Strangely satisfying thing, soldering - always good to look at a proper neat job!
Must be something to do with the age-old attraction to heat and shiny metal!
Congrats on a problem solved 
Agreed I love a bit of soldering, I’m not actually convinced that I’m any good at it as I just started doing it through messing with cars - never really taught how to do it but as far as I know none of my joins have failed yet. This cars ABS system and now heat/cool controls is now dependent on it, so fingers crossed. 
Oh, also soldered my Wife’s breast pump after she launched it across the kitchen 
I’m not declaring a success yet, but hopefully will get some miles covered at the weekend - still have the multimeter ‘diagnostic’ lead in the cockpit so I can monitor like a hawk.
Actually, proof that I’m no good at it.
Soldering Iron smells like an old BBQ every time I fire it up
Well done on troubleshooting the issue.
Like a bit of soldering myself, and, as hi-fi/headphones enthusiast, the importance of a good connection (i.e. soldered connections), using the correct mixture of solder (silver, tin, etc) for best conductivity and strength is not to be underestimated.
We’ll done
A few years back I was soldering and hung the iron on my vice as I did some wiring. The solder wire fell on the floor, I bent to pick it up and like having an injection, the hot iron sank into my inner elbow. 
I had poisoning for 10 days and felt absolutely sick as a parrot 
OK A/C saga not quite done yet…! I’ve done a few miles this weekend and the flap has behaved impeccably so I think I’m OK to tick off that issue from the list. AC has also performed great too, so I had no reason to suspect further issues until…
Took my OSF arch liner off last night to inspect the post-Blyton scrubbing damage and refit some more roof tape. I found a small trace of oil/fluid on the top side of the arch liner… Initially scaring me to death that I’d sprung another oil cooler leak.
On closer inspection the fluid was definitely “oily” but not engine oil, it was unlikely to be coolant from the CC circuit as I’m running a very weak coolant mix in there so it’s more watery than slicky - that could leave only the refrigerant PAG oil stuff from the A/C system. 
I fired the car up and had a good poke around, and sure enough it seems I have a very small pin-prick leak in the new AC pipe that was made up over winter. You can just see it slightly bubbling when the compressor is running and weeping out the tiniest bit of oil. Obviously for the sake of the o-zone I won’t use AC till I get it sorted.
I’m not too disappointed/shocked about this. Back in Winter we (myself and the mobile AC guy) weren’t 100% happy with the pipe because the OEM one had a pressure relief valve in it, and in order to retain that valve we had to knock up a weird half hard/half flexible pipe that didn’t fill us with confidence with regards to road vibrations etc.
I think we both expected the pipe to crack or a crimp to fail, not for the flexi part to gain a pinprick leak though 
Since doing that, I’ve been chatting with another local chap who has gone through a similar process trying to replace his AC plumbing but he managed to obtain replacements from Lotus. The replacements came without the pressure relief valve, and after querying with Lotus the response was that the valve was deemed no longer necessary and “new” cars no longer come with it.
That would simplify the replacement considerably as we could just run a flexi pipe all the way, allowing for much neater routing and making room for the CC hoses/oil cooler lines etc to all exist in harmony. So that’s the next job for the list, I swear though if this AC keeps causing my headaches it’s ALL coming out! 
Oh and it looks like this pipe is just about serviceable with the clam on, will need to pop the plumbing off the charge cooler for access but should just about accessible… hopefully.
[mention]Fonzey[/mention] - I really admire you for sticking at it with the aircon. I can understand that it’s the kind of thing that can get you down if it keeps messing up, but it’s worth keeping if you have the skillset to do so… I removed mine completely as I’m mainly interested in improving my power-to-weight ratio and it’s almost impossible for me to make easy gains to the power side of that equation, so faced with non-working parts on my car, they’re going in the bin, lol!
It’s one of those things, if you’d have told me back in November that adding a charge cooler would have a secondary cost of close to £500 and 20+ man hours to retain working A/C, I would have made a decision then to remove it all. As it’s happened, all of that time/money has been incremental - the odd £50 here and there, the odd hour tinkering - so it’s never felt like a big task or expense to keep it working. Also the more time I’ve spent on it, the more attached I’ve become to it’s functionality.
I’d like to think with this pipe replaced that I’ll have a robust and reliable system, but there are still a fair few expensive/difficult parts left that could cause me pain. The dryer and evaporator are still original, had them both out of the car and back in during the CC install so maybe in hindsight I should have replaced them both, as neither are expensive. Then we’ve got the compressor on the engine, and the dreaded sill pipes. The sill pipes I could probably replace myself with flexies based on my experience working in that neck of the woods for CC plumbing, but it would be a lot of work.
One of the reasons I’m keen to put in the matrix bypass is that it should in theory boost the performance of the cold air blowers (without AC), and therefor negate some of the value of having AC in the first place. That might make the decision to remove an easier one.
Bit of non-AC talk for a bit. Woo.
After much deliberation I’ve gone ahead and booked myself in for the supply, install and mapping of an ECUMaster Black ECU with RRR Engineering.
Plan is to get this installed with a wideband lambda sensor and data logging addon (because I’m a massive geek) and see how my car performs. The goal isn’t to go for silly power with this ECU, it’s just to give me the visibility and piece of mind that the car is behaving properly - particularly since adding the full exhaust system I’m putting a lot of faith in the factory ECU’s ability to adapt and keep things ticking along safely.
The main reason to get one is frankly that I just want one, when I was messing around with Subaru’s the cost of entry for standalone ECUs was just astronomical but in recent years there have been some real disruptive products come to market at much lower price points. The EMU Black stood out because I have local mappers that I trust and have known for years that work with them day in day out, and they also happen to produce a legit plug n’ play version for the 2ZZ.
I’m going to RRR rather than use my local mapper(s) for the initial install purely because they have the knowledge and experience working with Lotus platformed 2ZZs specifically - so I want to benefit from that experience for the initial mapping session, but knowing I can review any changes and tweaks to my setup in the future locally is a huge bonus.
It’s a few weeks away yet, but already finding stuff to geek out on and get a bit excited with.
One of the downsides (if you can call it that) with switching to this ECU and a custom map is that my car will likely make a little more power/torque than it does currently - mainly due to the charge cooler and exhaust additions. I’m running 440cc injectors still which should keep things pegged back a little bit (550’s would really untap the potential of my current hardware) but there’s a real chance I’ll be pushing my gearbox into the danger zone.
A recent thread on this very forum has got me thinking about this properly, I can’t plead ignorance - I know the chances of a 3rd/4th or FD failure are going to increase exponentially beyond 260bhp so if/when that failure comes I can’t really complain about it. If I get a catastrophic failure I shall just put my hands in my pockets and deal with it, but the big question is whether or not I should be doing anything proactively in the meantime.
Gearbox cooling is something I can look at as an unobtrusive way to maybe buy myself a trackday or two, or if nothing else it’s not a sunk investment as it would be utilised for any future rebuilt box etc.
To start with I’d like to get a feel for how hot the gearbox runs whilst on track compared with road mileage, and see what sort of impact stint length has on it etc. I don’t want to add another gauge to the interior as I don’t want things to get crowded - but the new ECU gives me some alternative options. The plan is to add a temp probe to the drain plug of the gearbox, and wire that into the ECU once it’s installed as an aux input.
I picked up an M18x1.5 to 1/8NPT sump plug adaptor which I think is the right thread for the gearbox… but won’t know for sure until I drop the oil. Speaking of oil, this also arrived today.
This will allow me to log gearbox temps on my next trackday and analyse afterwards, I need to research this more but I may also be able to Bluetooth an ODB reader in too to read it real time.
Depending on what I find will depend on what happens next, I don’t really know what temp is to be considered “too high” for this box/oil but if I come to that conclusion I will get an oil cooler rig planned and installed. I know seriouslylotus used to have one listed on his website as a complete kit but it seems to be no longer available, though it shouldn’t be hard to put a kit together with an electric pump.
Again something I need to research more, but the new ECU may even be able to start/stop the pump based on the oil temp on the auxiliary input - that would be pretty cool.
Snap! My 3 bottles of MT-90 arrived yesterday, lol!
Not sure whether to just wait until after my next track day to do it, or not (Donington next week)…
If you get the traction control set up by RRR then I might have to ask you for your map via email - I’ll diff it and take the traction control stuff and put it into my map! 
I’m not 100% sure how good the TC is going to be tbh. My car has the factory option installed and it’s really bad… I normally leave it on for road driving, and a couple of times in the wet it’s failed to catch the car (before I did) and on track it’s the opposite - as soon as I get inside wheel spin it just kills all power, so it has to come off. Seems to be worst of both worlds.
I don’t know if the >08 variable one is any better or not.
As for the EMU offerings, they explained to me that they have two options for implementing. Both are variable on a rotary switch, so a bit of cockpit bling if nowt’ else.
1- Uses RPM rate to calculate slip. It was described to me as a work in progress and still needs more calibration.
2- Requires a wheel speed to CAN device for (in the words of RRR) “Motorsports level traction control”
Naturally as option 1 doesn’t require to spend any more money, I’m going with that. I don’t think the car needs traction control, knowing what I know about it now I’d have never paid for it as an option in a new car - but for the sake of fitting a rotary switch somewhere it seems like a no brainer to at least give #1 a try. Having variable control might make it a bit more usable on a wet track, as it’ll let the inside rear spin up a little bit before cutting power but I’ll just have to play with it and see.
My car is currently at Hangar 111 having EMU black installed and mapped - mapping is tomorrow- will give some feedback once I get it back… my car never had traction control as its 2004, so to start with I will not add it unless Greg at H111 recommends to do so…
I went there as my car has their 280s kit which Greg knows well…
One thing we’ll have to compare notes on, is cold starting… OEM ECU used to start extremely eagerly from cold, whereas this requires a couple of seconds cranking and even then it’s reluctant. I’m positive it’s simply a matter of finding the right fuelling and ignition advance, but I’d like someone to compare notes with! 
Good stuff, my car has some history with H111 before I bought it and Greg and Marianne(?) have been really helpful when I queried a couple of things. They’re a bit far for me to go though for any work RRR are hardly local, but much more convenient.
Good info, my cold start is a bit ‘meh’ anyway which I always put down to the lightweight battery.
Cold start is pretty simple to sort. Mine runs really well on initial cold start. It depends on the way the mapper, maps it.
Hangar 111 want to keep it an extra day to make sure cold start is right… so I hope I will have news to share…
You wouldn’t happen to be able to view your ECU’s params would you? Do you know what the advance is set to for cranking? Maybe fuelling at around ambient temperature? No worries if it’s a hassle, just feel like if I had another to compare to I’d be able to get mine better fairly easily Suppose I should just be more patient and ask The Hornet!
With my RS232 → USB cable that I plug directly into the ECU and with my software can read every parameter?
I’m really after cranking ignition advance and cranking fuelling at ambient temperature - but no worries if it’s too much hassle (and sorry to Fonzey for the thread derail…)