Back in a Lotus - 2006 Exige S

[Fonzey]

I have a good friend who regularly lends me his pressure bleeder, they really are brilliant. I'll be getting one this winter because calipers will be coming off for braided hoses and I could do to bleed through the brakes on the Civic anyway.

Since I had to endure salty roads to get MOT'd the other day, I thought I'd make use of a dry Sunday to give the car a proper pre-SORN wash.







I did note down a couple of maintenance jobs needed with the wheels off, namely some missing trim clips (already done) but also my heatwrap on the cat converter is looking knackered.



I'm not sure how happy I am with this cat to be honest. It's not a legit Lotus one, they're kinda prone to collapsing and this one has been swapped for a pattern part at some point in history, hence missing the heatshield and gaining the wrap. It's not standing the test of time very well, at least not visually - and who knows how it's actually performing compared to an original item.

I may look into alternatives here, whether that be finding a legit Lotus one or (more likely) paying for a stainless replacement.

She scrubbed up alright, I'm not bothering with any polishing as I'll be manhandling the bodywork a fair bit over the next few months - so it can wait till spring before it gets properly done.



I'm rounding in on my upgrade plans for the winter, and will be ordering some goodies over the next few weeks - now that the mundane months of driving and doing trackdays are over, I can get on with the fun bit - taking it apart

[Koolkat969]

Fonzey said:

I have a good friend who regularly lends me his pressure bleeder, they really are brilliant. I'll be getting one this winter because calipers will be coming off for braided hoses and I could do to bleed through the brakes on the Civic anyway.

Since I had to endure salty roads to get MOT'd the other day, I thought I'd make use of a dry Sunday to give the car a proper pre-SORN wash.







I did note down a couple of maintenance jobs needed with the wheels off, namely some missing trim clips (already done) but also my heatwrap on the cat converter is looking knackered.



I'm not sure how happy I am with this cat to be honest. It's not a legit Lotus one, they're kinda prone to collapsing and this one has been swapped for a pattern part at some point in history, hence missing the heatshield and gaining the wrap. It's not standing the test of time very well, at least not visually - and who knows how it's actually performing compared to an original item.

I may look into alternatives here, whether that be finding a legit Lotus one or (more likely) paying for a stainless replacement.

She scrubbed up alright, I'm not bothering with any polishing as I'll be manhandling the bodywork a fair bit over the next few months - so it can wait till spring before it gets properly done.



I'm rounding in on my upgrade plans for the winter, and will be ordering some goodies over the next few weeks - now that the mundane months of driving and doing trackdays are over, I can get on with the fun bit - taking it apart

Enjoying the updates. Is that a Clio 172 / 182 i spot in the pictures?

[Fonzey]

Koolkat969 said:

Enjoying the updates. Is that a Clio 172 / 182 i spot in the pictures?

Glad you're enjoying!

Yep it's a 182, belongs to my wife and used to be her 'fun' car back before she got pregnant and I banned her from driving it If you look back a couple of pages I've put a fair bit of effort into that tidying it up, will be going up for sale soon - as soon as we can emotionally commit to it as a 5 door car is quite desirable for us now...

[Koolkat969]

Fonzey said:

Glad you're enjoying!

Yep it's a 182, belongs to my wife and used to be her 'fun' car back before she got pregnant and I banned her from driving it If you look back a couple of pages I've put a fair bit of effort into that tidying it up, will be going up for sale soon - as soon as we can emotionally commit to it as a 5 door car is quite desirable for us now...

Cool..... Just seen the post. Missed it somehow. Probably you could have done a separate thread on that . Glad you finally got the feel for it after putting in some extra work on the suspension. Some suspension mods and obviously tyres do help to get the most out of them. I've got the cup shocks and Eibach Sportline springs on my 182 which lowers the ride height a bit plus Pirelli P Zero tyres though the fronts have now been replaced with Michelin PS3's. A common suspension mod for the rear is the Whiteline Rear Anti-Roll Bar which apparently helps to sharpen up the handling but I decided to do without it as i don't track mine. Might come in useful for if you decide to go ahead with doing a trackday in it. Similar tastes we also have with Hondas (my other cars) and would definitely love an Exige .

Edited by Koolkat969 on Tuesday 26th November 11:39

[Fonzey]

The Clio is still here, still made no efforts to sell or list it - but we're rounding in on ideas for replacement. Current favourite being a ~2015 vintage Focus ST.

I've got a couple of updates for Exige stuff, or rather garage stuff!

I've finally got busy and got my garage into a vaguely workable area. I was blessed with enough space, but really no storage or place to work on stuff which was starting to bug me.

When we first moved in, we relegated the integrated fridge into the garage so our nicer/newer stand-alone fridge could go in the kitchen that we brought with us. The integrated fridge was then a nightmare to get rid of, none of the charities would touch it because it was integrated and we clearly don't get enough s (travellers) round here. Eventually the missus found a good home for it via FB, and it ended up being collected by another petrolhead - possibly a PH'er who has a Dax 7'.



The boiler obviously isn't going anywhere, and I'm trying to find a home for the tumbledryer in the house... so that may be kicked out later - but for now we had this to work with.



The plan was to knock up a workbench, put some shelving up and just have a general tidy. Then black friday hit and I got a bit carried away with SGS Engineering...

I had a sketch for a workbench, but the measurements changed everytime I went into the garage to "eye it up"... it was built/designed on the fly out of 6x 3metre planks.









I later added some steel pegboard to the back wall, and I scrounged a scaffolding plank from the village pub which would go up in the form of some shelves.

With my new SGS toolchest populated and wheeled into position (had to move my racking shelves into the corner a bit) I had a finished article











I'll make some additions to the workbench, probably some sacrificial ply just to board the top of it so that my nice planks don't get all oily and scuffed up and then I'll sort out a vice and maybe a little bench grinder/sander if I can find something discreet enough. (would just be used for cleaning up rusty bolts and parts I guess)

Speaking of Black Friday, I also got a bit carried away on the Exige and I've got a couple of big/exciting(expensive) parcels due to arrive sometime between now and Christmas. More on that later, but there's plenty to be getting on with over winter.

Edited by Fonzey on Tuesday 10th December 14:21

Edited by Fonzey on Tuesday 10th December 14:21

[Fonzey]

I got my first major parcel for the winter this week.




Nitron Clubsports. Yummy. Supplied by Type 116 Motorsport at a good price, look them up for Lotus and VX (specialises on VX) parts.

This is a bit of a big moment for me, I've been tinkering with cars for years and have never to date bought a set of suspension brand new! I normally just scoop up whatever is floating around on eBay/Forums and although that's done me fine, I've never had the opportunity to really pick and choose an exact model or spec.

Edit: It's probably worth adding that my standard bilsteins are 'fine', no leaks and no real problems but I do find the Exige a bit crashy on the road if I compare it to my old Elise. Obviously my Elise ended up on Gaz Mono's (underrated damper!) which worked great, but even on the standard bilsteins it handled real-world roads really well. The Exige tends to struggle a bit on anything other than a smooth bit of road, so hoping the Nitrons can let me have my cake and eat it. Obviously they should give me room for improvement on the track too.

So far they've just had a wipe down with an oily rag and have gone back in their boxes. I'm going to do a bit of cleanup on my wishbones first before they go on.

I did a full refurb on my Elise because they were in considerably worse condition than my Exige wishbones, but I've still got a bit of surface rust creeping through. Plan is to dab on some Bilt Hamber Deox stuff (amazing stuff), then probably give them a light dusting with their zinc primer and then coat in XCP rust prevention or something like that. Will do it all on the car, because if I take it off - I'll end up going the whole hog again with balljoints, bushes, powdercoating etc. No time for that this year and it would be wasted effort on this ~20k mile setup.

Edited by Fonzey on Monday 16th December 10:07

Edited by Fonzey on Sunday 19th January 10:58

[PTF]

Fonzey said:

I got my first major parcel for the winter this week.

Lovely

[Fonzey]

PTF said:

Lovely

Yes they really are, can't stop looking at them!

I've got a bit of progress done on the car over Christmas, just 30mins here and there.

I got the car up on all fours and took the old Bilsteins off. They're still in really good nick, so I'll box them up for now and decide what to do with them. Some new spring seats and a dusting with some yellow paint will get them looking mint and at only 20k miles they should have plenty of legs left in them. Maybe a good upgrade for an Elise owner out there somewhere.



My wishbones actually looked pretty good, for anybody that has lurked around an Elise/Exige readers thread before you will know that it doesn't take much time or mileage to start looking really, really rough. For contrast here is how my Elise looked after 40k odd miles...



On my Elise thread (around here: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&... I went to a lot of effort removing them all, stripping and re-painting with brand new bushes, balljoints, hubs and various other goodies.



I'm not quite ready for that yet on the Exige, the bushes and balljoints all feel good (apart from the track rod ends, nicked boot means they're up for the chop) and so doing a full refurb would be a bit of a waste at this point. Instead, I've soaked the worst bits in Bilt Hamber Deox and wiped the lot down with XCP rust prevention to buy me another summer or two before the big job is needed.

Eventually I had to stop looking at the Nitrons, so went ahead and bolted them up.



Everything fits without drama, as expected. I've wiped the threads and coils down with XCP to hopefully keep them nice. In addition to the shocks I threw some new TRE's on the front and replaced all of the ABS shims (camber shims that are used to hold the ABS wiring harness) with stainless items and replaced the hub-steering arm bolts... earlier cars had a few failures here, so it's worth changing them for the later 10.9 grade ones for piece of mind.

Also in the rear I removed the rubber brake hoses and replaced for some braided steel HEL ones I had. Can just about see it peeking in the background:


I can't do fronts yet whilst the clam is on.

As for the brakes, I've had them all up on the bench for a nosey. It seems that I've chunked through a good bit of brake pad this year during my track antics. Before my trackdays started I put in some almost nearly new Pagid RS4-2's (same compound I used and loved on my Elise). After finding the inside of my discs rotten I replaced the discs and got a spanking new set of RS4-2's just to give me a clean start. The Pagid's I took off still had 5.5mm of material so they're in the toolbox for 'get me home' pads.

Since then I've done 3, maybe 4 trackdays and I've got the new set down to 3.5mm already.... It's well documented that RS4-2's seem to perform worse and worse once they get below the half-way mark so the days are numbered on these. I've put the old 5.5mm deep ones back in for now till' I decide what to do.

My Elise never really consumed pads at anywhere near this rate. I've done a lot (8.5) trackdays this year and 5000 total miles so perhaps I'm expecting a bit too much - but my Elise seemed to go on forever on the same set of pads and I did similar numbers of trackdays back then too. Perhaps the extra 5-10mph at the start of each braking zone is having an exponential effect... or maybe my driving style (more likely) needs adjusting. Either way, I think I'll consider some big-boy pads that are perhaps a little more track focused at the expense of my disc life or day to day usability (noise/dust/etc).



With pads and pins out I gave all four calipers a good cleaning, and replaced the anti-rattle pads in the carriers.



As with the wishbones, these calipers with their 'unfinished' look often start to look crusty after a few years but these ones are still looking great - so they can avoid the hammerite treatment for this year.

The rears however have splits in the inner-slider boots. Nothing major but I've ordered a refurb kit so I can swap these over and give all the sliders a good clean.



All pistons and sliders are moving nicely, so overall a healthy setup.

Somewhere between that lot I got a nice present from the North Yorkshire Lotus Owners Club in the form of our 2020 club calendar, and a particularly nice choice for May...!



That's about it for now, got some new goodies to unbox and then it's time for the clam to come off... more updates to come soon.

[Fonzey]

Another quick update, something I forgot to post but is worth sharing.

I inherited a used Sector111 (now inokinetic) catch-can earlier in the year which had developed a fault. A loose baffle internally was causing a rattle. I'd been in touch with inokinetic about it and they told me to ship it over to them in the US once my car was laid up for the winter and they'd take a look. I posted it early in December and by mid-month I had a brand spanking new one in my possession. Top service!



Finally with a clear workbench, I could unbox my other goodies for the winter:




ProAlloy Chargecooler kit. This will replace the air-air intercooler sat on top of the engine with an air-water heat exchanger and plumbing of a pre-rad into the front clam.

Anybody who's read the thread through will note that I've spent a fair bit of time and effort (but critically, not money!) on reducing my intake air temps through auxiliary ducting to my intercooler. I will stand by my opinion that this is a legitimate way to mitigate the inherent problem with this car and I would recommend anybody who tracks an S2 Exige to do the same if they're not prepared to go charge cooling. My ducting was never realistically expected to replace a chargecooler upgrade, it was just something to keep my fingers busy last year and now I've got the opportunity to pay for and fit the 'proper solution', it's time to get cracking.

Main downsides are weight and complexity (and cost...), complexity in terms of it's a pretty simple system but there's just more wiring/plumbing to potentially go wrong. Upsides are that IATs should remain acceptable regardless of ambient temperature as the system is much more efficient, and the radiator component is housed in the front clam so no issues with heatsoak from the engine bay. ProAlloy claim a 20bhp power hike from fitting this alone but I remain sceptical; my aim is to avoid losing power after a few laps - not outright gain it... but a bit more midrange shove wouldn't go amiss if it happens to turn up

Also you may notice a new engine radiator in that lot. This is part of a bundle from ProAlloy that will allow the engine coolant, chargecooler coolant and aircon radiators to all coexist in the radiator shroud. As a result this will resolve another inherent weakness in all modern Lotus cars in that the plastic end-tanked radiators have a habit of leaking... not if, but when.

Obviously the front clam needs to come off for this, but my first job has been to figure out the hose routing from the back of the car to the front. The kit comes with instructions.... but they're more like a parts list than a real guide to fitting so I'll need to get inventive. As my car has front mounted oil coolers and aircon, my side sills are already pretty congested - so it should be fun finding a path! I'll update hopefully in a few days once I've figured that out.

Once that's figured out, I'll finally get the clam off and get started on my job list.

[james_gt3rs]

I never understood why the RS42s were recommended, I always got brake fade and vibration that I didn't get on Pagid RS14 or Performance Friction pads.

[Fonzey]

james_gt3rs said:

I never understood why the RS42s were recommended, I always got brake fade and vibration that I didn't get on Pagid RS14 or Performance Friction pads.

That's interesting, the more I've read into it the more reports I find of poor experiences with the RS42s. For me personally, it was the first non-OEM compound I tried on my first Lotus and found them to not be noisy or dusty, so I stuck with them and as a result I can't really compare them to anything else.

I've learned the hard/expensive way on previous cars that a set of brakepads can really ruin my enjoyment of a car if they're noisy... Worst pads I had for it were CL RC5+ which only went quiet after they started disintegrating inside my caliper

RS14s are the logical next step for me, might just have to tolerate a bit of squeal.

[Fonzey]

Thread updates are likely to trickle through now bit at a time, as I'll be doing the odd half hour here and there and it's easy to forget what has been done.

I mentioned that I had a couple of hose routes to scout out. There are two pieces of 'foam' that block the sill at different points. According to the parts list, the piece closest to the front of the car is just an NVH foam... probably just stops loose rivets from rolling around too much in the sill. Many people remove this completely by spearing it from the front of the sill and fishing it out. I went in for a look with an endoscope (thanks for the Birthday present Mrs Fonzey) attached to a screwdriver.




I found that the foam had a couple of perforated cut-outs already in it, so I poked those through and then joined them up using a hacksaw blade to make a gap which I hope is big enough for the two hoses. If not, I'll just go back in and fish the whole lot out.

I was able to record it via the endoscope app, I think I must have knocked it off though whilst doing the hacksaw bit as I can't find that recording anyway. Either way, you get the point - and I need a bit more work down there to expand the hole out a bit further and we should be good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_BkK2Cw_-U&fe...

With this front bit of foam dealt with, I'm now left with the rear piece. This is less of a sponge, and more of a hard styrofoam type stuff and is listed as side-impact foam. It's a slight wedge shape and effectively blocks off the bottom of the sidepod.

There is however a route under it, which some other hosing passes through already. It's very tight, but there MIGHT be a chance I can get the chargecooler hoses through it, but it would mean two sharp 90deg turns, one to get the hose inboard and the other to get the hose upwards towards the header tank.

The most direct route is to chip off a leading top corner of the foam (or tunnel through it) which would allow the hosing to come up through the base of the sidepod and take a simplified route up to the header tank. This I think is my preferred option, and I know this is how other cars have been done in the past.

This is my diagram to help get my head around it:



The sky blue line just under the gear lever is the NVH sponge foam that I've already tunnelled through and the dark blue is the side-impact foam at the back. The pink is the header tank.

If the red route was to work, it would need some 90deg plastic/metal hose joiners as I fear the hose would kink too easily once warm. It would probably require an extra meter or two of hosing (and extra coolant), so weight is worth considering. I think I can do a neat job of hacking the corner off of the side impact foam as it's sort of accessible both from the rear wheel arch and from within the sidepod.

I've got a day or two to think about it whilst I crack on with the front clam, so thought I'd post it up in case the internet has any additional words of wisdom before holesaws come out.

[Fonzey]

I now have my clam off. I did it over a couple of nights just while I waited for a spare pair of hands to help lift it off. All in all it was probably 45-50mins effort total though, doing it all from memory from the last time I did one (Elise) in 2017ish.

Thought it was a good opportunity to play with timelapsing too, video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sccxo5HOv0Q



Once off I went straight to the AC condenser fittings. I'd been pre-warned by a couple of people in the trade that the condenser should be viewed as single use and was highly unlikely to come off the car without damage. Sure enough, there was not a chance in hell it was coming out in one piece! The piping was just made out of cheese and would twist with the slightest of torque on the fittings. I couldn't use heat as it's embedded in the radiator shroud (plastic) so in the end I just broke it loose. Unfortunately one of the AC refrigerant pipes has suffered too which might be harder to source, it has a fitting at each end which I hope are fairly standard so hopefully I can get one knocked up at a hydraulics place if no Lotus ones crop up. Ideally I would have it swapped for a soft/flexible hose so the fitment isn't quite so strict, but I really know nothing about AC and whether or not that's feasible?!

After destroying the AC I put the stainless brake lines on.



I'll aim to refill the fluid and bleed next week, so then my car is kinda mobile again if I need to move it.

Next steps are to remove the radiator shroud so I can lift the rad and (what's left of) the condenser out. It seems the oil coolers will need detaching first, so need to buy a 30mm spanner for that.

[shalmaneser]

I love pics of cars with their body panels removed, amazing looking at the packaging challenges the engineers have to deal with!

[Fonzey]

Yes some of it genius, some of it is outright bodgery - at least in the case of a Lotus!

There are areas of the radiator shroud that look like they've needed manual shaving to make it fit properly under the clam for instance All things considered though, Lotus did a great job with the airflow at the front of the car for the radiator, plenty of room(ish) for the engine rad, AC condenser and soon to be a chargecooler radiator which can all sit horizontally.

Speaking of packaging, one of my other jobs on my list is to check out the heater fan resister pack, a unit that's unfortunately positioned that invariably fails at some point in its life. Lotus produced a revised item that could be relocated elsewhere, but it's buried way down beneath the AC, Brake and Servo piping which looks like a bit of a mare to get to. I'm debating whether to just leave it well alone or go in there and preemptively replace with the revised unit. Two AC pipes that I need to move seem to be pretty seized onto the AC dryer unit so chances are I'll end up having to spend (even more) money replacing bits if I attempt it. I've soaked everything in plusgas so I'll see how brave I'm feeling at the weekend.

Optimistically I'm wondering if my car has already had the revised unit fitted. I've seen some tell tales that the clam has been off before, but none of the obvious/usual items have been replaced or uprated such as radiator, brake hoses or tow post. Maybe that means this has already been done, but not sure how I can tell one way or the other yet... so more research needed.

[Fonzey]

Fairly busy weekend on the car, still taking stuff apart which is a bit depressing - pile of parts and fixings is getting bigger and bigger, panic slowly starts to settle in!

First up I did a mini rebuild on the rear calipers, the main piston seals are fine so left those alone (but have some spares now in my kit for later) but the boots that cover the slider mechanisms needed swapping.







Nothing to report here really, nice easy change - good kit too from the big red brake company's ebay shop.

Next up I started stripping down the radiator shroud on the car. When I did the radiator on the Elise I was able to largely leave this in place, just loosen it to slip the radiator out. This time round I've already got a 2-layer rad with an added AC condenser and when it goes back in there will be a third tier in the chargecooler - so not a chance in hell of getting it in. I also will need to modify it slightly, so much easier off the car.

To get it off I needed to detach a bit of loom wiring and the twin oil coolers.



This got delayed for a bit because I needed to add a 30mm spanner to my collection to undo the hoses. Luckily these hose fittings are fairly new due to the Lotus recall on them, so no drama at all undoing them.

Once the oil coolers are off, a few awkward fixings later and the shroud can come off the car with the radiator (already drained it t'other day) and then the rad comes off with a few bolts.





The fans look in decent nick compared to those that came off the Elise, but they'll be going anyway as the chargecooler kit included some new pull fans which will go up top instead.

As I already butchered the AC Condenser I don't even need to touch this stack now. The replacement condenser is due to arrive next week so progress on this has halted for now, and I'm still on the lookout for a replacement pipe either bought or made.

I commented before on the fan speed resistor pack, it's a recommended preventative maintenance item but it's a bit of a pig to get to... but I decided to get stuck in regardless.

Out needed to come some more AC components (luckily came out without damage), some coolant hoses and a few brackets etc. Then I needed to pull a square peg out through a round hole, at the expense of some knuckle skin. Eventually the unit came out.



That is the underside of the fan blower unit and is a 'resistor pack' that provides the three different fan speeds in the cockpit. These are one of those "it's not if, its when" failures and it could effect one fan speed, or all of them and losing the ability to demist in one of these cars is not cool. As I'm removing AC components to get to it, it just made sense to do it now even if I really wasn't looking forward to it.

The resistor pack sits literally on the car floor in an area that takes rain water and it simply can't drain away, so this thing is submerged for much of its life... failure is inevitable. You can see the pins are very rusty, but I'll be cracking it open next week to see the damage inside.



The 'fix' for this is a replacement/relocation kit that Lotus provided on later cars and as a response to warranty claims at the time. It blanks off the previous vent on the blower unit and puts the resistors actually inside the unit to protect them. It also used proper resistors rather than just the rusty nails that are apparently inside the current unit. I've not ordered that yet, so once again work is halted.

The car is now (hopefully) as dismantled as it ever will be, from now on I should be cleaning stuff and bolting stuff back to the car... but it looks pretty scary in the meantime

[kiethton]

Great effort on the resistor module - mine failed 3 weeks ago, taking out every fan speed, my heater and my AC...

Booked in for a replacement (and a full inside front refresh) in a few months time when the wallet has recovered...I just don’t have the skill (or space) to sort it out myself unfortunately.

Any recommended replacement part here - the specialist is normally pretty good but seems worthwhile relocating it completely.

[Fonzey]

kiethton said:

Great effort on the resistor module - mine failed 3 weeks ago, taking out every fan speed, my heater and my AC...

Booked in for a replacement (and a full inside front refresh) in a few months time when the wallet has recovered...I just don’t have the skill (or space) to sort it out myself unfortunately.

Any recommended replacement part here - the specialist is normally pretty good but seems worthwhile relocating it completely.

That's unlucky I seriously debated just leaving mine till it failed and then coming back to it later but that would have been another AC drain and another "will my condenser die" lottery when dismantling the appropriate hoses... so I've gone for it now.

I shudder at the thought of paying labour rates for a garage to do this, but I imagine much of it will be the clam on/off so you do well to get as much refreshed as possible whilst in there.... many of the jobs are fairly easy once clam is off.

As for the replacement, you can either spend £75ish on a replacement like for like part and expect to need to do it again in future, or go for the relocation kit: https://www.seriouslylotus.com/s2-heater-resistor-...

Good luck!

[Fonzey]

Update time before I forget what I've done...

I last updated with the HVAC unit out of the car and awaiting arrival of the updated Lotus modification kit which will relocate a new resistor pack out of harms way.

This arrived about 14 hours after I ordered it - top work SeriouslyLotus.



The kit replaces the two interfacing panels on the blower unit and the HVAC box, and the resistors are hidden up high INSIDE the HVAC box once done. All of the self-adhesive foam stuff you can see is to make a good seal between the two units to minimise heat loss I guess, but also will stop water ingress too. The OEM foam on the unit was way past its best.

I actually opened up the old resistor unit, it was looking a bit sorry for itself in there - but in its defence, was still working at time of removal.



First job was to remove the faceplates from each unit. Fan blower one was bolted on and HVAC unit had some rivets that needed drilling out.



Note the HVAC box missing a chunk out of it, I didn't do this and the chunk of missing plastic was nowhere to be seen - so I'm assuming that this broke upon initial construction and has always been like this... unlikely to be helping the efficiency of my heating/cooling system!



I "repaired" this with some sealant.



Mocking up the foam fitment



Once together the unit looks like this, I cleaned it all up and replaced some rusty fixings - doused the relevant bits in XCP rust prevention ready for re-installation



In this form it's too big to go back in the car, the gap it needs to go through is about 70% the size of it, so you need to drop down the fan blower first and tuck it in under a ledge, then drop one end of the HVAC box in and pivot it down... massive pain in the arse as you're having to hold various wires/hoses to one side... oh and there's an AC drain pipe that needs attaching to the bottom all at the same time.

Before tacking the refit, I cleaned out the base of the HVAC "cubby" and drilled some drainage holes. This isn't just me randomly drilling into my chassis, but Lotus released this as a service bulletin in 2007 - all cars should have 4x 6mm holes drilled in specific spots to prevent the build up of rain water in this area.



I sprayed the holes with a zinc primer I had lying around, then coated again in XCP. I still need to clean the holes up underneath the car and give them some protection from that side too.

Link to the TSB for anybody reading and considering the same work: https://www.lotustalk.com/attachments/tsb-2007-01-...

I got the HVAC unit refitted and got to work plumbing everything back in, from my notes I needed to:

- Reconnect HVAC thermostat wiring
- Reconnect HVAC diverter flap motor wiring
- Reconnect the AC hoses (x2) with new o-rings into the HVAC unit
- Refit brackets (x2)
- Refit AC dryer unit (whatever one of those is)
- Reconnect wiring into AC pipe
- Reconnect coolant hoses into HVAC (x2)
- Reconnect face vent blower hose
- Reconnect Brake Servo vac line
- Reconnect Brake Servo fluid line
- Reconnect fan-blower wiring

This is the view from the top down after re-installation. You can't even see the top of the HVAC unit that I've refurbed which gives an idea as to how crammed with stuff this area is...



Once done I reconnected the car battery and had a play with the fan settings with the car powered up. Obviously I have no heat or AC right now, but I was able to confirm that I've got 3 fan speeds and all the divert flaps work properly to get air to my face/feet/windscreen. Happy days.

Whilst all this was going on, I got yet another Pro Alloy parcel - replacement AC condenser.



So the next chapter will be building up the "radiator stack" and fitting back into the car - then I can refill coolant, bleed and at least test the heater is working without leaks etc.

I'm STILL on the hunt for an AC Pipe repair before I can think about a regas. This is what I broke:



As you can see, the condenser is still part-attached into the threaded attachment which simply will not move. I had a fellow Lotus enthusiast (Thanks Hugh!) volunteer his pipe from when he deleted the AC in his Elise... but guess what, he had exactly the same problem but avoided breaking the pipe:



So my options are:

- Successfully remove the condenser end out of Hugh's pipe and use it as it
- Use Hugh's unbroken pipe as a template to get a new one made up

I'm leaning on the latter, as trying to liberate his pipe will probably just result in two broken pipes which may make replicating them a bit harder to get exactly right. I've contacted all the local hydraulics places and nobody will touch AC but I've got the details of one place 45mins away, and I've e-mailed a specialist who do mail-order replacements so I'll chase them up this week.

[Fonzey]

More updates, on babysitting duty tonight so good opportunity to sort through photos and get myself caught up. It's been a hectic few days, sorting out jobs on the Lotus in the odd 30min slots so progress a bit scatter gun but some pretty nice milestones have been ticked off and suddenly everything is coming together.

Still no progress on the AC pipe, but that can wait till last now as it can be the last thing I do before the clam goes back on really.

With the radiator shroud off the car, I could build up my stack of new radiators and plan out the modifications to the shroud before fitting it all together and dropping it back on the car as a complete unit.

The Pro Alloy kit comes with some brackets which are specifically intended for coexisting an AC condenser with a radiator and a charge cooler pre-rad. The only instructions that came say "these are unique on each side, so get them the right way around", with no guidance as to what "the right way round" actually is



The AC condenser also came with some brackets which were riveted on. It looked like these needed removing so that my charge cooler bracket could replace it, but I wasn't 100%. Luckily where instructions/documentation is lacking - support from Pro Alloy is fantastic, answers to emails within an hour or so confirmed that the AC condenser rivets needed drilling out and the brackets binning.

Once this hurdle was cleared, it was just a case of stacking the rads and figuring out how it all went together. Seemed pretty straight forward but no obvious clues still as to what the "right way" was. I figured I had a 50:50 chance so just cracked on.

The new twin pull fan setup came on a laser cut bracket which bolted to the top:





Next up I had to chop the connectors off the old fans and solder them onto the new setup. The polarity here will influence the direction of the fans, I did a test run with a battery and joining blue to blue and black to black blows the fans in the correct direction, but apparently the polarity and colour coding on the "car side" can be a bit random... some people report putting it all back together and finding their fans blowing wrong, so need to make a note to test this before clam goes on!!



The next step was to figure out where new holes needed cutting into the radiator shroud to get the extra hoses through. Made up a quick template using the original rad hose and AC hose outlets as a reference:



...which led to:



Unfortunately it was not destined to remain this tidy. I later went onto find that fitting the rads back into the shroud required a fair bit of angle and pivoting so the holes ended up enlarged by quite a bit. It would have been quicker and cleaner to just cut out a massive void to take all outlets, it's not like this shroud needs any real strength.

Fitting back into the shroud made me realise what was finally meant about putting the brackets on "the right way round" and guess what, I'd got it wrong. The summary is that the back of the radiator needed some bolt holes clear for fitting to the shroud, and they were occupied by a stud on the "wrong" bracket, so had to dismantle it all and swap them round.



The OEM rad is covered in foam strips to stop air from escaping round the sides of the radiator. I ripped those off and copied onto the new rads, and used some extra sponge to fills some gaps.



It's pretty airtight round the radiators now, better than the stock arrangement - every little helps but I'm not entirely convinced my adhesive will survive the heat/airflow stresses so it might all just fall off and rattle around behind my grill... we'll see.

Here we have a bit of a milestone, rads and shroud fitted back to the car!



I spent a bit of time reminding myself where all the wiring had to route to supply the driving lights, horn, light clusters, etc. The oil coolers aren't back on yet as they could do with a bit of tarting up.

Easily the most daunting part of the charge cooler install is running the coolant hoses down the sill. A few posts ago I posted the following diagram which had to options for routing:



I decided to go green because:

a- It's the most direct route, requires less hose and "gentler" bends.
b- It's the only route I could find first hand experience/advice on... so I know for sure it's possible.

The first thing to do was hack a hole through the side impact foam at the back. Luckily removing the sidepod provides great access:



You can see the foam in question, forming the "floor" of the sidepod.

I started hacking away at the front edge of it with an array of screwdrivers and chisels, and it didn't actually take too long at all.



The main issue is I didn't manage to recover hardly any of the dislodged foam... so it's down in the sill somewhere, but I imagine it'll work it's way out eventually through the "red route" of the diagram.... or stay there forever, who cares.

Once I proved to myself that two lengths of hose could make their way down into the sill (very tight), I started thinking about the strategy for pushing/pulling the hose through. I could either go from the front of the car and try to fish the hoses up through the hole in the foam, or push the hoses through from the rear and figure out how I get them out of the front later. I went for the latter.

Using some wire-fishing-pole things that electricians use to feed cables behind walls etc, I poked some string through to the front of the car, tied it to a length of hose and then got pushing/pulling. As it turned out, the string was pretty much useless and I did pretty much all of it by pushing. Eventually it popped through into the access hole in the cockpit. (no picture of this, but here's the end of my fishing rod for reference)



The second hose was a bit harder, as obviously the channel was now more congested but it really didn't take long. The biggest issue with this job was injuries to my hands... the inside of the sill is like a meat grinder with unfinished edges, bits of rivet, clips and potentially maybe even a rodent of some kind just taking chunks out of me any time I went in there.



The wifi endoscope I got at Christmas has really earned its place during this work, really impressed with it and wish I'd bought one sooner!

With both hoses 'available' in the car interior, I felt quite relieved - as this was pretty much the hard part done! The next/final part will be to drill holes in the front of the sill, fit the grommets and then try and poke the hoses up through them. The positioning of the holes needs to be well thought out, as I've got oil cooler lines and AC pipes back there and I need to both avoid damaging them, and find a route that I can use.

Couple of other bits of tidying up involved the brackets holding on the driving lamps, they really rusted away on my old Elise so required a bit more of a refurb but these were sound, so I gave them a quick coat of hammerite spray and will XCP them up once dry:



I noticed one of my lenses has a stone chip too, so might replace that before the clam goes on.

Next steps are:

- Get the hoses out of the sill and connected to the pre-rad
- Reconnect main rad once new jubilee's arrive
- Top header tank up and bleed out all the air. After disconnecting the HVAC, rad and a bunch of hoses I think I've lost more coolant that I first realised so might take some time

Once that's done, I can turn my attention to the rear of the car. Intercooler needs to come off (minutes of effort) and the chargecooler fitting with header tank. Before it goes on I'm going to lift my cam cover and check for wear on my intake cam lobes. This wear was a bit of a thing on some 2ZZ engines, no confirmed root cause but I later found (after selling it) that my old Elise suffered quite badly from this and it was the same 2006 vintage.

Oh, and finally between all this we bought a new daily:





Focus ST-3 Estate, baby is getting heavier and the car seat was getting more and more awkward in the back of the 3dr Civic. It's got a fantastic spec, gadgets everywhere (but the Ford SYNC satnav is awful). Nice to have a bit of torque back in the daily fleet too, after the Type R and Clio182 it was becoming a bit exhausting 182 is now also up for sale, hint hint.