2007 Lotus 2-Eleven

[Fonzey]

Hi Everyone, time for a new thread. In many ways this will be a logical continuation of my Exige thread posted here: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

Small bit of backstory for anybody unaware, but I've owned/modified and tracked a 2006 Lotus Exige for the past few years. Learned some lessons, ignored others - but had a blast along the way. I feel like I hit a bit of a modification ceiling with it after running into gearbox reliability issues despite spending the cash on all of the right parts to prevent it. As such, the only logical thing to do was to buy another car with the exact same engine and gearbox and start over again...

I'll probably reference "the Exige" throughout this thread but I'll try to give context where appropriate.

On the day my gearbox failed, there was a Lotus 2-Eleven in attendance. I've always admired them from afar, never showing enough interest to learn much about them but they've always been a "I wish I could justify one of those" cars.



I should have taken a closer look at it, and I regretted not asking for a ride in it but I was busy sulking.

In the days and weeks that followed, the Exige got fixed and did a rather successful trackday at Croft but my mind was already wandering. I looked at newer V6 Exiges, considered buying an older rover engine car and embarking on a Honda build and considered sticking an order in at Caterham... but the 2-Eleven persisted.

New thread rule, it's now called a 211. I don't have all day to keep typing out 2-Eleven. The 211 on the face of it is an Elise/Exige without a roof or glass, but as usual with Lotus when you dig into it some more subtle differences shine through.
They did both an NA (192bhp) and SC (255, later upgraded to 260) model and I would be looking for a 260 one. Considering I ran my Exige at 300bhp for the last few months, it would be a bit of a power downgrade, but in exchange for saving approx. 200kg. That would put power to weight ratio in excess of my Exige, but with an aero penalty at higher speeds and better performance on the brakes.
The geometry is subtly different allowing it to run much lower than an Exige/Elise, and by all accounts it has a bit of 'real' aero, even more so with the GT4 upgrades that the Cadwell car had. The cars also came with some goodies, namely an Accusump and 2-way Ohlins dampers. Better oil surge protection and 2-way dampers were both on my roadmap for the Exige.

They don't come up for sale too often, but I kept half an eye out. I'm not a huge lover of the launch livery cars, I'm a paint not sticker sort of guy so when this one came up, it got me very interested.

Ad photo:


It is a launch car, at #50 I believe it makes it the last launch car that they did. I've not fully geeked out on the launch vs non-launch versions yet but I'm already learning that every car seems to have a different combination of parts-bin bits on it.

I'm a stickler for not engaging with a car seller until I've pretty much already decided to buy it, but after a few days of weighing things up I engaged with the seller, let's call him G.

G was exactly what I've come to expect from a private Lotus seller over the years, willing to talk about the car properly, stopped at nothing to share photos, videos, answered any questions and left nothing to chance. G was probably over-honest with the cars' issues, typically the aesthetic ones which looked much less dramatic in the flesh. More on that later.

A week or two passed, the odd conversation here and there but I was deep into thought and I was a bit distracted by getting the Exige ready for Croft.

Croft was a great day for closure, the car felt great and needed no post-trackday fettling, it just worked. I had the opportunity to drive a V6 car while I was there, and though it was fantastic - it made my mind up, I had to tick the "lightweight" box before I moved on and up.

After making my mind up, the next challenge was to be logistics. G was way up in Scotland, proper Scotland too. Closer to the North Pole than home.

I looked into some covered car transport companies and had a couple that gave me confidence that they could cater for the rideheight and stuff like that. Price wasn't bad, considering - but I had this little mental gremlin telling me it would be a good idea to go get it and drive it back... so we lined up a decent weather forecast and I went for it.

G would not take a penny up front, but he offered first refusal and even took the 211 sale ad down until I came to view it. Top bloke.

Train was to be Friday night after work, nice 5 hour ride up with no changes for £70. Nice! Obviously I had to make it dramatic, I'd double booked myself to take the missus and some colleagues into York for a night out, and they couldn't leave later than 5pm due to finishing work etc. That gave me 56mins to drive into York, park (on a driveway a mile from the station) and then run (sprint!) to the station in time for the train. I made it by minutes, utterly knackered, sweaty, coughing my collapsed lung up. Right mess. Poor lass I was sat next to must have been gutted.

Saw some pretty sights on the way up, and ate an onion bhaji in a naan bread.





I arrived just before midnight, hotel right across the road. Had dinner and then slept.



Obviously after the drama and close call of the day before, I slept in and missed my train. The sleep in wasn't fatal, but standing at the wrong platform as my train left was.

Luckily the small commuter train out to G's town was regular, so I had a quick coffee and started mentally preparing for what was to come.

After a short 20min hop, I met G at the station and off we went to see the car.

The car was exactly as described, so the rest was a formality. There were a couple of 'issues' with the car which we had discussed up front, but G was very descriptive so there were no nasty surprises.

The first up is a bodywork issue, this particular car was resprayed to Lotus Solar Yellow some years ago (Prior to G) and it is a fantastic paint job but the rear clam had developed some small cracks coming from the apertures where the spoiler uprights come out of. At a later date, the car had been reversed into a solid object and the following repair involved a replacement rear clam/transom which was again painted in solar yellow. Some months later, the cracks returned...

Whether it's a fitment issue, something misaligned on the spoiler uprights or maybe it's just a "211 thing", the body clams are particularly thin and lightweight, so maybe it's just something to live with. They're very small cracks and if they don't grow, I'll be in no rush to resolve. There's similar again in the front clam in a couple of spots, but again from 4 feet away you'd never really know. They looked FAR worse in the photos.



The next issue was the gear shift (I know I know, gearboxes are boring now). It is just so vague and wobbly, it's a million miles away from my Exige. I had done some forum trawling and found some posts from an ex-ex owner who had even invested in a LETSLA adjustable linkage (gearbox end) to try and remedy. I considered one of these for my Exige because of the bling factor, so at least I get one to play with now. It's clear that the shift had never been great, and past owners had tolerated it. It needs fixing.

Aside from that, there really wasn't anything to complain about. The aero screen has some weird UV damage in it, but G provided a brand new still in packaging replacement. The car also came with a spare set of 2-way Ohlins. Removed from the car when due a refurb and replaced with brand new ones.

I checked over a couple of things, the operation of the Accusump being one and I wasn't convinced it was working properly but to be honest, neither of us knew what we were looking at. More on that later.

The car had a couple of modifications, some known to G and some not. Some nice boxes ticked though and less for me to do later:

- LETSLA linkage
- Alloy triple pass radiator
- Engine Mount inserts (stiffer, had on my Exige - very good)
- Removable steering wheel boss w/ Momo flat bottomed wheel
- Pretty much PPF'd everywhere of importance. Paint is absolutely gorgeous as a result (aside from the aforementioned cracks)
- Brooklands aero screen added to the Lotus one
- Spitfire toelinks
- Lotus 'race' exhaust backbox

Service history is comprehensive as you'd expect. Looked after by main dealers in general throughout its life.

Short test drive was a formality, I didn't kick its head in until after I bought it.

With the deal done, we packed up the spares and my luggage the best we could (no boot!) and I was gone.



Thanks again G, pleasure dealing with you.

[Fonzey]

My route home had been a collaborative effort with a number of 'good roads' incorporated but a few opportunities to bail out and just 'get home' depending on weather/how the car was/how I was, etc.



I've blanked out the first leg, just to give G a bit of privacy. He's a celebrity now.

First leg was a fantastic one, after half hour or so I was into the Cairngorms and the traffic was light, roads flowing and car was getting a fine introduction. Initial impressions of the car were all power related as I was a bit concerned that it would feel a bit tame compared to the Exige at full tilt. I was wrong, it was great. Different power delivery to the Exige though, my aftermarket ECU on the Exige had eliminated a bit of a torque slump in the midrange and it feels punchier but the 211 just propels forward seemingly on a cloud. No big push in the back, but surges towards terrifying speeds in no time at all. The exhaust sounds angry, really really angry compared to the Exige. It's barking away at every slight lift or shift, crackling when coasting into a village or speedlimit.

Unlike the Exige the SC is barely audible, which is a great relief. I've always been irritated by SC whine, it goes right through me. At least now I'm being deafened by something else.

It was soon time for a first stop


I decided to take the brookland screen off and see how I got on. Turns out, not very well. In less than half a mile later I had to pull over as my new ballistic shades were threatening to be ejected.



They do have a strap, which I usefully left at home.

I decided to try with my crash helmet for a bit which was OK, but the weather was nice and I wanted to be back out in it so I pulled over in a scenic spot and got the screen back on. I'd continue with that until I got home, ace.



I used this break to take a couple of notes about first impressions, because they're quickly lost:

- Car feels fast
- Splitter catches on almost everything, it's silly low
- Brakes are astonishing, not really leaned on them yet but they don't have the 'slop' at the top of the pedal which I've experienced on every other S2 I've ever driven. Must be some subtle differences in the pedal box, surely. There's a much more positive bite in the first part of application, that might just be pad compound though.
- Dampers feel fine so far, it's a bit stiff on high speed compression but no worse than the Exige is. No idea how dampers are set at this point.
- Steering feels fast. The rack as far as I'm aware is same as the Exige, but there's no delay at all to inputs - it just darts around all over the place
- Engine felt a bit flat immediately after the fuel stop, heat soak? It was fine a few miles down the road.

After this stop, it dawned on me that I was already woefully behind schedule so I got the hammer down for the next couple of hours. Some great roads, bit of motorway thrown in but eventually stopped for lunch just South of Edinburgh.





I ate lunch just laying on the grass taking in some of the details on the car. It's a fantastic looking thing to my eye, so many details on it which you maybe don't take in on the first or second time of asking, and it all looks believably functional.



The next leg was a bit of a bore, just some motorway bashing to get back into England. Car with the added screen is surprisingly 'comfortable' even at motorway speeds, I was expecting to be helmetted up for these stints. I stopped at Gretna Green for a pee break, it was 17:00 already and I was getting irrationally concerned of driving in the dark, I wasn't even sure this thing had lights. (it did).

Into England, over on the West side I then had a great run over the Pennines to do, it was cooling off around now but still comfortable enough in shorts and t-shirt. The blast over the 'nines was great but the splitter was getting a proper battering here. I'd probably kissed the ground over 100 times already and I'm amazed there was anything left.





One last photo stop and then onto the A1 for the last boring hour back home.

I pulled into the driveway at 8pm, 10 hours and 400miles after I set off. Ace :mrgreen:



The garage is a bit of a squeeze, and put to bed any sort of hope that I could keep both cars for a while. I'll tidy some things up on the Exige, put it largely back to standard (I'll leave the hard to remove bits on it!) and then stick it on the market. It's been a fantastic car, still way above my skill level but once you have an itch... it's time to scratch.

[Fonzey]

Thanks all, I'm still buzzing and what came in the 36 hours following purchase has done nothing to dampen that down.

Following collection day, I had to repay some family-time credits so we had a day out in York, partially to repatriate my daily which had been abandoned there since Friday. On Sunday evening though I finally got to go have a tinker, so I experimented with some GoPro/External Mic positions and also had a look at the Accusump.

There are two main things to address on a 2ZZ engine Lotus if taking on track, one is the uprated toelinks for the rear suspension (already done) and the other is some measures to prevent oil starvation. This car I suspected had a standard sump (from what I could see/feel) and there was no evidence of a baffled item in the service/invoice history. It did however have the factory installed Accusump, but they're almost never working on cars if you just don't pay them any attention.



The Accusump was holding 80 odd pounds of pressure with the car switched off, which is about right - startup oil pressure plus air precharge. What should happen when powering up the car is that the accusump detects low/no pressure (because engine isn't running) so it triggers the valve solenoid and dumps the full cylinder into the engine to pre-lube the bearings before startup. This bit wasn't happening.

This means under a high G-force on track, the accusump would happily sit there with 80psi in it and offer no assistance to the engine as it seized itself to bits. Definitely needed to fix this to keep me protected until I get a sump sorted.

I suspected the oil pressure switch on the accusump, so I did a quick test to bypass it and immediately the accusump discharged. Excellent - should be a quick fix. I did a Google to see if I could find a part number or parts supplier for one who could deliver ASAP. Oh yeah, did I mention? I had a trackday booked the following day



Turns out, good old Dave@SeriouslyLotus was at the top of the Google list. Dave had kindly agreed to give my "Exige" a quick pre-Donington spanner check on Monday morning because "I'd not had time to look at it myself". When I turned up in the 211 it was a bit of a surprise, followed by a bit of ridicule, followed by some excellent advice and guidance as always. They did make me settle my Exige bill before I started up a new one though

Dave and John went back to front on the 211 just checking for anything that needed urgently addressing prior to taking it on track. It was good to see the car up in the air for a proper inspection, and start coming up with the job list.

All four corners felt fine, no undue play, knocking or banging. Wishbones have been refurbished at least once, but probably not far off needing doing again. Uprights haven't been done so they still have the original North Sea Shipwreck aesthetic.

Engine bay was very much unmolested, clean of all the extra tat my Exige carries such as sound deadening and heater plumbing makes it seem a much nicer car to work on. What did hurt to see though was all of the brackets, fixings and trinkets that have been meticulously cleaned up, blasted or painted on my Exige. Hundreds of garage hours making my Exige engine bay look spotless from either the top or the bottom and I'm going to have to do it all again. Oh well - I can't wait

The car has clearly been well serviced, all the bits done on time when needed - but nothing extra. Nothing that didn't need doing has been done, if that makes sense. My Exige is the complete opposite, I do stuff that never should have been touched. Few small examples of this on the 211 are oil weeps that are really quite normal on any car of this age - don't NEED sorting, but they will of course be sorted.

John did a few sanity checks on the Accusump, then came to the same conclusion as me - the switch was dead. Dave tends to have everything he advertises on the shelf, it really is a powerful asset when you're troubleshooting issues and he's bailed me out of problems many times thanks to this constant availability of bits. Out came a replacement switch, and bing - Accusump is back online.

Now that I know what to expect on the gauge, I can keep a closer eye on this. At least until the sump is swapped, this will be my engine-saver.

Up to the front of the car we turned attention to the front splitter. It was... seasoned.



We found that it wasn't supported quite properly, a rather inadequate bracket had sheared off allowing the splitter to almost certainly droop under aero load, further decreasing rideheight.



Always nice when Dave eases you into a new car gently by grinding it.



Dave popped next door and got a new bracket fabbed up. I need to come back and paint/rust treat this as soon as I get the Exige off the ramp at home.



The oil cooler link pipe you can see also needed a slight fettle to stop it rubbing on the bodywork.

With the splitter back on, there was an immediate benefit that we could now slide the 4 post ramp crossbeam under it without lifting up the car first. We couldn't before.

With the car signed off for track action, I headed off home - very grateful that my "half an hour to check the Exige over" turned into 4 hours of grinding, banging and fixing. Dave and John would be attending Donington that evening as support, so at least I'd have somebody to keep an eye on me...

Some other bits that I did are swapping my Exige steering wheel in. Both suede wheels needed a good clean and came up a treat, as new in fact. I have an S2 OE wheel somewhere too so plenty of choice.



The round, slightly smaller Exige wheel is more to my taste.

I also removed and checked the large breather pipe on the front side of the 2ZZ. Evidence of oil weepage below it. There's an oil control valve solenoid thing just below it as part of the cam timing stuff, so it could be that which has sprayed up - but upon removal this gasket was soaked, so I'm going to get a replacement in there just to rule it out.



Final job was a damper audit.



I'm a bit of a geek, and my interest in such settings way outstrips my driving ability or ability to get the most out of them. The "road" and "track" settings are as defined in the service manual. Purple are the settings I collected the car with, and orange are the settings I'd run for Donington.

[Fonzey]

Thanks again chaps, it's certainly a well received car so far.

shalmaneser said:

Awesome machine. Intrigued to see how you resolve the gear shift issue, you just be pretty familiar with these boxes by now...

I'm fairly sure I know what to expect. The later Elise/Exige platform cars seemed to get worse and worse in this department. I drove a 2010 car once and it was borderline undriveable due to the shift. Somewhere around 07/08 they switched to what I presume was a cheaper option for th gear lever involving a blue plastic bush. These degrade and fall apart over time, some times even the lever itself snaps.

My 06 Exige and 06 Elise that came before it had fantastic shift actions, prior to this 'downgrade'. If I could source an 06 mechanism I would, but I'm not sure I can (and no, I'm not robbing it out of my Exige!) so I may need to go down the aftermarket shifter route.

Lotus from '16ish had a lovely exposed shifter linkage which can be reverse engineered into older cars which I may consider but I don't want to be on the hunt for parts for months, need this fixing as a priority really.

[Fonzey]

Thanks all, can't believe how well received the car is. Either that or you're all just being polite. I always considered it a bit of a marmite car.

Following the healthcheck with John and Dave, I took the car home in the midday sun... all 38degrees of it. It was brutal, but survivable, just.

Since the accusump now had a clean bill of health I had a bit of confidence sticking on my sticky tyres. I've used Nankang AR1 for my last trackday or two on the Exige and they've been incredible. My 'track wheels' on the Exige are a set of rather nice 240R forged alloys which I bought to go alongside the OE wheels (which are my Exige road wheels) and as luck would have it, the 240R wheel is standard on the 211 so I now have two sets I had the Exige wheels painted shadow chrome recently which Laser blue really pulled off, so still deciding if it works on yellow or not.



It's my favourite S2 wheel bar one (the 2009 260 Cup wheels with the 10x spokes hold the top spot for me).

With the wheels swapped over, it was time for a cold shower and start mentally preparing for the ~80min drive to Donington in what has been the hottest day I can remember.

Kitted up with a few icepacks (you don't want to know where one of them went), a baseball cap cabletied to my now-strapped ballistic goggles and more water than I knew what to do with... I was off.

It was rather uncomfortable but the miles soon melted away and before I knew it I was 20mins away and ready for a fuel top up for the night. I paid £2.18(!!!!!) for vpower and decided to get my money worth by sitting in the AC for 20mins or so...



Fuel at the circuit turned out to be £2.05, a bloody bargain.

Upon arrival we had a bit of downtime before we could get into the paddock, so I broke out the included shower cap to try and keep the cockpit cool. Pretty nice cover, fits well and isn't much of a faff.



I was attending with friends Simon and Chris. Chris was having a shakedown trackday in his recently Honda converted S1.



Stunning attention to detail on the conversion, could eat your dinner out of the engine bay and it's been a pleasure to follow his journey along over the last 6 months or so. Car will be a serious bit of kit once he dials into it a bit, I guess gaining 100bhp is a bit off-putting initially

It was a sessioned day with Lotus on Track and MSVT alternating track time. It's a really good setup (usually) as it lets you run an expensive circuit for an affordable couple of hours and I usually end up with more track time when I'm on the clock. When left to my own devices on an open pit evening I tend to waste most of it nattering...

I was absolutely thrilled to see that James Roberts (photographer) was in attendance. He does some LoT days but often doesn't get a look in at MSVT events. In my opinion he is the best trackday photographer doing the rounds right now, he has a real eye for cars and some of the shots he captures are fantastic. The Anglesey photo he got of my Exige last year is a particular favourite.



The format got a bit muddled up, LoT have since handled it brilliantly but it seems like a few communication mishaps between MSVT, the circuit and LoT meant that we effectively lost a session which was disappointing, but in hindsight it was far too hot to be lapping anyway. Finishing early probably saved a car or two...

The sighting laps went without mishap, just trying to get a feel for anything and see if anything would fall off. All good.

First set of hot laps and the car immediately felt slow in a straight line, not just a "it might just be in my head" bit slow, but a "is this car even supercharged?" slow. I knew what to expect from the S2 OE Intercooler setup, and I spent a lot of time and money in the early phases of Exige ownership putting this right (ultimately ending in an air to water chargecooler) so I was ready for it. The conditions were exceptional, but the intercooler was just completely overwhelmed. After coming into the pits, the IC inlet and outlet external temperatures were pretty much the same.

That said, the ECU did its job - pulled a shed load of timing and added a bit of fuel and allowed me to lap safely and reliably. Just slowly! I wouldn't be surprised if the car was barely making 200bhp that evening.

While we're on the bad news chapter, the gearbox shift went from 'moderately annoying' on the road, to 'borderline undriveable' on the track. I had to effectively pretend 2nd gear didn't exist and even navigating between 3, 4 and 5 was a challenge. This is firing straight up the top of the to-do list.

The final bad bit was the rear number plate. G warned me it would melt, SeriouslyLotus warned me it would melt, I knew it would melt. Did I take it off? Did I balls



Car looks pretty mean without rear plate though.



The only other niggle was GoPro performance, it just decided it didn't like the heat. Annoying as I'd spent a bit of time figuring out external mic positions and stuff like that, but only got a couple of scrappy clips between mic failures or camera failures.

Right, onto the good stuff!



The car turns in like nothing I've ever driven before. Just when you start to get comfortable with the thought of "it's just like an Exige", you twitch the wheel and the car doesn't even think about asking twice - it just dives in. I didn't know it at the time, but through countless iterations of geometry, damper settings and spring weights on the Exige - THIS is what I've been looking for.

There's no sense of overcoming inertia when turning in or direction changes, it just immediately bite and throws itself in. So much so, it's almost like driving with a quicker rack and initially I was turning in way, way too early as a result.

In addition to the front end, the rear also complied with everything I could throw at it, short of the odd wobble around the hairpin when off the throttle. Get on the throttle early and it squats down and just has grip for days, but I fully expect this to be a different story when it's running the advertised power.



Then finally onto the brakes, they should not be allowed. They are so extraordinary I'm not even going to try doing them justice with words. This is probably the area where I lost most time with the car, because I couldn't wrap my head around how powerful they were and how responsive to pedal input they were. Just slight taps on the pedal was scraping speed off like crazy, and dive on them properly and lean on the ABS would have the harnesses straining to pin me back. Complete and utter cheat-brakes, are not fair for pretty much any other car on the road and should probably be banned.

As far as I'm aware, they're mechanically identical to the Exige brakes. Same little 2-pot up front and slider at the rear. You could option AP 4-Pots on the front of the 211 (maybe a later car thing?) but I'm honestly not sure what more they can offer, other than looking better. If they increase brake performance even further then I'm not even sure I want to play anymore.

The obvious answer to "why is it so good" has to be the weight, but I think that's not doing it justice. There must be something else at play... surely. I took a passenger out for what became the final session and he'd been lapping in his S1 Elise, so similar weight and similar brake hardware, albeit missing ABS and Servo. He was utterly gobsmacked at the braking.



Maybe the dampers have to take some credit, I had no complaints with the car balance or body control all evening though I was still a long way from the limits. The car had enough pitch and roll for me to feel the weight transfer in a predictable and controlled way, and you could certainly throw the weight around with the throttle - but I didn't hear a single scrape, bump or scratch all night. Bodywork clearance is far, far better than on the Exige which eats arch liners whenever you lower them to a decent level. I didn't have any data logging in the car yet (an area I'm very fond of), but anecdotal evidence puts my Craner Curves minimum speed approx. 10mph higher than that of my Exige. It was pretty much flat with my lack of power, probably less so when it's on song - but still felt bloody marvellous.

I finished the evening absolutely gutted that we lost a session, the car was just starting to 'come to me', but I'm salivating at the thought of my next trackday. Blyton Park mid August, a regular stomping ground and will allow me to really judge the car compared to my Exige. I just hope it's a bit cooler!



After stopping for food on the way home, I had a lovely cool(ish) blast through the dark to get home. I'm happy to report that the car was back up to its rabid acceleration and power delivery once everything cooled off a bit, assuring me that nothing was broken - it had just got a bit toasty.

[Fonzey]

AyBee said:

Great thread. Looking forward to seeing what you do with this car. I'm surprised the undertrays are fitted below the splitter so that they catch though.

Yep likewise, I'd love to see some photos of other 211 splitter setups just to see if it's correct.

[Fonzey]

Rocket. said:

Great write up and what a fantastic car.

I have been looking at 211's on and off for about 6 years, maybe one day. I saw this one for sale and glad it's gone to someone who is going to use it as intended.

Enjoy and keep the updates coming

Cheers, will certainly keep the updates coming. I enjoy writing them even once everyone else is bored of reading them

[Fonzey]

I like to write out my early plans for a car, always makes for entertaining reading later down the line when none of it goes to plan.

My Exige was somewhat unfinished business, I got 90% of the way there on a few bits but I had a few things I wanted to see through to the end. The 211 allows me to continue this journey fairly seamless but it does mean stealing some aftermarket parts from it.

Data logging and monitoring is something I get quite addicted to, even if I don't know what to do with that data. After each trackday in the Exige I'd be pulling three different SD cards full of stuff - it was great.

This was largely facilitated on the Exige by the EMU Black ECU and the ECUMaster ADU Dashboard.



Between these two I could log parameters for pretty much everything the engine was doing, plus some driver performance metrics too via the GPS track logging (where allowed, obviously). I also had goals to add more, TPMS to review tyre warm up, EGT's to make sure any ignition control such as launch/traction control wasn't going to melt pistons and a few other bits and pieces were all in the pipeline.

As a passive benefit of running a standalone ECU, you do of course end up gaining power... it's just one of those things. I'm keen not to blow up more C64 gearboxes than I have to in this car so creeping the power up is not on the agenda. For that reason I'd like for a "phase 1" to keep the ECU out of the car, and just run the dashboard instead. Another reason is that the 211 boasted a fairly trick adjustable TC setup when it first launched, probably old hat now - but I'd like to try it out a bit before sticking the EMU in. The EMU has its own variable TC setup, but it would be tuned by yours truly - and I really don't think I'd do it justice.

The Lotus CAN stream is very limited on the pre-08 cars, so I'll only be able to get basics like RPM, Coolant and Speed from it. Anything else will need a sensor connected directly to the ADU. Luckily it has I/O to spare, so there's no real problem there.

I hope in the next few weeks to have the ADU fitted along with data for:

IAT (will be a new sensor into the boost pipes as the OE sensor data isn't broadcast over CAN on the Lotus ECU)
Oil Pressure (Sensor taken from the oil filter sandwich plate)
Oil Temp (likely taken from the sump once a new baffled one is fitted)
Gearbox temp (taken from the redundant fill plug which sits just below the fill level)

The GPS addon for the ADU will be configured, which will give me speed (in addition to the VSS I'll get via CAN) and my track logging stuff for allowable events.

Once I have some data, this will allow me to progress with item #2 on the list. Intake Air Temps.

I've been through a lot of this before with the Exige, I added auxiliary ducting, heatshields and all sorts. I made good gains, but not all of those will be applicable to the 211 architecture. Ultimately I went with an A2W chargecooler because I just wanted the best setup I could get. I was really hoping to avoid this on the 211 to stick to its lightweight roots wherever possible, but it may be inevitable.

My plan for now is to log as much IAT data as possible and work on some minor and subtle alterations. I don't expect to gain much, but if I combine it with more ordinary operating temps (compared to the nigh 40C ambients we had at Dony) it might be enough for me to "live with" A2A intercooling longer term.

Item 3 is the gear shift, it really needs addressing. I don't know for sure yet, but I suspect it's an issue with the later 'blue ball' shifters that the earlier cars like my Exige were not subject to.



There are cases where this bush arrangement deteriorating has left people completely unable to select gears - so it may become more than just annoying. I'm not sure where to go yet, the replacement gear lever (bush not available on its own) seems to be an obsolete part, and I wouldn't be too enthusiastic about buying a second hand one. Reverting to the 06 setup might be possible, but again I expect I'd run into supply problems and I don't fully understand what specifically needs replacing.

There's been talk of 3D printed/aftermarket solutions, some quite recent - but nothing ever seems to see the light of day unless somebody can correct me.

That's quickly leaving just the option of an aftermarket shifter mechanism. There are a couple of options now, with more in the pipeline. Getting the exposed shifter from a later Lotus car would be the ideal, but again I'm going to end up scratching around for parts I think - and I'd much rather just get something all in one go, on a quicker timeframe.

I'll continue research, but I'm open to suggestions.

Final item on the short term list is just tidy tidy tidy. It's a very well presented car, but I'll be taking off, cleaning/painting and fixing anything I find along the way. Front splitter is probably front of the queue, maybe with a fabricated replacement for the front ally undertray.

[Fonzey]

honda_exige said:

Love it!

On the shifter - worth searching for an Alitech? They come up 2nd hand time to time.

If not then Dan @HPE has a new shifter - ostensibly for K20 cars but given the Alitech is cross compatible between Toyota and Honda then the same might apply - albeit you might need shifter cables made up.

https://www.hpeauto.co.uk/shop/ultimate-k20-shifte...

Yep the Alitech is on the radar, not so much the old one - but I'm keeping a keen eye on the "Mk2" they've been working on for ages. It promises to be a little less... substantial in appearance.

I've also seen one of Dan's first shifters in a K swapped car and it's fantastic. I understand a Toyota one is on the horizon, so eyes peeled for that.

There are 4 other options:

- Simply get an early Toyota Lotus one, my Exige shift is fantastic - so if I could replicate that I'd be happy.
- Sector111 in the US do an aftermarket shifter
- There's a newish aftermarket coming out of Italy, aptly named the Dolomite shifter and made by a guy called Manuel which could not be a more perfect name.
- Obtain the bits from a newer Lotus with their open/exposed shifter. Dave@SeriouslyLotus has adapted at least one to an S2. Probably the most expensive option and hardest to source, but would be the dream as it's still very much OEM+_

Anyway, more on that later.

Right update time, few things going on so I'll trickle out some bitesized chunks.

First off, post Donington I washed the car for the first time... which was interesting.



I tried to gingerly snowfoam it, then everything else was done with low pressure hose and I didn't get the interior *too* wet.

After the wash, I took it over to the Motorist, a local cars/coffee venue and met a few Lotus friends so they could see the new toy.



Car was received well, the Motorist regulars get to see quite an array of cars but this one had a fair few people skulking around the back trying to find a badge or sticker to say what it was!

Had an enjoyable blast home in the cooler air, the car certainly responds better to sub 30 temperatures. I know I'm already sounding like a broken record on this, so I'll try not to moan about IATs too much.



You may notice the melted Donny plate was still on the car, stuck back together with yellow tape I didn't think it looked too bad! But yes, it needed replacing.

The new plate arrived a few days later, I opted for a metal one to try and get more lifespan out of it. I regretted the decision as soon as I had it in my hands.



It just looks so tacky, like it's straight from a McDonalds carpark Golf R. Still, function over form I'd at least fit it up to the car and worst case scenario would use it as a heatshield to protect a standard plastic one stuck to the front of it. :lol:

Once fitted, it grew on me a bit - and maybe it doesn't look so bad...



After that the 211 got parked up as I had a few things going on, both car related in getting the Exige prepped for sale but also holidays, trips, etc.

Next trackday is Monday 22th August, which at this time still felt miles away...

[Fonzey]

As I'm sure I've mentioned, one of my early priorities was to get some datalogging capability into the car. It was something I was sorely missing from the Exige.

On the Exige I had both the EMU Black ECU and the ADU dashboard with datalogging capabilities, in many ways they both achieve the same thing but with some subtle differences. As I'm not ready to swap ECU on the 211 yet, I'd be putting all of my data into the ADU instead.

I had an adapter harness for the Exige, but it was a bit limited. It didn't make the most of the I/O capabilities of the ADU and it also wasted some inputs on redundant features on the 211 such as door switches, seatbelt alarms, etc. I was returning the Exige back to standard spec so I could have used the harness out of that with a bit of repinning but I decided to make a new one from scratch.



The start of my new one is on the left, old on the right. I started by robbing the connectors for the USB logger, USB to CAN adapter and 4 way plug for some spare digital inputs.

Next I had to source a female plug that matches the OE dash connector. John [mention]seriouslylotus[/mention] sorted me out with this plus pins.

The stock dash pinout is fairly well documented so didn't take long to figure out which pins I'd be needing. Bit of crimping later and I had the start of the adapter.



The 06/07 cars have the canbus high/low wires coming into an independent plug, so I needed another small adapter for that too. I included a splice and extra plug for canbus expansion here.



I pinned in the GPS2CAN module from the Exige (to do lap timing) and the last main bit I needed was a 6 way connector and subloom to go back into the engine bay. This would house 4 analogue inputs, +5v power and the sensor ground. To this I can connect oil temp, oil pressure, gearbox temp and IAT.



I'm not an autoelectrician, and this certainly isn't up to motorsport spec but it should be functional, safe and critically is scalable without touching or splicing the factory wiring, so I'm happy.

The next challenge would be mounting the dash, while keeping somewhat of an OEM aesthetic. RRR Engineering used my Exige as a bit of a prototype for this previously but after they learned of the many subtle differences between different MY dash shrouds, they gave up on turning it into a product. Mine is rough and ready, but functional. The 211 shroud was smaller, and would go into a smaller gap - so would need some fettling.





It was then time to start stripping the interior... which didn't take long!



I did have a bit of a problem with the passenger seat, as most Lotus tinkerers know - removing the passenger rear/left bolt for the first time is always fraught with danger. It's hard to reach square on with a socket or allen key, and so easily stripped if it's seized in a bit. Sure enough, this one was and I could feel the socket twisting through the bolt material. Uh oh.

Luckily I had a tool for the job, using an appropriately sized bolt extractor I could grip onto the outside of it and chew it out.



This and all others would be replaced with fresh bolts, and I also cleaned the threads out with a tap. Most were OK, but this one was particularly crusty.

Bit grotty, open top car life I guess.



Clearly a pre-Brexit car.



I dismantled the steering wheel surround so I could grab the binnacle for dash mocking. Also give me an idea of how much access there was behind the bulkhead into the front clam. The answer was nothing. I was hoping to get a hand sized hole there so I could bung excess wiring and components into that 'free' storage area, but that will need to wait until the front clam comes off I think. For now I'd be finding temporary homes for a few bits.

I took this opportunity to explore the gear lever area to see if I could find a smoking gun for the poor gear selection.



I was expecting this blue plastic ball to be crumbling away, it happens eventually to most of the post 07 cars. The pre 07 cars (like my Exige) have a much better setup, and tend to not die and leave you stranded without gears.

There was however a load of play, the ball had clearly worn and you could move the shifter in all directions without moving the actual cables. I spent some time tinkering with the aftermarket (LETSLA) linkages at the gearbox end which a previous owner has fitted presumably with the goal of fixing the shift. In my experience any aftermarket part with built in adjustability is prone to feck ups, so I wanted to rule that out - but with the sheer amount of play in the lever itself it was hard to get repeatable results.

To sign off on this chapter, I couldn't wait any longer so attached the dash to see if anything worked.



Good news, it gets power, the OE dash features work (light up indicators for sidelights, main beam, fogs, handbrake, ABS, etc, plus indicators. I even got left and right the correct way around).

I would be getting RPM, Coolant, fuel level, check engine light and TC light from the canstream, Coolant took some tweaking as the ADU was getting muddled up with Fahrenheit and Celsius but I got there eventually. Fuel level seemed to work out of the box, not sure about engine or TC lights yet...

[Fonzey]

With the dash alive, next step was to get some wiring back to the engine bay for the sensors.



Another sub loom made up, this one a bit more tedious to make because I need to splice in pullup resistors for the three temperature sensors I would be using. 330ohm for the oil and gearbox oil probes, and 2200 for the IAT sensor.

The wiring was measured out and run underneath the steering column, across the top of the pedal box, down the centre console and then out through with the gear and handbrake cables. From under the car, it would go up and sit near the firewall by the oil filter and splice out into the different directions from there.

I then needed some places to fit the sensors, first up was IAT.

As I mentioned before, the car has an IAT sensor already in the TMAP sensor on the intercooler but that data is not made available over canbus on the early cars (08+ had a much richer canbus feed). If/when I fit the EMU Black I'll be able to fix that, but for now I needed a dedicated sensor.



I broke my rule for this car on this particular modification, and I 'edited' a part with the help of Chris@Type116 by drilling an OEM part and welding on a boss. Wherever possible on this car I want everything to be totally reversible, and this will just have to be an exception. If/when I swap to an EMU, the extra IAT sensor will be retired in place of a MAP takeoff anyway so this can be recycled for that. If I go chargecooled, then these boost pipes will be coming off the car anyway.

Tidy job:


With that done, it was off in the car to go collect my Exige from Dave and John @]seriouslylotus. They had been doing some pre-sale work on it for me while I was on holiday, but as is often the case I didn't come back empty handed...



Lobbed onto the passenger seat was an entire shift mechanism from a 2006 Exige (or Elise, I'm not sure?) including uprated shift cables. Also was the Pro Alloy baffled sump made to Dave's spec:



This would give me pre-accusump protection, but also critical to the project at this stage a convenient 1/8npt bung for the oil temp sensor.

The next piece of the puzzle would be solved by the Mishimoto sandwich plate I'd used on my Exige. This would house the oil pressure sensor.



Finally would be gear oil temp, there's a redundant fill plug on the gearbox which sits just under the oil level, so would use that - but I don't want to make a mess or swap the gear oil yet, so that can wait.

The next job however was the gear linkage. Compared side by side is an 06 Elise/Exige one on the left, and the 07+ one from the 211 on the right:



As you can see they're quite different and I just can't find anything about the newer design which is better. A photo can't describe how much play the blue ball allows for, and even the reverse lockout mech is crap - it's just a plastic collar directly connected to the handle at the top, which when pulled up clears a plastic blocker in the assembly. These were both wearing too, so with enough force it was possible to find reverse without using the lockout.

The pre-07 one is so much better, feels tighter all around, the self centre spring is much more assertive and the lockout mech is metal and metal, much better. The uprated cables attached don't appear much different, but I think (ready to be corrected) that some/all 211's got the Lotus Motorsport cables anyway. They're certainly different and beefier than my Exige ones.

With the original shifter out I could clean the rest of the grot, and start to get organised.



Speaking of being organised, the garage was starting to get a bit mental - as I was concurrently stripping the 211 and rebuilding the Exige for sale!



New shifter bolted straight in, no adjustments needed. Cables just poked through for now.



I did a mod that was popular back in the day. I'm not convinced it makes any difference, but there's a redundant rivnut in the chassis floor which lines up with a hole in the shifter frame - so without cutting or bodging anything you can stick a 30mm spacer in and bolt it down adding a bit more support.



Around this time I also fed the wiring through for my new sensors. Also included are two switch to ground outputs from the dash which I'm running up to the battery box for now. Later on these will be used to trigger relays for when certain parameters are met, and will be used for the gearbox oil pump (when I add one) and whatever else I can think of.



Speaking of the battery box, at some point I put in a lightweight lithium battery to reclaim some of the weight I'd been added in with all this wiring!



With the wiring in place and a bunch of continuity checks carried out - I finished buttoning the interior plastics up. Very happy with how this looks, but it was a nightmare to squeeze it all in with the front clam on. When the clam inevitably comes off, I'll be revisiting this and tidying stuff up behind the scenes.



The most obvious fallout from lack of access up front is the fact I've had to just 3M the GPS module to the sill. It's out of the way, but still a bit unsightly and will be bundled away when the time comes. The actual GPS receiver is remote from this, and is routed through the same path up the centre console and is stuck on top of the battery box in the centre of the car.



I would leave the shift linkage exposed for now, as there's adjustment at both ends of the cable plus adjustment on the cable bracket - so lots of opportunity to get it wrong first time around and I wanted to retain easy access until I was happy with it.

At the gearbox end I didn't get many photos, but it was a fairly simple case of bolting it up to the aftermarket linkage and eyeballing in the cable lengths.

Next chapter, finishing sensors. To give an idea for timescales, I got this far at about midnight on Friday with the trackday looming on the Monday, and still a 24 hour cure period to come for the sump.

Edited by Fonzey on Tuesday 23 August 13:06

Edited by Fonzey on Tuesday 23 August 17:54

[Fonzey]

jm8403 said:

Sorry for thread divert, can you show how the extra windscreen is attached that reduces the buffeting? (Looks like it is a brooklands?)

Thanks for all the updates.

Edited by jm8403 on Wednesday 24th August 09:19

No Problem, it's a little hinged bracket with rubber buffer pads on it - you slide it over the aero screen and push the hinge down and it just compresses and locks. Hard to explain, but works well.

[Fonzey]

At about this stage it was late on Friday night and I wanted to get cracking on the sump so that I could get the gasket maker curing.

Original sump was looking very Scottish, so glad to be seeing the back of it. Also quite weepy on the trailing edge, unclear so far if this was just the sump leaking or something higher up on the engine. My Exige had a very similar leak when I first bought it, but a sump swap didn't fix it. It turned out to be the front crank seal, so that's going to be one to watch.



Before removing the old sump, I gave the surrounding area of the block a good scrubbing. Oh, I also discharged the accusump as that stores a few litres of oil at various stages, so wanted to get as much out of it as possible. This is done simply by going ign live, but not firing the car and you can hear the oil slurping out of the accusump into the engine, and down into the sump.

Removing the sump was only a little bit awkward, a few taps with a mallet and then some tactical pry baring had it off. The original sump is held on with a combination of studs and bolts, but the studs are not long enough to take the thicker flange of the baffled sump so they needed to come out. All but one came out easily with a 2-nut method, the last one was just not playing ball at all. Nuts eventually stripped the threads on it, so onto molegrips. I didn't have a stud extractor small enough, but eventually after much grunting - out she came, luckily leaving the engine block threads clean and intact.



No photos of the next 2 hours because it was pretty much me just laid on my back, tediously scraping at the old gasket maker with plastic blades. It took AGES, hate this job and every time I do it I swear I'll never do it again. Whatever it costs for a specialist to do this job, is not enough... it's worth every penny.

Eventually the flange was spotless, wiped down with acetone and went on to prep the new sump. My sealant of choice this time round is the Permatex anaerobic gasket maker, intended for aluminium flange to flange sealing and is left over from the supercharger rebuild I did on my Exige. Was really impressed with both how easy it was to work with, but also how easy it comes off if you need to re-do a job.



The Seriously Lotus sump comes with all new bolts, so no studs used at all for refitting. It's lovely and light, so holding it up with one hand whilst lining the first few bolts up without completely smearing your sealant everywhere isn't too difficult.



Looking much fresher under there already. While I was under there, I swapped the sandwich plate out for a Mishimoto one which would give me a convenient place to measure oil pressure. The Sump itself had a 1/8npt port that I'd use for temp.



I set the timer for 24hours, then went to bed.

Saturday early evening saw me putting the interior back in, not much to it. Didn't get chance to go full detailing-world on the interior chassis but it did all get a good wipe down, removed some old glue spots and residue and gave the seats some Gliptone leather treatment. Perked them up nicely.





I think keeping the interior if this car clean is going to be like pissing in the wind, but I'll do my best.

The gearknob on the donor shift linkage was a bit scuffed up from storage, so went to swap my mint one over... to find they use different thread sizes! Good old Lotus. The old knob is bigger than the new one in terms of thread, so I may just get an M10-M12 sleeve for the shift lever to allow me to use it. One for another day.

It was next time to hook up the gear cables to the gearbox. As I said earlier, I just eyeballed in the cable lengths - let the lever sit centred on its own and just put the crossgate cable on without it tugging one way or the other. The back/forth shift motion is a bit harder to get right because the stick doesn't self centre in that direction, but used my best judgement and stuck it in.

First impressions were very strong, no excess play in the linkage and has a nice satisfying clunk clonk click soundtrack. The throw is slightly shorter than OE, I may explore changing that via the aftermarket gearbox-end of the linkage but for now I called it a day. Left the centre console exposed to allow easy adjustment once on the road/track.

Sometime on Saturday I also finished off the engine bay wiring, cut my sensor wires to length, pinned the sensor connectors and plugged everything in. The dashboard also needed some reconfiguring, nothing major but the conversions from F to C needed a bit of fettling on the canbus for coolant and the scaling for the oil/IAT sensors needed some work.

Once 24 hours had elapsed on the sump fitting, I slopped 7 litres of oil in (new sump turns the total 2zz capacity to 6litres, and I over filled a bit to recharge the accusump) but it was too late to fire up the car, so left it over night.

Come Sunday morning, there was a NYLOC (North Yorkshire Lotus Owners Club) meet scheduled for around 10am which I quite fancied, introduce the 2-11 to the group and also was an ideal shakedown run. I had some work to do first, so got up at 7am to start tinkering.

First up I fired the car, ran for 30seconds or so and then fired off. This had charged the accusump back up, and as such the oil level in the sump had dropped again. I topped back up, repeated the process a few times until things settled down. Under normal operation, with the accusump fully discharged the dipstick should over read by 10-15mm and when the accusump has ~40psi of pressure in it, the dipstick should read bang on.

I whipped the car up and down the road before jacking up for one last leak check. The gear change was fantastic, I couldn't believe how much better it was with zero adjustment. If I'm being uber picky, reverse is a teeny bit hard to grab - but I'm reluctant to even trying to fix it in fear of ruining the gears that count! It is 4 or 5 times better than original, I'm over the moon.

The car passed the leak check, so after a quick swap of some rusty fittings for shiny fittings- the undertrays went back on and we were ready for NYLOC.





Car drove great on the way there and back, it was ace to be back in it. Oil temps were high though.

I wasn't initially concerned, figured I'd got the scaling wrong in the dash or something like that - but it was heating up quicker than I was used to on the Exige, and on the road was getting to the high 90's which I NEVER saw in my Exige. High 90's was more like what I would see after a 25 minute track session.

When I got home, I felt my oil coolers up front and they were both clap cold. Hmmmm. Trackday in 18 hours time, uh oh. The only part I could think of to blame was the thermostat in side the Mishimoto plate, it had been lobbed into storage after taking it off my Exige so perhaps the inexpensive thermostat component had broken. As luck would have it, I had a friend coming to stay for the night before the trackday to cut his journey down and he was able to bring me a spare from another mutual friend so I could at least rule that out.

I took the thermostat out of the sandwich plate, and tested it in some hot water. It was a bit sticky initially, but it did work so I was not convinced this was to blame.

Chris arrived in his recently Honda converted S1 around dinner time, and as is standard for a Lotus coming to my house - we took it apart.



I put the spare thermostat into the 2-11 anyway, not being confident it would fix my problem but still it was worth ruling out. No time to properly test, as it was beer and curry time.

Edited by Fonzey on Wednesday 24th August 12:46

[Fonzey]

Onto Blyton morning, the weather had been forecast all week for thundery showers so I was mentally preparing for an utterly miserable day. At the last moment, the weather seemed to pull a u-turn though and things were looking much more positive. Still, I packed my new karting waterproofs (more on these later...) and set off for a nice blustery drive over. Blyton is about 45mins away, and my local track. This trackday was organised by Jonny @Performance Autocare for his customers, NYLOC members and other hangers on. It was brilliantly organised, low number day - so you very much felt like you had the place to yourself all day, thanks again Jonny for the invite - and hope it becomes a regular thing.

I'd come up with a theory for the oil cooler issue over night so I was almost sure I'd have no oil cooling today. I was closely monitoring oil temps on the drive over, but the ambient air was pretty chilly and the massive aluminium surface area of the SL sump was acting like a radiator anyway, so temps never even got to thermostat threshold on the drive over, so inconclusive. Sure enough on arrival, the coolers and plumbing was clap cold.

My theory came about after an unverified forum post/finding early on the Monday morning. The Mishimoto sandwich plate allegedly reverses the flow of oil compared to the OE Lotus one. On my Exige, that's of no consequence, as the cooler circuit is identical either way around, but the 2-11 is a bit different in thanks to the presence of the Accusump.

The Accusump when discharging, feeds into the return line of the oil cooler circuit via a t-piece and critically, a one way check valve. As my oil cooler return was now my oil cooler outlet, the accusump t-piece was effectively isolating my cooler circuit. DOH.



It was also making my accusump pretty much redundant, as upon discharge all it would be doing is topping up my sump via the cooler circuit, rather than pressurising the block. Double DOH.

Still, this is why I add sensors - less to keep an eye on what the engine is doing and more to keep an eye on what impact my modifications are having. Sometimes it's not always positive!

In hindsight, the best thing to have done on the Sunday night was to remove the thermostat completely and run the sandwich plate open, or put the OE sandwich plate on and live without oil pressure monitoring for the day. As it was, I was stuck with uncooled oil for the rest of the day, so short sessions and close monitoring was the key objective.

We arrived, got unpacked and the rain came just in time for the briefing. Yes, a real life briefing - first one I've had in nearly 3 years!



With the briefing done, the rain had stopped (and would remain stopped until about 16:50) and so I took the opportunity to get out for a few damp laps before the circuit dried. Immediately the car felt completely hooked up, the pace was way off as I just tootled around and explored the grip, but even when following other cars clearly struggling at low speed in "the ump" and "wiggler" chicanes, the 2-11 just turned in and felt like it could have been dry. Perhaps this is partly in thanks to the AR1 Nankang tyres, they aim to heat up quickly for sprint/hillclimb performance and in this case perhaps they allowed me a bit of early grip in the wet.

After 7 flying laps, the oil temps reached my arbitrary threshold of 110degrees C so I cooled it off and came back in.

The track was pretty much dry now, but my morning sessions would be disrupted by the most ridiculous of things:

Session 1: Under heavy braking, the seat started suddenly unlocking and had me hurtling forward towards the steering wheel, then back again towards the firewall on acceleration. Very scary, but easily fixed. I had a passenger at the time, and trying to communicate that my seat was falling off and that we had to go in early, was just a lot of pointing and waving towards my nob.

The seat rails have a number of holes they *can* bolt into, but only 2 that they *should*. If you get the combination of holes wrong, the rails are slightly off square and can lead to either adjustment difficulties, or in this case - failure of the locking mech completely. I'd re-used the original holes when I took the seats out, but when comparing to other S2 cars in attendance I found these to be wrong. (I later checked my Exige to confirm too). The rails had clearly been in the wrong holes for a while, because they were slightly bent and I had to straighten them out before refitting to the correct holes. Once done, the seat adjustment became loads smoother and I had no further locking issues for the rest of the day.



Session 2: On left hand turns (which is pretty much all of them), the passenger harness buckle was smacking me in the face, so had to come in to clip that out of the way. Never had a passenger harness on the Exige, so this was new on me!

Session 3: Carpet came loose and bundled up under the brake pedal, bit scary - lobbed it in the tent for the rest of the day.

So the 2-11 has barely any interior, and somehow almost all of it had managed to end my sessions early throughout the morning. Very annoying, but now a bit amusing in hindsight.



Once I finally got an uninterrupted session just before lunch, the car immediately felt incredible. I have years of bad habits and expectation baked into me for Blyton, so adapting to a new car which is both incredibly similar and obscenely different all at the same time, is quite difficult. I need to reprogram myself - but instantly the car was right where I would expect the Exige to be after a long day of building up and tweaking.

I was turning in too early, habitually compensating for the hint of understeer you get in the Exige but the biggest change was the braking.

I was over slowing, steadily moving my braking points deeper and deeper into the corners making my margin get smaller and smaller, but still the car was consistently too slow at the apex. With the Exige I have to almost push through a vague spot at the top of the brake pedal, a sensation I've experienced on all ABS/brake booster Lotus cars (except the 211!) and then I get rewarded with heavy stopping power once I've worked through that. The 2-11 brakes bite immediately, and if I use the same pedal force as I do on the Exige, I quickly overwhelm the tyres and end up triggering the ABS. Triggering the ABS with such small margins for error in the short braking zones usually means I overshoot, so through the day it was a lesson in threshold braking and trusting that the car would slow up very quickly indeed, with the most delicate touches of the pedal.



Traction was just unflappable, I had the sound of TC kicking in on the final/first turn a few times which I remember not-so-fondly from the pre-LSD days in my Exige. Inside wheel is a bugger for spinning up here. I tried to switch TC off, but due to a suspected misconfiguration of my dash I didn't get the telltale/warning light when it was disabled or intervening. On retrospect, even when I thought it was disabled, I could still hear it kicking in - so maybe there was also a RTFM issue going on too.

As the sessions got faster and the day got warmer, so did my oil - and as a result my sessions had to get shorter and shorter which was a shame but it did not detract too much from the enjoyment of the day.

After lunch and a fuel stop, I had a fairly uneventful afternoon. Just got steadily quicker and quicker, but happy to say I'm still miles off the potential of the car. Still going too slowly through most turns, and still braking a bit early in some cases.



I'd wired in an external microphone for the GoPro, it was a cheap generic mic I found in a box of bits and luckily I decided to review my footage late afternoon to find it was all without sound, doh. I unplugged it for the final two session and will just have to tolerate a bit of wind noise on those clips.



I feel like the Exige has an edge in a couple of places, the midrange grunt I gained from the remap and added boost teaming up with the closer ratio gears I ran meant that I could use a different set of gears for most corners. In the 211 I was still replicating this, rather than throwing in an extra downshift. This left me missing a bit of grunt on a couple of corners and is just some habits I need to change.

Whether the power deficit or aero or a combination of the two, vmax in the 2-11 is approx. 11kph down on the longest straight at Blyton. This will only get wider at longer circuits, so will be interesting to see if there's a tipping point where the Exige becomes a faster car.

Intake air temps, the thing that thwarted me at Donington were really not too bad at Blyton - but this was obviously helped by the short sessions I ran to keep oil temps in check. I think the long term destiny for this car is to go chargecooled like the Exige, but I may tinker around a bit this year to see if I can improve it a bit as it sits. One to watch.



By the end of the day, The 211 was lapping quicker (based on GoPro, obviously) than my Exige ever has. Not by a huge amount, but you can just tell from the video that there's loads left on the table so I'm quite excited to get back and exploit a bit more of it.

The final session saw some rain falling, so I jumped at the chance to test out my OMP Karting waterproofs.



Yes I felt as ridiculous as I looked. They were also very hot, and very sweaty. Maybe something to pack away for Winter/Spring trackdays, but when it's 25+ outside and raining, just getting wet seems to be the best plan

Having a tiny amount of rain appear like a torrential downpour on the helmet visor was a new experience for me, amazing how little water it takes you to slow down when it's bouncing off your helmet!

Drive home was really quite wet, but enjoyable. Had the goggles on and a hood up and from the shoulders down I stayed surprisingly dry.



In summary, a fab day - a few things to fix/improve, but nothing major. Car is ace, can't wait for more.

Things to address:

- Brake Fluid needs a top up, it's too low in the reservoir so the handbrake light flickers on through the corners
- Oil Cooler/Sandwich plate situation
- Figure out the traction control, how to operate it and fix my dash configuration for it

For the first time since buying the car, that's this thread finally up to date! Phew.

[Fonzey]

Rocket. said:

Great update and glad you are getting to grips with and enjoying the car.

I am sorely tempted by a 2-11 at some point and this is / is not helping

Just curious on the accusump and baffled sump. Does the car really need both? Or is it a case of being doubly sure, have other 2-11's suffered from oil starvation issues generally that you know of?

Thanks Rocket.

Good question, any 2zz track car application struggles with oil surge and starvation. My Elise and Exige survived just fine with baffled sumps over the years.

I've heard of people racing these cars for many seasons with just the accusump. Lotus put it in as their solution to starvation on the Exige cup cars and the 2-11 cars, typically because these were the cars built by Lotus Motorsport and didn't even have options for "non sticky" tyres like the non-cup Elise/Exige cars did. Why they never invested in their own baffled sumps I'm really not sure, maybe a warranty issue with Toyota?

The accusump is however a high maintenance item, the accusump on this very car wasn't working for god knows how long - and if you don't have a vested interest in it (such as, using the car on track a lot) then you'd have no reason to notice! In the case of this 211 it was a quick fix, but you really need to check they're working and understand their various pressure states pretty much each time you use the car. They can be messy too, almost every union/joint in the accusump system has a mist of oil around it, and apparently the pressure release valves can spectacularly 'go' occasionally making a right old mess of your engine bay.

With that in mind, a LOT of 211's have had their accusumps removed now and instead run just a baffled sump. For me personally, I'd like to keep it as I understand how it works now, and I can keep an eye on it. It's a cool bit of tech, even if it is a bit needy. I plan to remove the analogue pressure gauge which is barely visible tucked into the rear clam and get it wired into the dashboard so I can monitor it properly.

[Fonzey]

Mark Benson said:

I've thoroughy enjoyed your Exige thread and only just stumbled across this one today but already it's another great read.
As a 2 time Lotus owner, with a third purchase never far away, it's been interesting following your progress.

Cheers Mark

I had a few questions about the dash recently, so thought this would be a decent time in the thread to share that info in case anyone else is considering this sort of tech in their car.

First up I spent a bit of time last night on the TC telltale issue, it turns out my config was fine - I just wasn't switching TC off properly on the car. The push and hold button in the car does not disable TC, but it 'activates' the adjustment knob, then you can spin the knob fully clockwise to disable TC (at which point the telltale correctly lights up), spin fully counter clockwise for minimum slip and then have a granular adjustment range between the two extremes.

Unfortunately with my car being an early model, the canbus is very limited and the only data sent from the ECU is whether the TC is on or off, or intervening. Apparently on the newer blackdash cars it also sends a slip % target to be displayed on the dash, which would have been cool - but I can add all that later if/when my EMU Black ECU goes in.

As for the dash itself, it's an ECUMaster ADU5. They do a 7" version but it's just too big to comfortably fit inside a Lotus dash shroud. In your hand, it feels tiny - but it does suit the Lotus interior scale pretty well IMO.



The 6 big lights either side of the dash are fully configurable and you can use them for whatever you want. I use two of them for indicators, one to flash up when an alarm is raised, one to flash up when TC intervenes (in addition to the telltale on the dash) and I have one light up blue when the coolant and oil are below the threshold I've set for "driving hard", stuff like that.

The shift lights are again fully configurable, you can either have them going left to right, right to left or in from the sides/out from the middle. I've gone for F1 inspired colour coding of Green-Red-Blue left to right.

The dashboards are one of the cheaper ones on the market, but they come with literally no config on them and you have to build up everything yourself. They're certainly not plug and play! For me though, that's the fun bit. I've spent hours and hours of sofa time on a night tweaking my dash layouts, alarm logics, etc. I love it. The base price also excludes wiring, addons such as GPS module and other bits that make the other PnP dash kits feel like better value for money if you just want to get up and running ASAP.

Oh, you also need to buy some sort of USB to CAN adapter, ECUMaster make one - but it's still more addon cost to consider if you're planning one into your project.

Once you have the client installed and you're connected, you can start making stuff. It's very, very flexible and generally the quality of the aesthetic is limited only by your own imagination. There are some amazing examples out in the community, but over time I've stripped out 'fluff' from mine and made them very plain and functional, whilst still in keeping with the car. My favourite dash design of all time is the stack "triangle" dash which gives an idea for where I'm at in terms of function vs form!



My 'Road' Dash layout currently looks like this. I've alternated between having a digital bar type RPM bar and an analogue style gauge, still not sure what I prefer.



The bottom half is loosely inspired by the later Lotus dash layouts, with their dayglo LCD panel in the corner and warning lights across the bottom. All of the greyed out lights are functional, and light up properly when needed. The top right one is a custom one I made to light up blue when my gearbox cooler was live on my Exige. (cooler hasn't been migrated to the 2-11 yet).

The speed, mileage, RPM, all data is just in a demo mode for these screenshots.

The 'Race' dash layout is like this:



Over the months I've stripped out all sorts of data that I just don't care about when lapping on track. The lap timing stuff across the bottom is of course not legal for UK trackdays so I wouldn't dream of having it enabled at such events, but it's very useful for the odd occasion I do something competitively.

I have two stages of warning for if some data goes out of bounds, if it goes "softly" out of bounds, the box lights up red:



And if it goes way out of bounds, the dash warning triggers which also lights up some of the LEDs. Very hard to miss.



In terms of stuff like fuel, the fuel pump icon lights up red when I'm <20% and stuff like that. The Oil Pressure warnings are dynamic based on RPM too, so I won't get a warning at 1bar of oil pressure if the car is at idle, but at 5k RPM if it dips below 3 bar (for example) it will flash up.

The next screen I have is a diagnostics screen. This is still carry over from the Exige so some of these rows are not currently available from the OEM ECU in the 211.



...and then finally, again for events only I can see a lap time summary of the session.



I browse through these pages sequentially using what used to be the trip reset button on the steering cowl. As far as I'm aware there's no practical upper limit of screens you can have or make, which is pretty cool. If I add more buttons in the future, you can also handle page navigation differently - such as pressing a "race mode" button to go straight to race, or having a forward and backwards option, etc.

Whilst driving, the data is all writing to a USB stick which can be loaded into the ECUMaster Data Master application on a Windows PC. This is where stuff gets really geeky, and I've barely even scratched the surface of it so far. Here is some data, of course from a competitive event I did previously.

On every dashboard/tab in the application you get a sidebar which has the lap list of the laps from that session:



You can select a couple at once (identified by the red and white circles next to the 1.11.1 and the 1.11.3) which will then allow you to compare those two laps on all subsequent screens.

There is an "Engine" tab which is setup similar to this, though of course is all customisable:



If you hover over a section of the RPMxLap graph in the top left, it will create cursors (one red and one white) in all the other charts to show you the data point at that particular moment.

The 'Driver' tab gives a bit of detail of where the time was lost or found.



This example shows that the 'white' lap was faster, by a fair margin almost all the way through, then threw almost all of it away at the final corner (probably due to taking a tighter line due to a car leaving the track). Once I have a full data set available to me, I'd love to track TPS and Brake Pressure inputs on this screen too.

You also get a full session breakdown of mini sector times:



Showing a virtual best, and a rolling best. This is what really showed how inconsistent I am from lap to lap. At a properly competitive event, being able to analyse this data between sessions would reap massive rewards in lap timing.

The Data Master client although in early Beta, also boasts video/overlay integration too - so looking forward to playing with that in the near future.

To summarise this is one of the favourite modifications I've made to any car, ever. If you want a PnP digi dash for an Elise/Exige then there are better options out there, but the fact this device is 'car agnostic' and I can take with me across all projects just adds to the value of it for me personally. The level of customisation is second only to the proper crazy motorsports gear at the thick end of the price range. After switching to the ECUMaster ECU in my Exige, this dash later stole the limelight and I found myself spending more time geeking out on the dash than I did the ECU, and is one of the reasons why I'm in no real rush to stick the ECU in the 211.

[Fonzey]

Small update by recent standards..

I was still running without the centre console and I'd already had to fish half a dozen fly corpses out of it. An exposed shifter in this type of car will just not work! Time to put the cover back on, but I wanted one more tentative adjustment of the linkage first. 1-6 are bloody perfect and I didn't want to upset that, but reverse felt a little hard to get occasionally. In hindsight I think that may just be the lack of leverage offered by the shorter shift throw meaning I need more man power to select reverse, but I did a half-arsed tweak anyway which didn't seem to make things worse.

Got the cover cleaned up, and gear gaiter treated.


These plastics don't half get a hard life, usually harness buckle and shoe fodder but this one is pretty tidy, and it cleaned up a treat.

Getting it back in was another matter though. At Blyton you may recall my seat rail was misbehaving and this was fixed by moving the seat to a different configuration of floor holes. It worked, but it means I no longer had clearance for the centre console. A night of swearing and head scratching, I came back with a fresh head and loosened off the shift linkage, encouraged it to the passenger side a bit and then bolted it all down. I now had clearance, excellent.

Last job was the gear knob. The 211 one was a minter, but had a different thread to the earlier Exige linkage that I was now running. The Exige knob had suffered some storage battlescars. I'd thought about sleeving the shift leaver to allow me to use the 211 knob, but thought I'd have a go at refurbing the Exige one first.

Ground the head off a bolt, stuck it in the knob and a drill and made a sketchy lathe.

Wizzed it with a few grades of wet and dry and was able to replicate the OEM brushed aluminium texture pretty closely, and significantly tidied up the knob.



Very happy with that, feels great in the hand too. Any serial Fonzey thread readers may recall I did this same thing on my Elise about 6 years ago, but went one step forward with some autosol. It made a mirror finish from the knob, looked ace - but not quite in keeping with the rest of the interior.



Interior back in, ready for action.

Oh, somewhere amongst that I took the car out again to a local family day at an aeroclub. The missus is showing an interest in light aircraft recently, and I'm finding that flight nerds and Lotus nerds tend to go hand in hand - one usually follows the other closely, so makes for some mutually enjoyable days out. I've said it before but the 2-11 really is a show stealer, it has a presence that photographs don't quite do justice IMO.

[Fonzey]

Bit of housekeeping this weekend.

I have a Strongman Tamar ramp which got heavily used for Exige maintenance, it's a great quick and safe way to lift an Elise/Exige and still provides access to the four corners and the engine bay quite comfortably.

Unfortunately the 2-11 didn't fit over it, so some garage modifications were needed.



I could look at sinking the ramp, at least partially into the floor but I like how mobile it is for now. Eventually I'd like to do away with the twin manual doors on the garage and put a big single roller in. This would allow me to bring the ramp a little more central and at that point I'd be happier sinking it I think. Until then, reject scaff boards it is.



They're a bit wavy and warped to be honest, so any hope of taking some accurate suspension alignment readings parked her will be a bit optimistic, so I need to to think about how I can improve it.

For now though, the car glides on nicely and I have lift capability again. Woo.







With the car in the air, it was a convenient time to address the oil cooler cockup I made prior to Blyton. As a reminder, I'd discovered the mishimoto sandwich plate reverses the OEM flow of oil, which is a problem on accusump equipped cars like this one. I didn't much much/any effort into sourcing an alternate with the correct flow direction, and simply swapping the hoses over was a bit of a stretch for the plumbing so I just put the original sandwich plate back in.



One of the early drivers for putting a Mishimoto plate in was to improve (increase) oil temps at road speeds. Particularly in colder weather, the Lotus/2zz setup with twin air coolers does seem to over cool the oil a bit. I say a bit, because it's not like it's been trashing engines across the world - so it's clearly in spec, but when you see oil temps drop to 50C or lower when cruising on a cold motorway it's a little worrying.
I managed to find a thermostat service kit for the OEM sandwich plate (made by Mocal), so put in a thermostat which opens at 92 instead of 80(?). I don't think this will help too much though, upon visual inspection you can see that the mocal plate design differs to that of the mishimoto by being "permanently open", it relies on the path of least resistance to do a "soft bypass" of the coolers, but right from cold there will be constant oil flow through the coolers, just not as much as when the thermostat opens later on.

Still, race car innit. Can't see me doing many frosty morning motorway jaunts in this!

[Fonzey]

No Techy stuff for a few weeks, but it has felt like the Summer has suddenly slipped through my fingers and I had a pang of panic that I wanted to get some more use out of the car!

I'd sold some Carbon bits from the Exige to a chap over near Manchester, so we decided to arrange a drop off, meet a few others and then do a run through the Dales and up towards Penrith before I peel off and go back home.

Meant an early start, pushed the car in a socially responsible manner outside at about 04:45.



I filled up at my local Shell, boring detail... but remember this later.

It was a very, very cold run over the top of the M62. I think the lowest temp was about 7 or 8 degrees when hitting the summit and I was struggling, wondering WTF I was doing.



Upon arriving at Lymm services, I went inside to warm up and wait for the others.



Following a coffee and a toastie it was time to push on, one of our attendees is an amateur meteorology enthusiast and suggested we'd stay dry, so I left the waterproof romper suit in its bag and pushed on.





It absolutely bounced it down for about 25mins. It was streaming from my visor, bouncing off the front clam, spraying up behind the car like a massive rooster tail... yet somehow, I remained 'quite' dry. The only part of me which was feeling wet was a patch on my right knee where water was dripping through a panel gap and then the hood of my hoodie was collecting the water streaming off the helmet. The passenger seat remained almost entirely dry, it was incredible.

On the short blast up the M6 we encountered a large bunch of modified Minis clearly on their way to a meet. We flew in formation with them for a bit, getting a handful of thumbs ups, a handful more laughs and was certainly feeling like I was the butt of a joke. What I later found out, is that the 3 Lotus' I was with had radios (pointless me having one...) and they ended up on the same frequency as all the Minis... so I was being laughed at from all directions I think.

We finally got to Lancaster services, not a scheduled stop - but I think everyone felt a bit sorry for me. Sun came out, but I wasn't taking any chances now.



Up into the Dales and things brightened up nicely, and the waterproofs added enough warmth to make me comfortable at last. Really should have left the house with them on.

We got fairly lucky with traffic all day, and had some great runs up and across, then up North past Banard Castle into the Pennines via a breakfast stop in Richmond. (I had a lovely marketplace audience to slow-clap me getting beached on a cobbled speedhump)

You can't do the Dales without taking this photo


Though the one taken seconds later was much cooler


I'd backed the damping off on the car for this run, only on compression and left rebound on the 'road' settings provided by Lotus. Still needs a bit of fine tuning but it was really quite capable on the road, using the V6 in front of my as a visual reference as to how bumpy the road ahead looked I was able to carry more and more speed through the bumpy bits, with only the extreme of undulations catching my front splitter. Unfortunately the Banard Castle -> Alston road got a bit too much in places, but after I backed off and let the others go I was able to still enjoy it, just at a slightly slower pace.

The 2-Eleven is fundamentally compromised as a road car, but I don't think that's a surprise to anyone. I could probably go quicker in either of my daily driver options on some of the sections but the sense of adventure and novelty of being open topped is well worth the effort. The damping and spring rates are bob on, it's purely the rideheight that holds it back. Perhaps a middleground could be found with a road-only splitter with a much skinnier profile.

It was my first full day of helmet use on the road and it... wasn't great, to be honest. It was very uncomfortable to squeeze my earplugs in, and whenever checking my blindspots for lane changes etc, the helmet would catch the airflow and bounce my head around like mad. I'm on the market for a new helmet, I'd like one which has the space inside the liner for a headset so I've got intercom options with a passenger, but also bluetooth/radio connectivity so I can be a little more comfortable when driving solo. I'll talk to some helmet-people about whether a lid with some aero-appendages is also worthwhile, or just a daft gimmick.

After getting about as far North and West as I dared, it was time to peel off and leave the others to it. I decided to go beanie and goggles for the return trip and was much more comfortable despite the still fairly cool temperatures.

Just before arriving home, 10 hours after filling up, I pulled into my local Shell to collect the fuel filler cap I'd left there all day...



Great day out, glad I did it - but I have some helmet/clothing to sort out before doing this again in mixed conditions. That might be it for proper road drives in 2022, but still more to come on the trackday calendar.

[Fonzey]

Guilty