Engine & Box are out

General General Lotus Talk
1

Took the engine and box out tonight. Found the problem. lol

Am off to the pub for a swift half, will post a few pics when I get back.

Sean…

2

Found the problem. lol

[image]http://www.partyareus.com/photos/C67858-2T.jpg[/image]

3

go on Sean what was it?

I hope its not too serious

4

Am off to the pub for a swift half, will post a few pics when I get back.

Sean…

Must have a 24 hour licence!!!

5

Got back from the pub last night and couldn’t find the lead for my camera. Got it now, so here you go.

Engine out

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SeanBicknell/engineout.jpg[/image]

I took the clutch off and the plate looked like this:

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SeanBicknell/Clutch.jpg[/image]

There were loads of little bits of metal floating around the bell housing and clutch cover.

Luckily the flywheel and clutch cover look fine, so I am just gonna throw another clutch plate in for now. My new engine isn’t far away, so I don’t really want to spend any dosh on this one.

My jammed gearbox issue may not be as bad as first thought either. It looks like the outer of the gear change cable has pulled out of the swaged on end. So when I push the lever forward to change down, instead of the inner moving and moving the gear change arm on the box, the outer is moving and the arm on the box isn’t moving hardly at all.

The box was dropped off this morning with my gearbox bloke for him to have a quick look at anyway and I will have a new gear change cable made up or the existing one repaired if that is possible.

I am gonna throw a new cam belt on my engine while it is out and adjust the lifters as my engine sounds like it has a bag of gravel inside it. lol

Sean…

6

Believe it or not stripped clutch off today, I have exactly the same, bits of metal floating around the cover. Will take some pics of the pieces tomorrow and post them. 2 AP clutches with the same symptoms, from the 2 people saying AP road clutches are fine for racing with, you bunch of panic mongors

I still believe they are good, they just have to be purchased in pairs .

7

I just said they slipped and couldn’t hold on when giving it the wellies.
Didn’t know they also self destructed…

8

Sean,

Scuffers tells me that AP refuse to call them ‘A Racing Clutch’ anymore after he had 5 display the same symptoms as yours.

He said he gave up on the AP one and went to a 7.25" twinplate, its not road friendly though. but youd be better off with a Singla Plate Solid disk clutch, apparently lotus used these in the Autobytel as they had the same problems you are having.

AP apparently make them, but unsure if you can get them off the shelf, the problem with the standard one is that the centre can’t stand up to a dog-engagement gearbox.

I hope this helps.

Christian

9

Cheers Christian. I may look into a standard sized non sprung plate. I am going twin plate with my new engine, so don’t want to spend to much cash on my existig setup. Maddog has offered me a replacement AP sprung plate, as it probably only has to do Silverstone.

10

Oddly enough… my car is sitting in the workshop with the engine and gearbox out waiting for a new clutch too. Killed it at Brands in May… 3 days before the Exige-Dono day

11

… should add, I’ve been away on business (still am) so there has been no rush to get it repaired.