08 Exige S 240 in Starlight Black

Good to hear some thoughts on the wheels.

My heart says silver and the head says stay stealthy black. It’s a job for the winter so I’ll mull it over a bit more.

I do love the look of the silver on the British GT though:

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Black.

Keep the wheels black.

Looks full stealth ninja in black.

Black👍

black :slight_smile:

:thumbup:

Thanks for the thoughts on the wheels. I had a feeling that it would be a mixed response!

Already done the silver on the 260 wheels, my latest car will also have silver wheels soon and thats chrome orange. Fed up with black wheels

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Silver wheels look lovely Lee, thanks for sharing the pic.

Do you know if these wheels are painted a standard silver or is it a particular Lotus colour?

Amen brother

You might be able to find the colour ref from the part number :woman_shrugging:

I have a British GT Edition but not sure how I can confirm the paint code for you.

https://wiki.seloc.org/a/S2_Wheel_Options

Interesting that your forged wheels are listed as being available in silver as both painted and anodised finishes.

I’ve always loved the Matt finish of the silver British GT edition so I guess that these may be anodised.

They got painted in Shadow chrome with black inside

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Nice, thanks Lee :thumbup:

Wonderful car in black !! Re the wheels, I would go silver all the way ! It would contrast so well with the black colour of the body shell. Wheels have to be silver :wink:

Thanks, decision made, I’ll be going silver!

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Not a very exciting update I’m afraid, but you never know what might end up being useful for someone!

I had a very slight leak from the valve cover oil breather pipe, so wanted to get the gasket changed to sort it before it got any worse.

It’s an easy job - remove two nuts, clean up the mating surfaces, install a new £5 metal gasket and tighten back up to 10nm.

In a rush of enthusiasm, I also decided to whip off the valve cover to take a look and also tidy it up with a bit of paint. I had planned to do this over the winter, but got a bit carried away.

The cover came off nice and easily once all the supercharger gubbins and other bits and pieces were out of the way.

The only unexpected part was having to remove the engine cover strut, locking mechanism and heat shield to allow me to remove the three valve cover bolts nearest to the boot. I could just about get to them with a flexi socket, but I struggled to get a good purchase on the bolts and didn’t fancy rounding the heads.

Cover being sanded down and degreased:

A couple of coats of etch primer:

You can see a few spots of rain made it onto the second coat, but luckily it had managed to dry off in time :grimacing:

Back where it should be after 24hrs drying time on the final coats of Aluminium coloured paint:

The paint I used is here. I generally try to stick with the same brand of primer and paint to avoid any reaction between them.

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You have just given me a few ideas for some jobs to do over winter! :slight_smile:

Update time as it’s been a while…

It’s winter car fiddling time!

The black beauty has been SORNed and tucked up in the garage since late November / early December. It’s always a shame to put the toys away over the winter, but I’ve never been a fan of driving a 111 in cold, wet and generally crap weather.

Having had the car for almost a year now, I was actually really looking forward to parking it up for a decent spanner session to sort out a few bits and pieces I had added to my to do list throughout last year.

The suspension has always been a bit crusty, although to be fair I’ve seen worse and it the car feels good to drive. I knew when I bought the car that it was something I wanted to sort out.

With the car still being fairly new to me and knowing that it had very recently had a new set of ball joints I decided to do a cosmetic refresh and leave the wishbones in place. I’m hoping that this will last a couple of years. If and when it all starts to feel noticeably tired I’ll give it the full works and strip it all off.

I did notice this when removing the rear pads though…

It’s a first for me to experience friction material breaking off in chunks, but they’re Carbon Lorraine pads, so I’m not all that surprised :smile:. I fancied trying some RS42 anyway, so will be swapping them out.

With the discs and shocks out the way I attacked as much surface rust as I could with a combination of wire brushes and drill attachments.

And then gave it all a coating of good old Kurust…

Then the very fiddly task of painting. After much swearing, rolling around on a cold concrete floor, painting upside down in a cramped single garage, I did begin to question my sanity. Surely it would have been easier to remove it all and send it off to be coated rather than this ‘quick’ refresh!

The rear calipers were also treated to a fresh coat of paint…

With the shocks off the car I wanted to give them a bit of tidy up, so with the springs removed I could attack the areas of rust. The Sealey motorbike spring compressors are an ideal size for the smaller Exige springs.

The shock bodies were given a few coats of Hammerite Yellow, then ‘cured’ them in the hot water tank cupboard

The springs were also stripped and given a damn good Kurusting for good measure before being painted in tough black stuff and baked in the oven to harden.

I also painted the lower areas of the shock in silver and popped on some new Billy stickers to complete the job. This is probably overkill and I expect they’ll fail within ten minutes of driving the car!

It is a great feeling to bolt shiny bits back onto the car, so although I have questioned my sanity these last few weeks, it was satisfying to see it all come together.

Next on the list is rear diffuser and foot rest. Getting these recoated and anodised is surprisingly cheap (which doesn’t happen very often in the South East), so I’m prepping these to be dropped off.

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Fantastic effort, great results on the suspension :+1:

Ditto what Fonzey said. Some graft in there!

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Cheers!

I have questioned my sanity at times, but having had some evenings off away from working in the car I’m ready to get cracking again.

Now where did I put that to do list… :face_with_raised_eyebrow: