Is that the shiny ring or the stretchy, oily one you’re all referring to? 
Sounds like the oil cooler issue might be sorted!
Be very very careful with improved tow eyes they are VERY VERY STRONG.
The lighter version fitted by lotus is weaker by design. It breaks before it pulls the tow post away from the front crash structure. Ask me how i know!!!
Ill bite …
How do you know Dave? Is the bit blob of weld the weak point deliberatly?
Yes agreed, but then I’ve also seen an OEM post snap in half (or at least, I saw the aftermath) at which point it ripped a chunk out of the crash structure and tore a big chunk out of the front clam too! It was fairly rotten mind.
Similar to the toe link argument, we uprate them so our wheels don’t start flapping around on a high speed bend, at the cost of potentially writing off the subframe if we slide into a kerb on a roundabout. It’s just shuffling around the compromises!
Tow post painted up and fitted:
I then did one more ‘run up to temp and rev it for a while’ test and the oil coolers/unions remain dry - so can’t really dawdle any more, with a hand from the missus the clam was offered back up.
I spent the next day or so of odd free 5min sessions fettling the clam and bolting it all down. Removal is a piece of cake, but refitting takes a bit of care to line everything up and I have to be honest my charge cooler plumbing makes it a little more awkward than it should be! I did find one of my main beam bulbs had gone so delayed by a quick trip to the motor factors and the car was finally ready for the road again.
I’ve done a quick test run to the shops, got everything up to temp and got 10-12 miles in and everything remains dry, so fingers crossed. I at least know that I haven’t introduced any big leaks, so providing I keep a close eye on it over the next week (particularly on track on Saturday) I think I can maybe start to relax. Annoyingly it’s forecast to be wet, which may make eyeballing fresh leaks a bit more difficult.
Blyton Report:
First trackday of the year today 
and of course after the string of stunning weather it was given 90% chance to rain all day.
Woke up at about 5am to the sound of it absolutely lobbing it down, pottered about for a bit and then set of for the circuit in pretty grim conditions. Had a few flashes of blue sky on the way over, but it was pretty damp on arrival. The new sign-on/briefing process is all online so other than collecting wristband/stickers etc it was just a case of waiting around for sighting laps.
The track was wet for sighting laps but we’d had no rain for almost an hour, and a dry line started to appear already after the first sighter. Car felt OK enough on these laps, just hunting around for grip and prodding the throttle on occasion to check for drama. Once that was done I gave the other cars 40mins or so to try the circuit out completely for me and it then remained dry until about 15:00 - a miracle really, the odd shower came along the way but not enough to really impact grip levels.
This was not my fastest day at Blyton by quite a margin, a few reasons really but the main one being that it was a shakedown day - I’ve changed a lot, added to the recent oil leak I just didn’t want to be pushing anything too hard. The car wasn’t at its best either though, which gives me some areas to work on:
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Brakes started vibrating after my first quick-ish session, probably pad transfer and maybe a poor bedding in effort by me. I spent the last session on track pretty much just doing 100-20mph slows (track was empty, but I must have looked a right weirdo to those watching on) which I think cleaned them up a bit, but I intend to give everything a once over and give it a thorough testing on the road next week. Vibrating brakes on track is nothing new, but this got so bad that I actually took all four wheels off to check for a caliper hanging off.
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Suspension setup didn’t feel great to me, possibly trying to change too much to improve the damper early conditions but the front end never really felt like it had my back. Car would push on more than the OEM/Bilstein setup on the faster turns (probably 5-10mph slower through the fast Port Froid section) so I had a play around with the damper settings:
I arrived on 12F/10R from hard as my road setup (going to go to 14F/12R in future)
Incremented to 10F/7R initially, this made an appreciable improvement to stiffness and made the rear a little more lively on the slower speed stuff.
Tried one more step to 9F/5R which I finished the day on, but didn’t pay it enough attention as braking was becoming a bit annoying by now.
My gut tells me that I’ve pushed the damping a little too hard rather than relying on the native stiffness of the springs and the geo of the car to take care of turn-in.
The car seemed to handle its body roll a little better on the Nitrons, but the balance of the car just didn’t feel right to me. Perhaps if turning in with a bit more aggression on a hot and sticky day would have brought it to life a little?
Aside form the handling traits, the front ride height is just too low. I knew the arch liners would become sacrificial at some point but I expected that under more extreme conditions but I was getting scrubbing into just normal braking zones, and pretty much all of the quick left handers. Very off putting, and my Front OS arch liner is pretty much trash.
I intend to raise the front by 10mm or so, then revisit the corner weights to balance things back up again, and will give all of the other settings a review to see if I can gain a bit of ‘front end’ somewhere else.
Back to the damper settings, I appreciate it’s not possible to simply say “change X, achieve Y” but I’d welcome some tips on a ‘testing’ approach to try and tune them in a little sooner on my next track day.
This post probably sounds a bit negative so far, but neither of the above made the day particularly un-fun but it’s certainly given me something to think about (which is a good thing).
On to the positives, no sign of an oil leak!
The car pulled really well all day - and of course I was logging intake air temperatures. I can now compare three Blyton trackdays, very similar ambient temp on the OEM and Charge Cooled days (within 1 degrees) but the ‘ducting’ day was a bit higher.
Needless to say the CC is working, and it was noticeable on track. Even towards the end of sessions the car still had that 'zing to it.
A couple more “not very race car” complaints to make whilst I’m here:
- Got a rattly bulkhead trim. Probably introduced it when re-doing the fuel pump install in a bit of a frenzy a few weeks ago. Should be easy to sort.
- AC on the way home was sort of intermittent. Dreading a total failure after all of the cost/effort I put into restoring it over Winter I found that it would blow icy cold for a few mins, then warm for 10mins, then icy, then warm, etc. I found a middle ground where I could set the temp dial to ‘sort of low’ which seemed to keep the AC running full time. I’ve done some googling and apparently sometimes the system can freeze over if it’s working “too well” and you need to wait for it to thaw out… sounds like that could be feasible. There’s an uprated thermostat to fit which can solve it, but if it’s where I think it is - the clam needs to come back off to swap it… sod that. It’s liveable as it is if this “set temp to sort of low” technique proves consistent.
Apparently Javelin pictures are FOC nowadays, so I’ll post those up once available.
I heard about the freezing AC as well.
If you raise your ride height won’t that knacker your geo?
Do you get scrubbing on the road?
Useful day out though if nothing else than to find out you aren’t throwing oil everywhere!
A shame about the negatives but at least it’s come back still working! And it still looks lovely 
The online briefing/sign up sounds like it might be better than it used to be. Hopefully that sticks out of all of this if it is.
Yeah geo will need looking at again, but that’ll give me the opportunity to check for any other causes for the understeer. It only scrubs on the road if I’m doing a tight turn up a ramp/hill etc - can’t/don’t really generate the load on the car in corners that I do on track!
Cheers Darryl, yeah I’m hoping the TDO’s use this as an opportunity to modernise a bit. If I could make one criticism it was that the briefing was too easy to just skip/scroll past and click “I agree”. I’ve done site safety briefings before for example which are a bit more interactive and at least ask you a couple of site specific questions mid way through, I think that would work better for the track days too but it’s early days for everyone.
Bit of post trackday inspection today, done the following:
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Spanner checked the front brakes and cleaned the disks up best I could with some wire wool and brake cleaner. There were a few ‘high points’ from pad material but nothing too bad, pad condition looks fine too. Will do rears another day.
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Wound approx. 10mm ride height onto the front and checked out the arch liners. Woops!
This is the bulge that covers the headlamp pods from behind, this is the area where I expected to see a bit of wear as it seems to be an S2 trait once lowering at all below standard ride height.
Whether it’s normal to burn right through… I’m not too sure!
Onto the main body of arch liner, there was a large hole burned straight into the top if it:
Luckily there’s a big air gap above that, no clam/components to damage but this certainly isn’t sustainable long term. Hopefully 10mm ride height does the trick but aside from that I could maybe look at a stiffer ARB at the front to try and minimise roll.
I’ve clicked the dampers back to 14F/12R so a nudge softer than before, will see how I get on with that.
I’ll get some geo booked later this month to see if we can come up with a better compromise on setup.
Interesting. I might head out in a bit and check mine.
Rather than a material being inline/infront could you plastic weld something behind this arch liner to prevent ingress of dirt etc?
Have you been on track since you’ve been running your current ride height? Mine survived just fine right up until I rocked up to Blyton!
I was thinking of a less robust version of your suggestion with some tape for now, at least to allow me to gauge whether more ride height is the fix or not. If adding 10mm doesn’t fix it I may need to look at something else such as stiffer springs or an ARB or something - I don’t think my Nitrons will go much higher!
Nope! I havent been on track. Covid sorted that. I know I have some wear already though
Interesting measuring the intake temps, I have been measuring mine, a quick half hour run and max i can get it to is 45° on full hard acceleration and crushing temps around 28° ok it’s not a hot day but interesting all the same.
Not sure how this compares with other cars, I am running a bigger IC. The Europa been CC would sit at 30° all day long whatever conditions.
Yeah I got a bit obsessed, but it was something interesting to monitor!
Your road pulls sound similar to what I had last year, generally got up to the 40s on a “pull” but the nature of road driving means you’re rarely going to be going from pull to pull back to back, so even the OEM IC does manage to recover fairly well. On track it’s a different story and they slowly keep climbing into the 80s or above on a hot day, I think that’s where the ECU timing really gets pegged back.
There’s an old thread lurking around on Exiges.com somewhere in which the aftermarket intercoolers of that time were all tested back to back and the consensus was that with standard air flow they didn’t make much difference BUT they responded much better than the OEM one once you threw more air at them via sidepod ducts etc.
If I were to run an Exige S exclusively for road blasts I’d be happy with the sidepod ducting and an air/air intercooler. I don’t think the charge cooler adds much for road usage, unless you start to push for more boost with a smaller SC pulley etc.
I will try and find that thread 
Regarding the wheel arch liner, they are basically a sacrifical item if you have lowered the car at all.
Its the area behind the headlights that gets worn away. What I’ve done is bonded an aluminium section into the liner to fill the hole and protect the back of the lights. Works well, lasts longer and can be replaced, while costing much less than new liners.
This isn’t the thread I had in mind, but I stumbled across this today - some good reading in there, even though I think most aftermarket IC brands heavily revised their designs since this: Exiges.com - Exiges.com - Lotus exige club
Cheers Evo, I did a good bit of reading last night and came to a similar concluson. I think trying to raise my ride heights to save my arch liners will ultimately be a futile mission unless I go back to 130/130 stock setup.
I have spoken to a few people who I know and trust who do suggest that 110mm at the front is still probably a bit on the low side for an S2. I’m going to take that advice and raise to 120ish and then the rears will just get configured at whatever height retains the optimal weight distribution (probably close to the 130mm OEM height).
As for the arch liner, I’ve been recommended to try roofing tape, I’ll use that to patch up the holes and then I can at least gauge at my next trackday how much damage they take from the 120ish ride height (if any). If they come away unscathed I’ll consider buying some new ones (if they’re even available?) but if they take a bit of light damage still, I’ll just keep repairing them between trackdays!
My headlight pod seems to be unscathed, but to be honest I really wasn’t fully “on it” at Blyton so with me at my best I imagine I could have easily taken chunks out of them from behind.
I’ve done a few track days at 120/120 and I’m not wearing through the liners 
Thanks Matt, good to know
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