Aircon...more Con than Air!!!

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1

This will make David laugh, and apologies to Nick Adams for misusing his infomative posting onthe OLC but, I quote:"Hi Phil, sorry to hear of your troubles! The air-conditioning system fitted to the Exige had to be compromised to some extent to fit all of the necessary components in a very small space. The efficiency of the system is not helped by the exposed aluminium chassis which acts very much like a radiator, cooling the cockpit in the winter and heating it in the summer. This is reflected by the performance of the system, which will not achieve the levels of re-fridgeration achieved in more conventional systems fitted to larger cars. Having said that, the system should be capable of reducing the air temperature to a noticeable degree, so I�m afraid a trip to the dealers may be in order.Sorry, Nick"In other words, you guys are carrying the weight and power loss penalties but only getting the same cooling effect as winding down the windows!!!..and remind me…Lotus charged extra for this as well…

2

Yep, I can confirm that aircon is sht! Stuck it on yesterday, used sht loads of fuel and was still sweating mi gonads off! �1500 for a fancy button that slows the car down… What a rip off…!!!

3

Well I think I may have found a use for the aircon in it’s current form. The pipe coming out of the compressor is actually quite cold so if it could be re-routed to the inlet manifold we could get a small increase in combustion negating the power loss of the compressor drive belt?! Alternatively we could just leave it off I suppose [image]http://www.exiges.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif[/image]

4

In his Dr Evil voice.Muwhahahahahahahaha…Muwahahahaha…MuwhahahahHmm… [image]http://www.exiges.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/grin.gif[/image]

5

oh no, not this one again…but if you insist…at least, the poxy A/C doesn’t look as naff as some tinted side windows…he-he…and for the weight: don’t forget, I’m not a beens on toast or chippy eater either…funny, that, I also switched on this wonderful peace of machinery yesterday for the fist time…and it even worked…you wouldn’t believe it ! well, first, it made some quite strange noises…but we are used to all sorts of strange kind of noises in this car…he-he…but then after a while, I had to put me jumper on. it got that flipping fresh in the car…what about that then, eh?

6

Another idea for the aircon - leave the button pressed in (i.e. aircon on!), take someone for a spin, then say ‘And, if you press this button, it makes it faster!’… ‘Instant Turbo’ on a button… ;o)

7

[image]http://www.exiges.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/tongue.gif[/image] [image]http://www.exiges.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/tongue.gif[/image] [image]http://www.exiges.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/tongue.gif[/image] [image]http://www.exiges.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/tongue.gif[/image] [image]http://www.exiges.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/tongue.gif[/image] [image]http://www.exiges.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/tongue.gif[/image]Snigger SniggerSorry bruno but it does’nt work!

8

Sorry to open this old chestnut but…My new car delivery was delayed because. ughhh the air CON was not working. (thanks to JCT 600 for the loan of their demo car)Apparently the air box for the �1500 CON lives under the batery and is that flimsy it is prone to smashing.No Spares available as Lotus franticly try to get the last ones off the production line.After some preasure was brought to bear Lotus agree to take one of said boxes of the production line and DHL it to JCT 600 who fit it and I picked up my car last night.I tried the air con and was left less than impressed. My esprit air con was that cold it could ice condensation. So I put a temp probe in the vents. Suprise suprise! There is no bloody difference on or off.This one is set to run and run. I’ve paid �1500!!!

9

I would love to have been at Lotus when the design decision was made, maybe someone was in the wrong meeting and agreed to the wrong thing.“I’ve got an idea lets fit Air Con to the last few Exiges, I’m sure we can fit it in somewhere if we make it small enough to be useless.”"Brilliant I’ll put it on the price list right away. BMW charge about 2000 for theirs so we charge about 1500, ours won’t be quite as good so that seems fair."May be they just found a box of the things from somewhere when they were tidying up and decided to do something “useful” with them.All that said I did see an Exige with AC the other day and I have to say I liked the heating controls better on it. Dials rather than sliders. I’m not sure if these were different because of the Aircon though or just because it was newer than mine and Lotus started using other bits.

10

[image]http://www.exiges.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/grin.gif[/image]

11

erm…I don’t mind mine…at least, mine is sort of working… [image]http://www.smilies-world.de/Smilies/Smilies_klein/hidesbehindsofa.gif[/image] Bruno [image]http://www.smilies-world.de/Smilies/Smilies_klein/ylsuper.gif[/image]

12

got to add…
mines an 06 exige and the aircons fine !

fook … it’ll probably break down tomorrow now … !!!

2006 exige S 37 K miles

13

i can confirm that my 05 exige air-con does not make any difference to the incoming air temp.
Has anybody come up with a fix or had it regased ?

14

[quote=Mikespeed]i can confirm that my 05 exige air-con does not make any difference to the incoming air temp.
Has anybody come up with a fix or had it regased ? [/quote]

A common fault on the early 'yota cars is that the pipes corrode just inside the sill aft of the front wheel arch. It can be fixed with an upgraded (rubber coated i think) replacement from Lotus. Expect to pay circa �600 at a dealer.

Have some tracer dye put though first to confirm.

15

How easy is it to remove air con system?

I didn’t think it was fantastic over summer, made a slight difference to cabin temp but not enough to justify carrying the extra weight or burning the extra fuel.

16

Tal

There’s summat up with your system - it should be very effective.

Why are you worrying about weight savings, when you don’t even track it, or know what it/you can do as it is? I won’t mention tyres… :wink:

17

S2 air con shoud work quite well, on hot days I use it on track as well :wink:

18

Any excuse for not enough power!!! :smiley:

19

Absolutely, more power means I can leave the air con on on track :wink:

20

And at least you have a car to take on track! :smiley: