Your car. Looks. LOW, lol!!
I was thinking the same! Speed bumps must be ‘interesting’ 
Yeah it’s very low. I find the lack of roof/windscreen is only 10% of the reason why it’s a terrible road car. The other 90% is down to ground clearance, it’s shocking. Think I actually got beached on one of those leaves.
With the amount of stuff coming off that tree we wondered if you’d been preserved in tree sap. Front plate blanked for an upcoming Instagram post, perhaps I should just have used the shot of the rear 
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I got lucky with the photography attendance on Sunday, another great shot!
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Needed to catch up since the wheelbearings.
Did you buy or have the nut and bolt through the center for the front bearings to give them an easier life?
Nice the trailer!
I cannot read this topic to much. I love the 211 in general.
No I haven’t used the bolts in the front bearings, I know the ones you mean though - I think they were present on earlier cars from Lotus but I haven’t bothered with them on any of my S2s, nor did Lotus.
Nothing really to update now, trailer is loaded ready for Silverstone. Looks dry so far, fingers crossed 
Onto Silverstone and the finale in my 2022 trackday calendar.
I’ve done a 20min session on the small National loop before at a car show, but never a trackday here and certainly not on the GP circuit, so I was pretty excited.
Car had been loaded on the trailer since the weekend and I felt weirdly under-prepared as a result. I think the mad rush of cramming stuff into the boot and passenger footwell on the night before normally settles my nerves!
I stayed the night local to the circuit, no towing dramas or exploding minibuses to report. On the morning of the trackday though I did feel pretty ill, banging headache and made myself feel rather car sick on the sighting laps… but I’d try not to let it bother me too much.
Thanks to Mark Holmes and James Roberts for the excellent photography as always, didn’t feel the need to take any of my own as there always seemed to be a massive lens pointing vaguely in my direction!
Sighting laps done on the AD08RS tyres that the car was on since Anglesey, but it was promised to be bone dry all day, so after the sighting laps I tried to settle my stomach by lobbing the AR1’s on. Been a while since I’ve seen the car on these wheels, I do like the colour still.
I’ve been an F1 nut for years, watched countless F1 laps and YT videos of Silverstone GP but it still felt like a very difficult place to learn. The sheer width of the track in places meant that you could take any number of lines into a corner, most of them are very fast and you can quickly run into trouble when you find the exit suddenly sneaking up on you.
Stowe nearly caught me out a couple of times in the early sessions, it sort of kinks back on itself just after you’ve settled in and committed your exit speed, a sharp lift here to avoid running out of exit can quickly lead into a tank slapper. Other corners that don’t even feature as “things” to an F1 car for obvious reasons are suddenly quite scary in a road car.
My sessions were kept quite short in the morning due to regular red flags, but my stomach and head thanked me for it. I was still feeling a bit car sick, but only on the cool down laps… I guess adrenaline kept me distracted when trying to do a hot lap. The buffeting on my helmet at 125+ mph was… severe, and not helping the headaches. I later improved on this by really tucking my head into my chest as much as I could.
The car was going great, right up until it wasn’t. I’d just passed the pit entry and I felt/heard a bit of a pop… and the car suddenly had no power. Then it had power, then it didn’t… and I kangeroo’d all the way round a lap which really did my head and stomach no favours.
Into the pits and quickly found the intercooler hose that had popped off. No harm done, just a fidgety job to do. The intercooler and plumbing don’t really line up very well on the 2-Eleven, so the silicone joiners take too much of a structural role. Something I intend to address.
I had a lambda related fault code on the following session, probably just hangover from the IC hose. I cleared it and had no reoccurrences for the rest of the day.
Despite feeling a bit “off it”, I was really appreciating the occasion at Silverstone. The circuit is an absolute monster, the almost creepy deserted grandstands towering above the track, the shear number of people entering the circuit premises in commuter traffic and the scale of the operation, quality of the facilities etc - all just made me feel really lucky to be there. A bit corny, but so glad I’ve experienced it.
As for the circuit itself, it definitely exposed some weaknesses of the 2-Eleven. My VMAX on the straights really struggled compared to the bigger machinery there, and the mind bending advantage the 2-Eleven has on the brakes and in traction zones was pretty lost at Silverstone. This didn’t really bother me, I’m not the type who likes to “win at trackdays” but I felt like I could have probably gone a bit quicker in my Exige here… which is the first time I’ve felt that. The V6 cars, even at the modest end of the range were just walking away from me.
Obviously the lack of power (40bhp down on my Exige) is part of it, but I can’t help thinking the 2-Eleven is massively penalised by drag too. The Exige is not a slippery car by any stretch, but I felt like it could happily pile on speed over 110mph or so where the 2-Eleven really struggled.
Where I could stomp on the brakes though, the car was as impressive as ever. Braking for Stowe from the thick end of 130mph was complete in a heartbeat, and even right at the end of the day I was over-slowing for it. I’d be screaming along, head rattling all over the shop, vision blurring trying to spot the braking points… I’d leave it as late as I dare, tap the brake and suddenly 60-70mph would just vanish from the speedometer, and I’d be left turning into Stowe feeling like I was far too slow. It’s incredible, and I’m taking my time to get used to it!
I did my best to learn the circuit, but with no hope of tuition in the 2-Eleven (yet, intercomm is planned!) I had to just do what I could from memory, and hope I was getting things vaguely right. I improved in a few bits, got a few bits wrong - but left bags of time on the table. It sounds daft, but two iconic corners of Abbey and Copse feel nigh on identical when you’re sat down bobbing along the road and even in late afternoon I was getting disorientated by which one was which. Is this the one with loads of tarmac run-off, or the one with gravel? Maybe that says more about the way I was feeling…
The Maggots and Beckets complex was a lot of fun, I tried a couple of lines here throughout the day but no matter what I did, I’d come out of the final bit onto Chapel curve feeling far too slow and not having to use anywhere near the full width of the track. More commitment needed into Becketts and somewhere that I expect I’ll find heaps of time next time I visit.
The Caterhams were another good example of how punishing straight line speed is at Silverstone. There were a couple absolutely crawling all over me through the majority of the circuit, but my advantage on the straights was enough to keep plenty of daylight between us.
The V6 Exiges were shadowed only by the Porsche metal in attendance. There was some pretty serious kit gracing us with their presence.
I finished the afternoon a little bit early, I needed some fuel to squeeze a final session in and my stomach couldn’t take the smell of pumping in a few litres of v-power so called it a day and got the trailer loaded.
I took a fair bit of video, but I’ve only really reviewed one session so far. The others were fragmented a bit by red flags, forgetting to turn the camera off between sessions… you know, usual gopro drama.
I want to go back, soon. Normally when I finish a trackday my laps have really stabilised and I hit a bit of an internal ceiling and can’t go any quicker. Reviewing my laps on video, I can see that pretty much every lap around I was taking chunks of time out of previous attempts - so I’m right at the foot of the learning curve for this one.
Eh well, that’s a wrap for 2022… time to start taking it apart I guess
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I’d love to say that was a daunting sight in the mirrors but between my head bouncing around and my mirrors wobbling about I didn’t have a clue what was behind me
Another fantastic write up.
Do you think the taking chunks out of laptimes at Silverstone every lap is just down to a lack of familiarity? I feel like I have hit a plateau at say Blyton or Donnington now due to lapping them pretty frequently.
I have done Silverstone before but same as you with a car club. Is it a “must do” track do you think? When I did it in another car which is admittedly far, far slower than the exige I felt the track was meant to be driven on by fast cars and not run of the mill stuff hence I didnt enjoy it as much as I thought I might.
Yes the big gains were because I was just so hopelessly lost on the circuit. It’s also a very long circuit, with laps in the region of 2 and a half minutes - there’s shed loads where you can gain and lose time.
I’d love to go again, and intend to book it next year. The lower powered Lotus’ do struggle there, if I only had one or two trackday opportunities in a year I’d probably give it a miss in favour of something more Lotus-friendly like Croft, Donington, Oulton, etc etc.
Another great update. Silverstone GP was the last trackday I did in my Exige before selling it. I had exactly the same problem with those two corners and double guessing myself which one I was at each time. I think it’s one of the best trackdays I’ve ever been on, I loved the track and the history etc helps.
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Entertaining and informative as ever. Looking forward to the winter updates.
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Great stuff, it looks like it was a brilliant day going by some of the photos I have seen on the LOT Facebook page.
I really enjoyed Silverstone in my old Elise. Yeah it was woefully underpowered, but I love that there’s so much to track to learn and the history of the place is inspiring.
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Time for my annual ‘summarise my plans for Winter’ post.
Since buying the car I’ve been battling with indecision, as it drives great and has no real need for improvement with the exception of the (very) hot day we had at Donington where it lost a load of performance due to high IATs.
I have a small pile of parts that were removed from my Exige, they’re probably worth more to me in fun/enjoyment than they are to sell on the used parts market, so this ultimately pushed my decision. So with that in mind, my plan to improve on a car that doesn’t need improving is:
- Fit ECUMaster Black ECU
- Fit 2bular exhaust manifold and sports cat, retain OE backbox though because it sounds ace.
- Fit ProAlloy chargecooler to fix the IAT issues on hot days
- Fit gearbox cooler
- Tidy up whatever I can find that is dirty, rusty or broken. General refurb
Bodywork will remain off the agenda for this Winter. As amazing as the car looks from 5 feet away, the gelcoat has cracked in a few places. The general consensus is that “it’s a 2-Eleven thing” and it’s only really aesthetic with no risk to the underlying coremat… so I’ll get another year out of it, then decide whether I want to invest in it further.
In terms of how that work will be ordered, it will likely be a bit mishmashed. Not sure whether to keep the thread updated chronologically or break each mini project down into its own timeline. We’ll find out soon I suppose.
For the chargecooler install, most of the bodywork will need to come off - so that’s a logical starting point, and removing the front clam will also give me some space to store ECU/Dash related gubbins.
I’ve removed Elise/Exige clams a few times now, these are totally different - but not difficult to figure out from just looking at the car, and reading the incomplete instructions from the service manual.
The ‘front quarter’ and ‘a pillar ducts’ as they’re called in the SM are easy enough to get off:
It’s then just a case of unbolting the oil coolers from the clam, and removing a couple dozen fixings from both within the cockpit and under the splitter, etc. Every single fitting (so far) has been a dome headed M6x16 so it makes keeping track of fixings for the rebuild really quite pleasant.
Oil coolers have DIY stone chip protection fitted, but the sikaflex stuff used also stuck them to the bodywork which was a bit annoying but nothing a few mins with a blade couldn’t fix.
A fixing inside the cabin had been inexplicably bonded in too. It may be a stripped rivnut on the clam which I can sort easily enough, but this needed a bolt extractor to get out.
…and finally the aero screen was removed. Big pain, it has some weather stripping sandwiched between it and the clam so after the (many) bolts were removed, it remained ‘glued’ in place presumably from where the weather strip had heated up and melted a bit. Tedious 20mins with fishing line to saw that off.
Two big electrical connectors in each wheel arch to disconnect the lights, and we were ready to lift.
It’s light, and very flimsy. Easily a one-man lift if you had arms long enough.
The car looks like a dream to work on, space and access everywhere.
No nasty surprises, everything looks straight and neat.
Pretty shocking contrast with the packaging of the Exige… you can see where 200kg goes with comparisons like this.
That concludes progress for now. Next steps are just to get organised, find somewhere longer term to store the clam and start planning out my ECU wiring. I’m still keen to stick to my original brief of not making any changes to the car that are not fully reversible, so no cutting/drilling/etc. This will require careful planning and maybe a few bespoke brackets to help me piggyback existing mounting holes/rivnuts etc.
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Another fantastic update and TBH I couldnt be a Fonzey update without a mention of a gearbox.
It will be a flying machine with the mods going on and increasing the HP.
Are there any more obvious signs that you have discovered yet on why the braking feels much better than your S2 exige did?
Good lord! That looks radically different under the front clam! 
“my plan to improve on a car that doesn’t need improving is:”
lol! I’m with ya buddy… I’m with ya… 
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Nope, its mechanically identical from what I can see - which matches the part diagrams.
It must just be a weight/inertia thing 
Looking forward to the next installment.
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