Sunshine....

.....this weekend meant opening up the batcave and finishing off all the jobs i could before getting the roll cage installed.


1) Taking the thing off of the axle stands. Sounds a simple job but fitting wheels to the car in such a confined space is a huge S&H. This, combined with refitting the undertry on my own, took 4 hours.






2) New ROTA's on, wheel the car out, jack it up.







3) Bolts dreml'd off (and right thumb nearly in the process), replace indicator unit.




4) replacement bolts and nylock nuts all ready to go














5) In fading light, wheelarch liner back on with new shiny bolts - take the thing out for a drive. Reminded that the toelinks are still f*cked so it's handling like a shopping trolley. Geo also way out and the engine is clunking all over the place due to the perished gearbox mount. Nice to get it out under it's own steam nevertheless.

6) Gearbox mount and driveshat oil seal still need doing (see pics below)...........

.........along with: roll cage install, new 6-pt harnesses, remote thermostat, oil cooler, coolant replacement, new coolant bottle, rear toelinks, geo etc etc...
All of these items I am leaving to the professionals.
***Good news today: Elgan at Hot-Lap called me to say the new cage is fabricated and is going for painting in.....Orange (joke). and will be delivered at the end of the week.

Assuming they start work on Monday, we have x2 weeks to get the car sorted before a test day at Brands Hatch. It's all getting a bit close............

(15th Feb) More faff

Stripped, sanded and Isopon 40'd the front splitter this weekend.

There was a c20-24 inch crack along the NS where it's hit a big road-kerb. Had to cut out unwanted F-G and fill with an aluminium mesh, then swab-on the P40. Added some P38, then sanded and painted with Hammerite "straight-to-rust"

Couldn't be arsed taking any pictures - will do that later. Had enough of doing shitty little jobs and just want to get the 'fing thing out on the track. ETA for the cage 7-10 days away. ETA for first outinf on the road-let-alone-track; 4 weeks away. bah humbug.

(13th Feb) Best intentions.....

I took a call this afternoon to hear that the roll-cage has been delayed by another 10 days.
Great.

Best-intentions and all that now gone to pot. I deliberately factored in some "slippage" time in getting the car track-ready for mid-march; in_that the very LATEST I wanted the cage fitted was this week. We are already c2 weeks down on that.

Slippage time? Why? I hear you ask. Well.......this project has all the soundings of complete "arse" written all over it ergo: I have been taking measurements for a specific roll cage fitting independently, which is never a good thing.

So, taking everything into accoint, I estimated I would need to get the cage fitted this week latest, as there could well be some "WTF is this?" and "WTF is that doing there" and even worse "it doesn;t fit, you'll need a different seat if you want the HANS device to work properly" *things* to happen.

Apparently the cage "is" fabricated, but they cocked-up the mounting of the harness bar, so it is/would be fouling the angled section of the bulkhead near the A-pillar. Fair-play to Elgan (Hot-Lap) in that he is starting again from scratch - so as not to influence the overall integrity and strength of the cage, but it has delayed the plan for 2 weeks.

So, best case now is that it goes to Steve Williams c23/24th Feb, and then needs 20+ hours of cage fitting + additional workshop time for a whole host of other tasks - which doesn't leave much margin for error as I have x2 test days booked in Mid-March.

I have some faff to do over the weekend - namely refitting some parts i took off last week but it's annoying I'll lose another week now...Oh....cock.

(11th Feb) : Colin Chapman

Colin Chapman said:
"More power makes you faster on the straights. Adding lightness makes you faster everywhere"

Generally, this first year is all about getting race experience. My aspirations are all about not disgracing myself and - mechanical reliability allowing - finishing as many races as I can - I'll leave any fine-tuning weight stuff - lighter flywheel; ally bells, CF seat; until next year.

That said, I am adding c20 KG's to the car with the cage. AND, one of the 111s wheels is bent.
So, where there's an opportunity to replace, why not upgrade?

These ROTA wheels (the black ones - pictured) cost £500 and save a kerbweight of 10 KG's, which is tiny compared to the unsprung weight saving.

I think they look better than the std wheels as well. We'll see at the weekend...

(10th Feb) L.O.T.U.S

Lots

Of

Trouble

Usually

Shag-and-hassle

My NS indicator housing is cracked, see here:

On Sunday afternoon I started taking off the NSF wheel arch liner and well er......fell at the first hurdle :-\
Well in fact....i got completely sidetracked (as you tend to do when stuck in an artificially lit garage, with "man-music" playing, supply of tea (Mrs R) and much-to-do. Actually I forgot how much i liked Bon Jovi and er....Def Leppard (ahem).

Like a magpie i got distracted by something shiny (actually the opposite, something less shiny that expected) - the state of the wiring and perished mounts in the bonnet and chassis-well. So off came the radiator water-shield.........

(all the panel fixings had perished)

...so it was off with the water shield and a good clean (yes yes i know it's a race car but it doesn't mean any work-and-wire-area shouldn't be clean)

And I started noting various items which needed replacing due to age, i remembered that Elgan (Hot-Lap) still needed some additional plumb-line measurements for the roll cage harness bar.

My-oh-my I never realised what a mess the cockpit was. "It's going to get completely f*cked when it goes in for the cage to be fitted so what's the point in cleaning it now?" I think.

Tourettes kicked-in........so i find myself taking off the gear level surround (unsurprisingly no small job)and.....well, this is what I found.....enough foilage for some small nesting animals to hibernate for the winter.

None in the least a fire risk i thought, and a huge weight penalty.....

....so out came all the crap, and combined with a can of "gunk" I attacked the cabin....

As you can see, it was filthy.

The idea was not to get the thing pristine but at least clean out enough of the crap so that there's a clean operating area for all the stuff to go in the car; from the cage, to a in-car camera system (Chase-Cam) etc etc.....

Several hours later.....I find myself back at the wheel arch liner.

(Note: the Mrs came in with the umpteenth cup of coffee at this point and mentioned the time. I also got a SMS from CTO of BRR Steve. It's 18:30! Better get a move-on.

Now...anyone who has ever tried getting something done on a car by a certain time will know that it;s a recipe for a sense-of-humour failure.

"remove liner, fit light, replace liner. 30 minute job" I thought.

60 minutes later and I am still hacking away at screw number 1!

Equally, the wheel arch liner is hardly easy to take off (FFS) and in typical Lotus fashion, why make something simple (maybe with 4 or 5 panel fixings) when you can make it impossible? I know, let's mount a fuse box and a relay box on TOP of the wheel arch liner AND make the mounting screws
a) Inaccessible
and
b) prone to corrosion so that whenever you try and take them out the rawlnuts are just corroded to feck and will (again) knacker the liner.

The outboard screw on the front-facing side (commonly known as "M5 x 20, front-of-wheelarch liner-to-front clam" ) was already rounded off and I just can't get the bugger out :(
I managed to get a set of lock-grip pliers on it but that only worked as far as getting the screw turned about 2 turns, and now it appears to be stuck - it turns about a quarter-of-a-turn before it loses grip of the pliers and then "crack" ! as i think it's jammed in the rawlnut on the other side. I *think* what's happening is the screw is solid in the rawlnut, and it's turning the c-plate on the wheelarch - the sound is a little concerning in that it sounds as if some glass fibe or plastic is being slowly cracked - so i'm worried about using any more force in case i knacker the hole in the clam, wheelarch or both.
I was planning tomorrow to undo ALL the other bolts and try and drop the wheel arch out backwards, so only this bolt is connected and try and get at it from the other side. Based on the parts manual, it's saying what's behind there is
Part #12: Rawlnut, M5, clamshells, front & rear(A075W6074F) part #10: Washer, shakeproof M5 (A075W4045Z)PART #11: Washer flat, M5, A075W4011Z
AKA i think i'll need to drill the f*cker out. Great!

So, after 3 hours of completely getting nowhere (my oh my it feels just like i'm at work!) I wrap up for the night. I remember that smug Steve Williams telling me it's "a five minute job" when they've got the front clam off to do the cage installation. 3 hours versus paying someone 20 quid to do it.....the bottle of Merlot sitting on the table is far more appealing at this point in time.

"Boring boring boring" I am shouting to myself as I type this.

WHAT ABOUT THE RACING YOU SILLY TOOL?

GOOD NEWS:

The cage is nearly done. Calling Elgan @ Hot Lap tomorrow to find when I can get the car booked in to get it fitted (hopefully next week)

In the meantime and in between 14 hour days at the office, I need to find time to:

- Source some cap head bolts for the diffuser (hex shaped don't work)

- Get the tyres swapped onto the new rota wheels

- Measure up the car and order a trailer

And it's torrential rain outside.

Damn...the grid seems a long long long way away........

(6th Feb) Time stops for no man....

The roll-cage is now fabricated; awaiting the mounting of the harness bar and to be powder-coated (black).
ETA is back on of next week (read: w/c 16th Feb).

There's quite a lot to do to the car still and all of a sudden i find myself looking at the diary against the first test day - booked for Mid-march - and wondering "will the car be ready?"

Providing we can start work on stripping it ahead of the cage arriving, we should be fine but, the cage will take 20+ hours to fit. So I imagine at least c2 weeks in a workshop. We *should* be ok but you never know.....

The budget took another hit this week with the addition of a 6-point set of Willans Harnesses. Hot-Lap have modified them especially for the Elise; so it makes sense to pay the premium (£190 all-in -erhum-)