The day had come at last to give the car it's first run. It was an early start having loaded the car on the trailer on the night before. It was a wet drive to Silverstone which did not fill me with confidence. It was a Lotus on Track organised day on the full GP circuit and we arrived 30 mins. before the driver's briefing giving me chance to unload the car and get set up in the garage. Andy Napier got there earlier and saved me a space in the garage. Good lad!
Took the day off on the friday to get the last few little jobs done and check everything over (again!). The main job was to pipe-up the fire extinguisher. I didn't need it for the track day as road car regs apply but I wanted it working... just in case!
First the extinguisher cradle had to be bolted down. The only place for it is in the passenger footwell. 4 x 6mm holes with the air drill and it was fixed in place. I had already wired up the internal and external pushbuttons and fixed the control box when I carried out the work re-wiring the dash panel. So all that I had to do when I was ready was plug the connector into the extinguisher firing control unit when I was ready. The lifeline system comes with all the hose fittings that are needed. The regs. require 2 nozzles in the cabin and 2 to 4 in the engine bay pointing at the bits that burn i.e. the fuel and the oil systems. I didn't want lots of plumbing around the clam as this meant I would have to disconnect it whenever I wanted to remove the clam. So I went for 2 nozzles mounted in the bulkhead behind the seats, one pointing down each side of the engine. Once these were bolted up, it was then the tricky task of cutting and bending the plastic coated aluminium tube so that the two bulkhead nozzles could be tee'd together and a single tube shaped to go from the bulkhead pax side along the floor near the pax sill, across the floor in front of the pax seat and then into the push fitting tee of the extinguisher firing unit. The other end of the tee connects the two nozzles that I had set up facing up into the driver and passenger sides from the centre tunnel. These really needed a proper support bracket to fix them but were fixed temporarily for the track day using duck tape as the job had taken a lot longer than I had thought. Another job for another day.
The focus was now Silverstone on 16th October. That must be do-able! surely...
Amongst the jobs that needed doing was to get the interior safety equipment sorted. The Tillet seat needed adjusting for position and fixing down with eye bolts with reinforcing plates. Fortunately the new side mount format and Mog runners woth slotted adjusting holes allow plenty of adjustment. I like the seat quite low and I was able to get the bottom of the seat on the floor which means the centre of gravity is as low as possible. I had bought some longer eye bolts (they are 7/16 unf as standard and you can get them 50mm long. I drilled out the 8mm standard front and rear seat mount holes and pushed the eye bolts through the seat runners and down through the floor. Spreader plates are required underneath. These are 100mm square x 3mm steel plates with a 7/16" unf nut welded to the underside. A quick coat of Duralac on the top of the plates and they were run up the eye bolts. The plates have a 5mm hole in 1 corner so that they can be pop riveted in place to stop them unwinding. The 6 belt Schroth profi-II was then clipped in place.
I had fitted 2 eye bolts to the rear of the Mog seat mounts, one each side on the vertical, for the two crotch belts. These need to be fitted as far back as possible.
It was good to have a trial fit in the seat with the belts and helmet so that I could set the bet adjustment and check the seat position and angle. It felt really good to be 'belted up'
Next job was to fit the standard elise pax seat. I had bought a 4 belt Schroth for the passenger side, fitted in eye bolts as for the drivers side. Just fitting the seat and belts took the best part of the whole weekend. I just had time to fit the A frame petty bar padding. This was an easy enough job as the standard 1m fireproof tubular padding (Demon Tweeks) is slit so that it can be wrapped around the bar and secured with cable ties.
I just had time to mount the Alfano lap timer that I had bought from SELOC classified. It was only loosely positioned. I will have to come back to it.
It was starting to look like a proper race car inside. A good weekend's work!!.
.... that was the plan anyway, 16 September at Oulton Park.
Jobs that had to be done that would take time were :-
- Remove, paint & refit front and rear clams, bonnet and boot lids, roof and wing mirrors.
- Full geo set up.
- Fit Tillet race seat, fit drivers 6 point Schroth race harness, pax seat and Schroth 4 point harness.
- Fit Lifeline electronic fire extinguisher, pipework and nozzles in cockpit and engine bay
- Fit TSL timing unit
- Fix faulty engine temp readout on stack dash
- Test and fix lighting system and sort out rear fog light not working
- Fit wheel arch liners
- Find and fit door seals and fit doors properly!
- Make and fit boot bulkhead
- Fit graphics and series stickers
............. then I had to get some circuit time to learn to drive the car !!
To make matters worse, work was really busy and becoming a real time and thought distraction. The pressure of getting all the jobs done in time for Oulton was making the task just impossible... so I made the decision to pull out of Oulton. That would give me plenty of time, almost a month, before the next round that I could do which was Silverstone National on 16 October.
.... that seemed much more do-able! So the email went off to Mr Golding to say that I was scratching from Oulton. To say I was disappointed is an understatement but I was at the same time relieved as the pressure was off for a bit.
Full Power test at TDI
Just a few days after the trip into Norfolk to get the K6 mapped, the car was back on the trailer this time heading south down the M11 into Essex. Thurrock to be precise and the premises of TDI who are the ET series official power testers. An official full power test has to be undertaken by TDI to confirm that you are below the 151bhp @ the hubs limit befoere you can enter a race. The series organisers also arrange random tests during the year to catch out theless scrupulous. I wasn't too worried about being over the limit as my VVC is stock part from the hurricane induction, Janspeed manifold, silenecd de-cat and Emerald K6. I was more worried that it was way short of the upper limit.
The power testing kit at TDI looks pretty sophisticated and well able to cope with the sort of power the K series puts out. The TDI guys took over once the car was off the trailer and in the large soundproofed booth they have at the end of the workshop.
After jacking up the rear and removing the wheels, a large hydraulic unit is attached to each hub. I don't pretent to know how it works but once all bolted up and the computer logging unit connected, the car is run up through the gears to max revs as the resistance is increased. After a bit of magic, the LCD display shows the results. It didn't take that long and I think they did 3 full power tests in total. 
By the time that the hydraulic units had been unbolted, wheels re-fitted and the car back down on the floor ready to go back on then trailer, the results were printed.
The guy who carried out the test (sorry I forgot your name but he is the one who carries out all the tests at circuits during the season), gave me the nod to say it was under the 151 limit. I was really surprised to see that the results showed that it was pretty close at 149.5bhp. Definately where you would wanty to be, no closer!............. 149 tomatoes and 128 torques
I was pleased with the overall power it is making, no complaints there! and I was also pleased with the smooth power curve with no flatspots. I have read many times that the K series has an inherent flat spot between 3 and 4k which good old Mr Walker has properly sorted. The torques are a bit lower than I had hoped but I wasn't too surprised as the VVC does like a bit of back pressure and the fitting of a janspeed big bore exhaust and particularly the de-cat pipe don't help! But it's enough and it does mean I can't use lack of power as an excuse for being Captain Slow!!
The full results of the test are shown in the power curve and data sheet below:-
The full results of the test are shown in the power curve and data sheet below:-
One final note of interest is that the power and torques from the Emerald dyno session were different to those from the offiocial TDi test. Was it a case of one is wrong in which case is it Dave Walker's kit or more worryingly is it the TDI setup? ........ or is there a reason for the difference that becomes evident later.......... mmmm, watch this space!
The last week has been pretty busy getting the car prepared to go over to Dave Walker at Emerald near Norwich for mapping the K6.
Jobs on the list were fitting motorsport quick release catches to the bonnet and boot. This involved removing the old catches and making up some aluminium brackets to mount the Q/R post to.
The boot cover needed a repaint from its original silver to satin black. Plenty of rubbing down and spraying later it was ready to go on. Similarly the doors that I had stripped down months ago had to be rubbed down, painted satin black and re-assembled and re-hung. All of this took up a whole weekend. I am a couple of window seals missing but those can be sourced over the next few weeks.
The new rear Sport 160 spoiler and raiser blocks had to be painted after first lining up and drillng the rear clam (scary!) and then a bright vivid red paint job. After 24 hours for the paint to harden it was fitted on the car.
The motorsport lightweight hardtop was next to go on after first fitting a new seal to the perspex rear window and making new retainers for the rollbar cover clips as they are not available new from Lotus. The hardtop is fixed with four bolts at the leading edge which involves drilling the windscreen surround (scary moment no.2!!). After drilling the hardtop first and marking the surround it was a careful job to drill the surround. It's about 50mm thick and needs to be at the right angle to bolt up squarely. Having checked the bolts would go in, tiger seal went on the roll bar cover which would secure the hardtop at the rear. Job was quite straightforward in the end.
Next job was to fabricate a heatshield between the exhaust manifold from the large piece of nimbus I had bought from Yvo at Elise Shop as part of the SELOC group buy. I started by making a template from card. I wanted it to wrap around the manifold protecting the bulkhead, laminova and oil pipes and go down to to the undertray so that all the heat would be funnelled up and through the boot cover vents. Took a while and while I was at it I fabricated a small piece that would protect the oil filter which becomes pretty close to the manifold when the oil cooler take off adapter is fitted. I took the opportunity to fit the alternator heatshield from Eliseparts. It comes flatpacked and takes a while to work out where it bends and folds, but I got there in the end. It looks really good now it's finished and works very well.
I had originally intended not to fit wheel arch liners but changed my mind. I had 2 rears already and just needed a pair of fronts which I picked up from SELOC classifieds.
On the big day (today) I had to fit the liners, quickly set front and rear toe by eye and bleed the brakes once more just to be sure. I was due at Emerald at 2pm and started the jobs at 7am. I checked all the fluids once more plus tyre pressures and torque up the wheelnuts. I had only ever started the engine in the garage and reversed it in and out a few times but never run it up through the gears and bedded the brakes. Wasn't too worried about them as they would not be needed today. So at 10.30 i reversed the car out and onto the road and ran it up and down my quiet rural road just to make sure I could get gears and all was ok. Took a few pics for posterity....
Finally I was ready and after a quick check of the preparation notes for mapping from Emerald, I had a last check of oil and water before setting off. A quick txt to Andy Napier to check what fuel was best and I was off to Watton in Norfolk. Andy had recommended Shall Super V but there were only BP stations on route so I had to go for BP super unleaded. The elise was filled right up and a jerry can also filled for good measure. Dave recommends bringing plenty of fuel as cars can use a fair bit on the dyno.
Watton is about an hour and 15 away for me. I was made welcome by Dave and the team and they quickly set about checking the car over and strapping it down on the rollers. The dyno is in a sound proof room and fitted out with plenty of air blowers that were positioned at the front of the car for cooling and blowing air in and around the engine bay. There is also a meaty exhaust and fume extraction setup as you would expect. Dave prefers it if the undertrays are removed which was handy cos they had not been fitted (one less job for me in getting the car ready!). Dave hooked up his test bay PC to the serial comms port and positioned the twin lcd screens he uses during the mapping so that he can easily read them when he is sat in the car at the controls.
The screen on the right had the standard M3D software running and the screen on the left is dedicated to various instrument and dyno live readings.This screen can also display graphs of results after each mapping run. Dave has a wireless keyboard and settings console for use inside the car whilst he is at the car controls.The mapping process consists of adjusting and setting ignition and fuelling for each of the 16 load sites in the M3D ecu at increasing revs. A wide band lambda probe is put in the car to get AFR readings.
Dave was happy for me to sit in on the session provided I used the ear defenders provided. It was all pretty relaxed at first as he set about mapping at low revs. I was a bit nervous generally as the car had never been properly run apart from a few engine starts in the garage and a couple of hundred yards of running up and down the road at home just to check that I could get all five gears on the new box and linkage. Mapping is laways carried out by Dave using fourth gear runs.
I started to get more nervous when the revs got a bit higher! Once you get to about 5000 rpm it's all very noisy and the car is really straining at the restraint straps. During the full power runs towards the end at 7000 rpm maximum revs I hav to admit to having my fingers crossed.I needn't have worried as the car ran faultlessly with no leaks and the temps stayed rock steady which showed that the PRRT and laminova were doing their job.
Power Curve
Next blog update will be after the TDI power test when I will post up the official power curve.
No pics I'm afraid in this blog update as I am working so quickly there is just not time.
Finally my new Emerald K6 arrived. Lots of apologies from Karl at Emerald but he wanted to make sure that the base VVC map was a good one and had been testing it on a hack at Emerald HQ for a good while. I had set aside a saturday morning to do the pin movements. The Emerald ecu has only one 36-pin male euroconnector and the std. VVC MEMS loom has 2 female 36-pin euroconnectors coloured black and red). The idea is that the removable pins are moved from the two existing plugs to a new single one provided in the K6 kit. This takes some concentration but after a couple of hours I had swapped everything and checked it thoroughly over a second time. Software from Emerald supplied CD was loaded onto my IBM Thinkpad laptop, RS232 serial lead was connected to the appropriate port on the K6 and that;s where it stopped. Turns out the usb connectivity firmware is not yet sorted on the K6 even though it has a usb port and guess what my laptop doesn't have an RS232 serial port. To that matter neither did my works laptop so I was buggered! A quick email to Emerald on the Monday produced a very nice EasySync usb to RS232 adapter which with software loaded worked a peach.
I did find the next day that the coolant had dropped and there was a hint of coolant under the o/s rear sill which turned out to be a hose clip that had 'relaxed'. Annoyingly this did involve removing the petrol tank shear plate to check that the leak wasn't on the coolant pipework in the sills.
Bringing things bang up to date, earlier this week attention turned to bleeding the brakes and clutch. I had put new seal kits in both front and rear calipers and new stainless aeroquip brake lines. Quick check that unions and hoses were tight and a fill of the reservoir with Motul RBF600 and on with the Eazibleed. Brake fluid pi**ed out of the rear calipers depositing most of the (expensive) Motul on my drive. Retired hurt that night!
Next night rear calipers came off and were stripped. Turns out after consulting the SELOC masssive yet again that there were some bits missing from the calipers I had bought used (cheers Junks lol...). To be fair he didn't realise! So I took the bits I needed from the original calipers which were the threaded bits that fit inside the piston and wind the piston out as part of the handbrake auto adjust mechanism. These in itself were not directly what caused the fluid to leak but the seal that was part of the missing bits is what stops the fluid leaking out of the top of the piston and through the dust seals. With the right bits fitted the clutch and brakes were bled through using the Eazibleed. Couldn't get anything on the brake pedal at first and had to have a second go using the inverting and tapping the front caliper method. Got a good pedal at one stage but lost it again so there must be some air still in there somewhere.
Got the whole weekend to work on the car this weekend as Em is away on a hen weekend so makimng a start on fettling the bodywork and getting it looking like a race car. Another update and some piccies soon.........
......the last blog post so apologies for that! It is because I have been spending so much time on the car honest!.
Daughter Rhiannon joined in to add the female touch by rim striping all four wheels. Ta!
The job that has taken the longest really and far more time than I had expected/allowed in the build is the electrics and wiring.
3 reasons really, firstly I needed to fit an electrical isolator with pushbuttons (required by regs/MSA blue book). Didn't want to go down the Cartek route as so many of the ET guys were having problems. I went with the Brise EV200 which meant that there weren't very many 'this is how to do it' guides - well none really tbh! In the end Neil at Polevolt linky came up with the goods (literally). Bought all my wiring stuff inc. relays, pushbuttons and connectors all from Polevolt - brilliant! and I now have a great schematic that I now know works very well. Beauty of the EV200 is that when it is off, it really is off - no battery drain (yay!). Neil recommended the use of an in line main fuse (200A) and primary and secondary failsafe relays that cut the feed to the ecu and allow the alternator to discharge (to save it cooking!) if the power is cut at high revs.
Second reason is that I discovered sections of the loom that were not in great condition i.e. the copper was badly oxidised to the point where I couldn't get solder to take to it when soldering the new fuel pump pigtail to the exciting loom for example. Two things were needed, to check the impedence of the critical wires in the existing loom and to run a new section of loom for the new things I wanted to add (extinguisher and isolator external pushbuttons, fuel pump switch and coil feed to fuel pump relay in MFRU, change light from Emerald when it is fitted, +12v feed via Brise relay for ecu etc.,). The new small loom follows the route of the existing front to rear harness i.e. via centre tunnel, fuel tank bay and along n/s of engine bay to ecu/relay position.
Third reason was that I wanted to sort out the dash and ignition wiring. The previous owner had fitted an autolec switch in the dash that controlled the feeds to the ignition switch. The autolec had to go and the wiring was pretty bad (and dangerous!!) so something had to be done with it. I wanted to fit a switch and pushbutton panel to house the new isolator pushbuttons on & off, start button to replace the keyswitch, ignition/ignition drop out on/off toggle switches again to replace the keyswitch, fuel pump switch (so I can control when it primes and test it independantly of the ecu), heater fan switch and more importantly a cooling fan override switch. Took best part of 3 weeks to get it all sorted and meant the installation of a couple of heavy duty relays to switch the ignition but it does all work very well.
So with external pushbuttons recessed (see pic right taken before the dash dwitch panel was fitted) and wiring complete. Next job was to make some ally shear plates to support then rear clam and provide something to nail the ecu and relays to. Armed with cardboard templates and 1.2mm ally sheet, they were cut to shape using air shears and folded/returns formed using my 750mm bench bending brake. Job was a carrot and the few days after were spent attaching the various relays, connectors, fuse holders and the MEMS ecu using rivnuts.
The idea was to sacrificially fry the old MEMS ecu if I had got anything wrong. So with trepidation and a keen nose I switched on the Brise (with a purposeful 'thunk' as the relay came in). On with the main ignition and ignition drop out. All seemed good and the isolator dropped out with another positive 'thunk' when the external kill button was pressed.
Before I was tempted to touch the new start button, there was the small matter of fluids. Next few nights in early July were spent filling the gearbox and engine with the finest Motul could offer (aka expensive!!). Then it was plugs out and coils disconnected to spin the motor over to get oils into the new filter, take off plate and around the laminova and hoses. Probably spent an hour or so whizziong it over and then checking oil level and for leaks before re-fitting the plugs and re-connecting the twin vvc coils. Re-assuringly the oil pressure light went out straight away each time it was turned over. Then it was on with the coolant hose clips and a final check that everything was tight before filling with 'OAT'. Then the Janspeed S/S sports silencer and de-cat pipe were loosely fitted (to keep in with the neighbours you understand!).
With an appropriately assembled audience (well the long suffering gf Emma actually) I was ready to hit the start button. Nothing, not a light!! .... Emma gave me that look that is instantly recognisable from a woman as being one of anti-climax and disappointment (with a bit of "could have told you that would happen" thrown in - you know fellas!). I have read enough threads on SELOC to know that either the fuel pump and/or MFRU are at the heart of many a starting problem. So it was out with the Fluke tester and checking for feesd and earths. Eventually after checking the fuel pump fuse, safety cut-out, alarm by-pass connections and MFRU I diagnosed no volts. Turns out I had connected what I thought was one of the many earths in that area of the car to an earth point (naturally) but actually one of those black wires with a black sheath looking pretty earth like turned out to be a live feed that should have been connected to the +12v starter motor terminal. Hey-ho. So back out came Emma, hit the start button. Nothing, not a light.... Emma retired to Big Brother with the words "don't bother calling me out again..."
Back to the SELOC thread and the massive said en masse that I needed to earth out the fuel pump relay earth that is normally earthed through the ecu ('cos the ecu immobilises this). With relay earthed and no audience it started first time and ran for about a second which is what I expected and is about all you will get from a MEMS without a matching Lucas 5AS module and fob - which I don't have. Good feeling to hear it run though........
Just a short post to report on progress over the last week or so. Really want to get the car down on it's wheels so that I can get the suspension all torqued up and see how the suspension and steering alignment looks to be about right by eye before a full geo. Not having the springs for the single way nitrons I had off junks that came with the donor car has delayed getting this done. Finally they arrived and mighty fine they looked in the box. I went for 450F/550R ratings with 150lb helpers based on a poll of drivers that I had asked at rounds earlier this year.
Wasn't too difficult a job to mount them on the bodies once I had worked out how to remove (and set up again afterwards) the removeable end fitting that contains the rebound adjuster. Obviously the pre-load has to be guessed at this stage and subsequent ride height set when the units are on the car and it is down on it's wheels.
Next job was to get them onto the car which was straightforward enough except that I had forgotten that it is easier to adjust ride height if the units are fitted upside down. Of course, you guessed it, the helpers were at the bottom which is not good practice and even worse, the writing that said nitrons and spring rating were upside down - disaster!. For those of you that know me, you know I have to have it right!!
Moving on the units were fitted on the car with new bolts and nylocs, courtesy of Eliseparts who supply a complete suspension bolt kit. Much easier than trying to source from your local ironmongers (and cheaper probably!). The spherical bearings at each end of the unit were checked for play once more then re-greased. Each of the bearings has an 'o' ring between the bearing and the spacer inserts. These were checked, fitted and the units bolted up and torqued at 45Nm. As they are bearings and not bushes they can be torqued up with the car on stands.Driveshafts next - the job was made simple due to the gearbox and shafts being new and much easier than trying to refit used (and possibly worn) shafts into a well abused gearbox. They snicked in at the gearbox end nicely and then the hub end threaded through the refurbished hubs with new bearings after disconnecting the upright at the top ball joint. A new driveshaft nut went on which will be torqued up when the car is back on it's wheels.
Pics of the finished n/s and o/s shafts in place. Taken a guess at the camber shim thickness required only so that it looks about right by eye and it will be geo'd properly later.Bolts at the hub end on all four corners were torqued up and the ball joint nuts tightened.
So now I have all four corners complete with all bolt fixings torqued except for the wishbone bushes.
Getting closer to getting it onto it's wheels for the first time. The donor car deal included a set of Compomotive MO's in ET spec (i.e. offset). Rears were new and still boxed and finished in the satin black that I wanted. Fronts came with a pair of nearly new AD06's fitted and were in silver. I had also picked up a set of part worn ET spec Yokohamas AO48's (much thanks to Ben Pitch for those). So it was off to the local tyre fitters to fit the the rear tyres onto the virgin rims and remove the AD06's from the silver front rims so that I could get them painted to match the rears. This will be diy job.
Couldn't resist a trial fitting of the rears. It was good to establish that nothing fouled and they looked right. Looked pretty good too!!
With both rears on it was time to stand back and refelect on the fact that I am getting there............
Main job for this weekend was to get the engine finished and installed in the car. I had decided not to strip and rebuild it as you would normally expect for racing, but the engine was low mileage and most in the trophy run the engines as they come.
The last few weeks have been spent fettling the engine. It's taken a while to get all the bits that were missing from the engine including map sensor, injector wiring harness and front timing belt cover.
The engine has had the VVC timing checked, new cambelt and manual tensioner and new plugs and leads. The timing was set following the instructions in the elise manual. Pretty simple job involving aligning cam pulley and crankshaft markings. Whilst the engine was up on the stand the sump was removed to fit the Eliseparts sump baffle. Comes in 3 aluminium laser cut parts that are assembled inside the sump and are interlocking to retain them. Required a small amount of hand fettling to fit properly but worthg doing. The sump was refitted with the appropriate sealant.Next job was to fit the Eliseparts lightened flywheel. It's a piece of art so couldn't resist a few record photos. A new set of flywheel bolts were fitted and torqued up.
Not sure how much lighter it is but quite a bit of metal is removed compared with standard. Once the flywheel was on I could finally fit the crank position sensor by pushing it fully home and bolting up. 
The new AP uprated clutch was next to go on after degreasing the flywheel and pressure plate faces. I had also bought the Eliseparts alignment tool. The job is simple enough with the friction plate fitting between the pressure plate and the flywheel with the alignment tool inserted through the friction plate into the end of the crankshaft. The pressure plate is then bolted up using new bolts and threadlock. The engine was then lifted off the engine stand using my engine hoist ready for the gearbox to go on. The box is a new close ratio PG1 unit bought as part of the original project car bundle from junks.
Finally the engine was in the car. Seems to have taken ages but it was worth all the effort to see it sat in the engine bay. The Janspeed large bore 4-2-1 manifold was fitted with a new gasket, then the silenced cat replacement pipe and Janspeed s/s supersport exhaust system was offered up and bolted loosely in place so that I could check the fit and alignment with the rear clam fitted. As you can see from the photos, it wasn't far off.
When I last updated progress on the VVC it was to strip it down to the block and head, degrease and inspect for damage/wear. The VVC is the EU2 version and as it came from a low mileage 'S' I have decided to put it in and run it rather than stripping it right down and rebuilding with new internals. So mostly the jobs were to clean up and do a visual check for obvious problems and compiling a list of missing parts. Some of the bits can come off the original K16 that was in the project donor car like the oil filter carrier, dipstick assembly, crankshaft main pulley, rigid cooling pipes and thermostat housing and various bolts/fixings.
One of the main items missing was the timing belt front and rear covers. I have spare K16 covers which I was able to adapt but will need to get a new front cover at least. They are still available and less than a tenner. The water and oil pumps were removed, cleaned and inspected. Both looked fine and were refitted with new gaskets. A new manual cambelt tensioner was fitted. The thermostat hosing was stripped, cleaned and the old stat removed and eliseparts blank stat and new 'o' rings fitted that came with the PRRT kit. The fuel injectors and fuel rail were cleaned and refitted together with the inlet manifold and VVC plenum, again with new gaskets. On the exhaust side, new studs were fitted and stud locked and the new Janspeed big bore 4-2-1 manifold trial fitted. The beauty of having the engine stand is that all the ancillaries can be fitted properly with good access. There are still a few things left to do before the engine can go back in like fitting the injector and main engine loom and making guarding for the alternator and oil filter from the large G3 nimbus sheet courtesy of Yvo at elise shop. Picked up a new 52mm throttle body and cambelt pulley off ebaywhich will be fitted during the next week when they arrived. I have ordered a sump baffle kit from eliseparts which will also be fitted in the coming week.
I also managed to get the new main engine mount fitted ready for the engine to go in. Similarly, the new mount and eliseparts tapered bush/bolt were fitted to the new PG-1 c/r gearbox, together with the refurbished clutch slave cylinder and mount and ready to be mated to the engine together with lightened flywheel and uprated clutch supplied by junks.
The interior has also received some attention. I was missing a handbrake assembly but that was sorted thanks again to ebay which provided a brand new unit and handbrake cable for a tenner!. So that went in together with the gearchange assembly. The electrical loom was in poor condition so much time was spent inspecting an re-taping it. The refurbished fuel tank complete with new pump courtesy of Gaz at spitfire was dropped to allow the refettled rear loom to be threaded through to the engine bay. Whilst the tank was dropped I took the opportunity to fit braided fuel hose to the quick release pump flow and returns and again thread them through into the engine bay. The tank then went back in with new fixings and the shear plate refitted having been cleaned up and new fixings used.
I was missing and a pax side lower dash extrusion that I had been hunting down for weeks from used parts suppliers in fear of the cost new from Lotus. I should have checked as they are only £30 or so new so B&C supplied me with a shiny new one. That meant that I could assemble the dash complete with controls panel that I had made up. The panel has 3 military style toggle switches with indicator lamps for ignition, fuel pump and extinguisher arming. A mechanical isolator in addition to a Cartek or Brise electronic isolator and a start pushbutton. 
Looks quite neat with it's carbon backing plate and fits snugly in the dash. It will have to be wired but I will deal with all that later. Next job was to fit the momo steering wheel adapter again courtesy of ebay for £15 ready for when a decent momo/omp/sparco suede race wheel comes my way.The brakes have also come in for some attention. A trip to eliseparts resulted in a pair of new AP 290mm discs ad EP ally bells, caliper spacers and new bolt sets for the pair of older 280mm EP discs and bells that came with the project car and that are going on the rear. The Lotus AP calipers were cleaned up and treated to new pistons, seals, pad fixings, crossover pipes and bleed nipples. A new set of pagids from junks went in and the calipers fitted onto the car. Jobs a carrot!!
Finally to round off a busy few weeks, the front and rear clams that had ben sat outside patiently over the winter waiting for their turn to get some attention were temporarily fiited on the chassis. Mostly this was to make me feel good that all of the hard work recently meant that I was getting closer to having a proper looking car again. It was also a chance to check alignmemt of clam fixings, clearances and to measure up for new aluminium panels that will be fabricated for the rear boot section that the electrics and new Emerald K6 ecu will be hung on. Did I mention that I had ordered a new K6 from Emerald........ more of that in the next installment.
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