With almost everyone on here so busy fettling Exiges I’m wondering what I can do to mine . . . might check the tyre pressures, I suppose. Turn over the spare engine? Reorganise my Exige archive?
Catalogue bolt collection?
Way in advance of my skills!
What happened to your winter refresh @ Phoenix? Did we ever get updated pics on that?
Thommo
You can look at my new bike pedals. Power meters with Bluetooth and ant+ comms.
That will keep you busy for 30 seconds.
I’m awfully sorry, but I thought you said you had bluetooth cycle pedals? You did say that… right… where the hell have I been that this is a thing??
It was done so quickly by Ollie and reassembled that I don’t think I took any pics. Then again there could be a whole album and I’ve just forgotten about it. I will have a scout round.
Very nifty kit . . . I have enough trouble keeping up with my Garmin and its foibles.
- PS: Got a new bike on the way, discs and Di2. Not sure of arrival date as yet.
Couple of updates from the weekend, with more to come when I finish off a few things tomorrow/Wednesday depending on postman.
Got my new ARB fitted.
It’s a 1" bar from Racefab, I mentioned a few trackdays ago that I was committed to trying one to try and cut out the ‘delay’ I was feeling on faster sweeping turns such as Port Froid at Blyton or the Jim Clark Esses at Croft. It’s probably another controversial change as generally body roll = grip, but I feel like I want to try it a little stiffer up front. It’s an easy change to revert if I don’t like it, besides it might protect my front arch liners a bit too. 
Next I had some painting to do. I noticed when I took my fuel filler cap surround off during clam removal that I had some lacquer peel underneath it. I forgot to take an initial photo as it looked worse than this, but I’d cut off the worst of it with a blade before this photo.
It’s just visible in the 6 O’clock position, wasn’t really visible on the car but I did want to try and nip it in the bud before it spread. I rubbed it down with 1000 grit and cleaned it all up before squirting some Halfords clear lacquer over the area:
I’ve got a bad track record trying to do paintwork on actual body colour panels, so for the last few cars I’ve owned I’ve stuck strictly to painting satin black accessory panels and that’s it… but this came out a treat. I was expecting to need to wet sand it back and polish it all up a bit to blend it back in to the main panel but it looks amazing straight out of the can.
It may look nasty under the cold light of day once the car is wheeled out into the sun, so I’m still expecting to do some DA work with it - but for now I feel it couldn’t have gone better. 
I got my calipers finished off tonight. Most of this effort is from the weekend but needed to wait for a couple of bits.
Initial plan was to just clean the calipers up as they were in very good condition for the age of the car, but as I had some down time waiting for wishbones to get back I thought I’d put a bit more work in.
Fronts are easy to strip so did these “properly”. Rears are apparently a nightmare, and there’s a fair chance of writing them off by breaking an unobtainable grub screw/bolt so I left them alone and did what I could ‘externally’.
50:50 after the first degreasing. Pretty much good enough to go back on the car, but in for a penny and all that…
Step 2…
Pretty clean and ready for paint after the dishwasher.
The VHT paint I used recommends curing in the oven, so in they went. 160C for an hour!
Really happy with the finish, very close to the OEM look but hopefully a bit nicer to keep clean than the raw cast ally.
With the fronts rebuild with new bolts, fresh seals and pistons I got onto the rears. As I said before I didn’t want to dismantle these so they’d be avoiding the dishwasher and oven, but I compensated with a good blast with the heat gun to hopefully cure them enough.
Final 50:50s:
Really happy, I think they’ve scrubbed up a treat.
Well worth the extra effort after the first clean the look great after the full works
Look great Kyle !
Top job, once again!
PS: Kyle, I found my pics of recent (October) work at Phoenix. Will post elsewhere on here.
Big weekend as I got my wishbones back from Chris Type116 after blasting and plating.
I still had a fair bit to do, starting with masking off and spraying POR15 clear over the top. It seems to come out of the can like water when it’s cold so spraying in the garage wasn’t an option, so I converted the utility room into a spray booth (which went down better than expected…)
Everything got a couple of coats and then was left to cure over night. The following day I could start the fun stuff installing the nice shiny new balljoints and Nitron bearing kit.
The EliseParts BJ and Bush tools really made this a doddle, initially hard to stomach the cost for what is a few bolts and some machined metal but it’s worth its weight in gold once you start these sorts of jobs.
I got all eight balljoints done first so I could give the tops of them a quick squirt with POR15 and then got on with the bearings after it dried a bit.
Really happy with how it all came out, and hopefully these will be looking nice for years to come.
Colour is a really close match to the spitfire toe links.
This week I’ll gradually build the four corners back up, got fresh fixings all around to go on. Once that’s done I might actually be able to fire the car up and see if stuff works - like gears. 
looks great mate, 
Happy to help
They look really smart
Looks well that Fonzey . What are the benefits of the nitron bearing kit?
Looking really good I’ve only had limited mileage, but so far I am impressed with the move to the nitron bearings.
Finish on your wishbones look fantastic
Cheers Gents, I’m really happy with the finish. I hadn’t ruled out painting over the zinc plating with something like black or silver - but I think the ‘raw’ look works, especially contrasted against the few black/silver bits I’ve got to go with it.
In theory it’s removing play and compliance in the OEM rubber at the expense of a bit of noise/harshness. I’ve rolled the dice really depending heavily on other accounts that it won’t “ruin” the car, but what I did learn from my Elise (I did a suspension refurb on that and replaced with OEM rubber on that occasion) is that the stock bushes do not age well in these cars, not sure if it’s the nature of their usage or stifness elsewhere in the chassis or what - but my Elise was completely transformed with fresh bushes.
On my Exige, after only 25k miles a couple of the stock bushes were already making a bid for freedom and walking out of their homes. Given enough time/ignorance this could have caused interference between subframe and wishbone, seen pictures of plenty of cars that have ended up with perforations around the pick up points due to this. The bearings should in theory be maintenance free and remove this from concern.
Noted.
Ill have to have a poke around mine just in case.