally be an expense and a half, but since the NZ dollar is kicking arse against the pound at the moment, I've priced it up and I can probably swing it pretty well.... now I just have to decide which version of the ProAlloy rad to get.

The spinoff of all this is that it'll probably be another few weeks before I can get the front clamshell fitted, which is a bit disappointing. This isn't slowing me down or anything, it's just one of those milestones I'd love to get to as it's visually a big step forward. Still, I've waited this long, a couple more weeks won't kill me I'm sure.

The other news today is that I went to visit Ken at KW and see my engine build. The liners are in and the crank was test-fitted yesterday. Today we were going to get the crank bolted in finally, but when we did so, things went alarmingly tight. Bruising on the new bearings seemed to suggest that the block and the crank cradle are slightly out of alignment. I'm guessing that the engine has probably been this way from new.

I'm going to take some advice from the legendary DVA on which way to go with this but it looks like the liners will come out again, and the block and cradle will go off to get line-bored. Again, it's a bit of a bastard, and a setback, but much better to invest time and money now than rebuilding the bugger again in a year's time. Will update y'all when I know more.

[Mick Doohan]

[quote name="Esprit"

Bruising on the new bearings seemed to suggest that the block and the crank cradle are slightly out of alignment. I'm guessing that the engine has probably been this way from new.

I'm going to take some advice from the legendary DVA on which way to go with this but it looks like the liners will come out again' date=' and the block and cradle will go off to get line-bored. .[/quote]

sounds quite odd ... aren't these spose to be hand assembled versions of the k20 ? .. i can even imagine how they would be out of alignment considering there bored bolted and dowelled at the factory

perhaps a remeasure of your bearings and journals would be in order ... and if the crank was cryo treated a check to make sure the journals are still round

stupid question.. but did he put the caps on the right way around ??

[Esprit]

sounds quite odd ... aren't these spose to be hand assembled versions of the k20 ? .. i can even imagine how they would be out of alignment considering there bored bolted and dowelled at the factory

perhaps a remeasure of your bearings and journals would be in order ... and if the crank was cryo treated a check to make sure the journals are still round

stupid question.. but did he put the caps on the right way around ??

This isn't a Honda K20, it's a Rover K-series. The crank is a brand new item, non-cryo-treated, straight off the Rover production line. The crank is graded and all the journals are measured for bearing grading purposes.

As for putting the caps on the way around, the engine doesn't have caps, it has a crank cradle, so it can only be mounted in the one direction.

I'm not sure on the factory machining procedure for the bearing mounts.

As I said though, I'm going to get in touch with my guru in the UK who's built a great number of these engines and I'm sure it's a problem he's come across before, and no doubt he'll be able to suggest the best solution.

[Esprit]

Just finished the design of the battery holder. I'll draft it up tomorrow and send it out for pricing. Will get it lasercut and folded out of 2mm Aluminium sheet, I'll then fettle it and get it black-anodised before lining it with EVA foam and installing it. Should hopefully do the trick without too much modification required.... fingers crossed.

Anyway, here it is. I've not blinged it up too much as there's no point... it's not a visual thing:

[Esprit]

Well not a huge amount of material progress to report this week. I've done a lot of parts ordering and currently have a TurboXS knock-lite on its way from the states. This will be integrated with the dashboard when I can find a way to make it fit. I've also ordered the three-way switch that will enable me to switch between the alternate maps on the ECU.

Also en-route from the states are my new injectors. These should supply all the fuel I need to sustain up to about 260-270bhp so will be plenty.

A shiny new ProAlloy radiator will be on its way very shortly and I'm expecting my battery clamp pressing to be here by the end of the week ready for fettling prior to anodising.

Today I've also stripped down my sacrificial BMW E36 ECU. I've managed to desolder the connector (see pics), and will now be able to use this to create a converter-loom between the Exige loom and the Rover MEMS-style-plug on the Emerald.

This will take some thought as I'll need to include all the external signals I wish to route to the ECU so some heavy-duty wiring schematics will be the order of the day in the coming weekends. Perhaps something to do whilst sat in front of Bathurst next weekend?

[Esprit]

Right, well the Proalloy Radiator is now on its way and should be here next week. Injectors now shouldn't be far away either, and the battery clamp pressing should be here by the wekeend, giving me something to do.

My TurboXS KnockLite arrived today, which will be used to warn of knock conditions in the engine. This is particularly useful in NZ where our fuel is known to be of.... shall we say "variable" quality and it's not uncommon to get a bad tank out of the blue.

The KnockLite looks like this:

I'll be purchasing a Bosch Knock sensor to go with it and hardmounting it on the block.

What I plan to do is dismantle the knocklite from its casing and integrate it into the dashboard. The circuitry is siliconed inside the aluminium tube so I need to find out how to separate that (without damaging the circuitry) and then sliding the circuit out. I've had a bit of a careful cut-away and have managed to remove some of the silicone, but the rest won't budge. I'm thinking some kind of solvent to help break the silicone bond and help lubricate its passage (ooerr!) In the past I've used isopropyl alcohol to reasonable effect in releasing optical silicone moulds, but soaking the circuit in isoprop probably isn't a good thing.

Any ideas? Answers on the back of a stamped, self-addressed envelope....

Once the circuit has been removed, I'll remove the LED and microswitch from the circuitboard. I'll then solder on some fly-leads to enable me to mount the LED and a remote switch in the dash.... all discrete-like! The circuit can then mount behind the dash panel out of sight and I can have the full functionality without a chavvy-looking thing tacked onto the dashboard.... or so the plan goes anyway.