A couple of weeks ago I did a very sensible thing, I bought an Exige that had spent most of its life in car museum. This is my first Lotus so I am looking forward to learn more about this wonderful car.
I have a question if someone would like to assist me. Due to the low mileage on the car it has never been on a service. My experience with sportcars is that there are usually some fixes that has to be done, like upgrades of management systems etc. Is this true for the Exige as well?
regards
First of all welcome to the club! you will not be disappointed calling pesky on this one…come in Rob! Goran, I get the feeling you’ll be needing a sunstrip!
Welcome! Good choice (but why are a museum letting it go? It’s an obvious classic!)
There’s an ECU fix to stop mis-fires, get it to a dealer
All road cars originally had a baffle in the air intake to help get it through the Euro regs, get rid of it! Ask the dealer to do it when they do the ECU fix.
There is a 190 upgrade that’ll put the engine back to the way Lotus designed it before the Euro regs got it toned down. It’ll cost about a grand, although some will claim there are better 3rd party options for similar money
The ‘Yip’ noise that you may get over small bumps is (probably, nobody really knows) from the front suspension, learn to love it
The brakes are not up to the rest of the car. If you’re going to track it (and you really should!) fit some Pagid RS14s (better than 15s). Braiding those lines is a good step too.
In the meantime, the Lotus trick for bedding the pads in is to do a few hard stops from high speed, to soften the material up, and then stand hard on pedal for a couple of minutes
A048 tyres give more grip (in the dry), are cheaper and wear better
Goran, welcome and… which museum had it? We all know it’s future classic, but that’s in the future.
I just wonder which one was clever enough to have one early and why did they let it go.
First of all, thank you for all your comments, now I only have to find someone in sweden who can help me with my car. The museum is in Gothenburg and is called autocollection. It belongs to a friend of mine and I can recommend a visit there if you ever come to Sweden. The reason for the owner to sell the car is that most of the cars is older (an example is an Lotus 12 from 1957). He got about 40 really interesting cars in total.(He is a very lucky person)
And by the way, Exige is a great car to drive in the snow as well.