I havent been on track yet, no. Its around 15mm lower at the front I think but as you alluded to I have stiffer springs than most. Ill revisit it in a few weeks to see if I have any scrubbing.
I must say though - my wheels dont appear to be nearly as in arch as yours
Bright lights mister. What have you got?
Nothing special mate, not touched them since I bought the car anyway.
I tried all sorts of bulbs in my old Elise, never really made a significant improvement tbh…
Wearing out arch liners and the backs of the headlamp assemblies is standard on a track Exige, in the end I just cut what got in the way and ground off some of the headlamp back, I ran my car at 105\115 but had stiff springs on 46mm nitrons
Phew! Good to know [mention]ade[/mention] thats exactly what I have 
Yeah I’m ready for a bit of arch liner wear, as I say I had it on my Elise too - just want to give myself as much room as possible. With my car lowered onto its wheels in the current setup, I was getting arch liner contact going from lock to lock stationary which is not great - but when I last tested that the clam was not on, and so the arch liner wasn’t screwed in its “up most” position. I’ll test it again this week now I’ve got a clam on and if I can at least turn lock to lock without it scrubbing - I’ll be happy to go get it on the road to align it.
I’m booked in for Dyno (just for a general health check) and geo in early March, so I’ve finally got a deadline to stop mucking about.
I am pretty much done though, clam is all fixed on now and I just need to take the car out for a little run to try and force some air out of the ABS system before giving the brakes a final bleed.
I’ve picked a couple of bits and pieces up recently, stuff that was on my list for later in the year but both came up in classifieds/facebook groups for cheep cheep so I jumped on them both and might as well look to get them sorted too.
Similarly to my Elise I’ll rivnut this to the boot and will probably stick a cut-off switch in.
For anybody following the thread you’ll know I installed a cheapish 3-in-1 gauge earlier last year, I picked it because it came with a known-good Lotus adapter ring for the air vent and I just needed something quickly to go with the install of my new sump. In all honesty that gauge is absolutely fine, and I should really just keep it - but it never had the aesthetic I was looking for, and it has boost pressure which I’ve never been too bothered about monitoring - so a large proportion of the screen real estate is hogged by a measurement I don’t care about.
I’d had a SPA gauge in mind since the beginning, but it’s smaller than the one I’m removing so something would need fabri-bodging to get it to fit nicely. I think I’ve got a plan now, and it should look nicely OEM once it’s in. The back lighting is very customisable so I should be able to match the orange of the OEM stack, and it has added functionality of low/high warnings and the ability to feed an external warning light/buzzer which may be a nice addition for oil pressure in the future.
The sensors are the same 1/8npt as the ones I’ll be removing, so other than dribbling a bit of oil on the floor I should be able to swap it out without too much aggro.
Thats SPA setup looks familiar , as does the battery 
Do you have this gauge too, if so is it vent mounted?
I have half a plan for mounting it but I’m open to inspiration 
Yep! Exactly the same. It is vent mounted as well.
Excellent, at least I know it’ll fit! I assume it was fitted to your car before you bought it? I don’t remember it from your thread, but I may have missed a page or two. 
I got in from work a little early today so took the opportunity to take the car up and down the lane to try and trigger ABS so I could do another bleed. I had a slight problem with that plan, in that ABS isn’t currently working! I’ve got the ABS light on permanently and it didn’t clear after a few yards of driving (which it normally would after confusing the wheel speed sensors on axle stands) and I couldn’t trigger it for the life of me.
So either this is because the ABS system does indeed have an air pocket, or I’ve picked up some damage to one of my wheel speed sensors (the latter I’ve experienced before at Blyton, so I need to check my previous repair).
If it’s the former, I don’t know what my options are other than driving it to Lotus and letting them plug their scan tool in to cycle the ABS solenoids. 
Yes but I have had it in and out a good few times being nosey …
Cheers mate, looks good and yeah definitely looks lower than mine now that I can see it properly.
[mention]andybond[/mention] do you know if your steering rack has been raised?
I never bothered on my Elise, but people/the internet told me that at the rideheight I had, I should have been experiencing bumpsteer. I’m not even sure I know what that is, but I’m now wondering if I should be raising the rack on my Exige. As far as I know it’s achieved by sticking some shimmed brakets into the footwell bolts that go into slotted holes in the chassis. Cheap to do, if not a total pain in the ass due to positioning.
Not sure whether this would have a negative impact at a certain rideheight, and positive once dipped below a certain height - or if it’s just universally a good thing to do?!
Not in my ownership but I am not saying it hasnt.
I get no bumpsteer at all. It feels superb.
Cheers Andy. It seems to be a topic that lots of people talk about but I don’t actually know anybody who’s done it other than a good friend who runs a VX.
I talked to Dan @ HPE about it briefly this morning and he said that he did it once years ago on a car that was ‘extremely’ low but just hasn’t felt the need to on anything running a sensible amount of ride height. I’ll leave it alone I think.
Dan and I are both extremely happy with the height of the car and I am delighted with its handling characteristics. I would trust Dans judgement on this one
Suspension aside for a minute…
I ‘fixed’ my OS indicator.
On my Elise my OS indicator made a bid for freedom whilst doing the NSL due to a broken clip, I solved that by drilling a hole in it and tying it with string to part of the radiator shroud under the clam. When I bought my Exige I checked the security of the indicators straight away and found one close to making its own escape, not snapped like my Elise but the nub of the clip had worn right down.
I tied it at the time, but decided to ‘fix’ it properly with the Lotus documented fix:
Before:
After:
It actually seems like a nice solution, grips the indicator in place much better than the OEM setup so I’ll sort out the NS proactively too.
With that sorted I made a start taking the interior out…
I ripped out the old gauge and wiring and got to work on my new one. Recycled my previous ISO adapter and put my new loom-tape fetish to good use.
The SPA gauge comes with some wiring that looked like it would be too short to reach the engine bay. I got in touch with them and they offered to make me up a new set of wires FOC I just needed to give them the measurements. With this in mind I wanted to mock up the install, but decided to try an alternate wiring route to try and make the existing wire fit. As the gauge is in the driver side vent, I decided to run down the sill pad instead and round the back of the driver seat into the central grommet down into the engine bay near the sump. With this new route it was pretty much a perfect fit so no new wiring needed.
With the interior out I also took the opportunity to lift the fuel pump out. The only reason to do this was for a quick check over as I’ve had the odd bit of fuel surge on track which in fairness is quite normal for these cars on sticky tyres, but after having a similar issue on my old Subaru I wanted to check for an easy fix such as the filter sock having fallen off…
No such luck, sock very much attached but whilst out I decided to get on the phone to Gaz @ Spitfire to see if he could ID the pump in it. My car has an uprated pump to handle the 260 upgrade but I wasn’t sure what it was. I took the pump to Gaz as he could dismantle it and rebuild with new seals on hand if needed and he identified it as the denso item that Lotus fitted to the 260 cups. One thing led to another and we ended up deciding to put one of Gaz’ uprated pumps in it which would flow more than the denso if needed and would just future proof me even if I ever needed it. Denso is still fine though and only 5000miles on it so will stick it on eBay or something.
As for the aforementioned fuel surge issues, need to look towards a new larger capacity/baffled tank I think.
I have a gaz pump on mine! Great bit of kit!
I like the indicator fix!
