Over the weekend I had another U2U (from SELOC) about someone getting the dreaded 5.5k rpm limit. I’ve recommended they go get it diag’d to see if it’s the wheel speed sensor (as it “could” be a genuine misfire)…
But if it is surely this HAS to be a silly amount of cars with this problem, I’m getting an Emerald to get round it as have a fair few others which IMHO is just stoopid.
Should this be a fault with the car? And why doesn’t the Speedo one go??? The only difference will be the routing through the engine bay (the speedo one goes along the upper wishbone).
If it was one or two isolated instances then maybe it’ll be OK but as it’s quite a lot now I personally thing something should be said / acknowledged by Lotus IYSWIM.
Sounds fair - they can pay for my new leads, plugs, coil and ECU!
We could also have a winge about warping brakes, cracking clutch hoses, breaking air con, exploding radiators, cracking water pipes and disintegrating CATS… etc etc etc
Well I guess there’s a sizable list and as the saying goes “Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious”…
But disc warpage I’d expect on any trackcar that sufficientially abused The CAT is the oddest one on there but the rest is kinda “wear and tear”, pipes going, clips falling off, etc etc
But this is always cropping up and people are spending a fortune changing leads, plugs, coil etc… When they don’t need to. I’d at least have liked the option to turn the misfire detection kit off and trust my know how to detect a misfire (and a big one is obvious enough )…
I dunno and not that bothered as my Emerald will be with me very soon (along with Shocks / Springs) so I’m out of that equation IYSWIM
Considering I have only been on the track with my car for the sum total of about an hour I don’t think that the problems I have had can be put down purely to wear and tear. The discs used to warp after a couple of minutes of road use because they are not up to the job, the radiator went pop because of it�s crap design with crimped on plastic side tanks, everyone�s air con breaks so that is obviously a design fault and I�m not the only one to have a CAT go bang and destroy the exhaust on it�s way out.
I love my Lotus but I do wish they would spend a bit more time testing their cars before putting them on sale as so many of these problems are really common and could easily be ironed out.
The only good thing about the problems is that it has given me the excuse to replace them with shiny new parts . Ally belled discs, SS exhaust and silenced CRP, Ally radiater and Emerald ECU… now all I need is the shocks to drop off so I can justify buying some Nitrons .
Mark, not wishing to appear, ahemm, unsympathetic I paid prob over the odds for my Exige because it was in rather good fettle, never, touch wood had a major prob (in 20k miles), it has been totally reliable and I don’t subscribe to that hackneyed LOTUS acronym - you gets what you pay for???
Simon, with great respect, I think you have probably been lucky with your car.
I have now had my Exige for just over a year and it too has been totally reliable. Nonetheless, such has been my experience of Lotus cars, I don’t expect this to last indefinitely.
Prior to the Exige I had a brand new Elise S2. Although I admittedly never had any major problems with it, there were several minor niggles that were undoubtedly down to poor build quality.
Things like the rear view mirror falling off 200 miles from home and a series of very annoying and never cured squeaks whenever it was warm.
And if you really need evidence of the lack of quality inherent in ALL our cars, you only need to consider the current floor corrosion recall.
I am sure that it is this reputation for poor attention to detail that has to date prevented Lotus from doing well in the �30K+ car bracket.
I had over a year of perfect reliability with mine before having a spate of problems but hopefully I have upgraded most of the weak components in the car now so maybe I can go back to a bit of pleasant reliability soon. The Exige is always going to be a bit marginal on reliability though as the engine is in such a high state of tune for a road car and it tends to vibrate components to death.
My car was suffering from the 5.5k problem on sat and Dave R suggested turning off the ingition pressing the accerlator 10 times! then it was fine.
Personally I think that was luck Apparently that reset’s the TPS but only on Rover MEMS stuff… Apparently
Mark, not wishing to appear, ahemm, unsympathetic I paid prob over the odds for my Exige because it was in rather good fettle, never, touch wood had a major prob (in 20k miles), it has been totally reliable and I don’t subscribe to that hackneyed LOTUS acronym - you gets what you pay for???
At the end of the day I didn’t pay top dollah for my car, I knew it needed some work, it’s already had a fairly hard life and will continue to have an even harder existence by my hand This I accept…
However my grip was with the misfire detection kit is that loads of people have had this trouble and there isn’t a definitive cure and Lotus don’t seem to know anything about it IYSWIM.
I do love my car and wish Lotus the greatest of sucess but I think Herman is right and you’re pretty lucky… If you wonder about the build quality of our cars, just look at the build quality In places it is quite shocking IMHO… But that’s coming from driving Toyota’s…
My first track car was a MkI MR2 that cost me �800… It had 208,000 miles on the clock and in a year of doing at least one trackday a month, in summer around 3 per month, it never once missed a beat… It’s just accepting the difference for me
Mark and HM this is my 13th Lotus and believe me the build quality of the Exige is superb - in comparison to mass build manufacturers I concede it may be found wanting however a mate has a 55AMG? Merc (�80k)and out of 6 months of ownership he has had the pleasure of driving it but for 10 days
Over the weekend I had another U2U (from SELOC) about someone getting the dreaded 5.5k rpm limit. I’ve recommended they go get it diag’d to see if it’s the wheel speed sensor (as it “could” be a genuine misfire)…
But if it is surely this HAS to be a silly amount of cars with this problem, I’m getting an Emerald to get round it as have a fair few others which IMHO is just stoopid.
What do you dudes think?
RL
If the ECU has had the recall done then the 5500 revlimit is most likely due to a real misfire… so you need to get to the bottom of this ?? I don’t think that too many people these days ahve been getting this problem have they??.. more people have problems with starting no?? I know you had problems and eventually got it down to a faulty ECU wheel speed sensor yes ??.. everyone agrees this is a crap design but i ain’t sure what we can do with it… other than get an Emerald… … I don’t have enough time these days to read SELOC with much regularity so maybe you know more cars with this problem, but are you sure its really wide-spread?
ps
Randy – did you ever actually sort your misfire or did you just newk it by going Emerald??
believe me the build quality of the Exige is superb
Simon, I agree that the more recent Lotus cars are far better than what the company used to produce.
One also needs to bear in mind that these are essentially hand made cars manufactured in a relatively low volume environment. This is a large part of the appeal of the Lotus brand to many of us, of course.
It’s just a pity that there are so many potential niggles, which I think is what Remarklima was originally asserting at the start of this thread.
And what is so disappointing is that so many of the problems could be ironed out at will, for example the very poor quality of many of the fixings on the Exige - I had many of these changed to better ones at the factory!!!, so they obviously have the parts.
And don’t forget who pays for the vast majority of these oversights - the Lotus customer!!!
Any chance this rev limiting issue could also be the cause of loss of power I suffered recently as I tried to leave a junction smartly - put the foot down car started off then it was as if someone had pulled the rug out from under it - just lost its go momentarily. I didnt see what the rev counter was displaying at the time so cant be sure. Any one else experienced this?
RL
If the ECU has had the recall done then the 5500 revlimit is most likely due to a real misfire… so you need to get to the bottom of this ?? I don’t think that too many people these days ahve been getting this problem have they??.. more people have problems with starting no?? I know you had problems and eventually got it down to a faulty ECU wheel speed sensor yes ??.. everyone agrees this is a crap design but i ain’t sure what we can do with it… other than get an Emerald… … I don’t have enough time these days to read SELOC with much regularity so maybe you know more cars with this problem, but are you sure its really wide-spread?
ps
Randy – did you ever actually sort your misfire or did you just newk it by going Emerald??
Rox,
It’s not a genuine misfire at all, and I nearly went down the same route as Randy and brought the coil as well… If you get the standard ECU plugged into the lotus scan tool it has all the error codes.
Last time I had it checked there was one error… WHEEL SPEED SENSOR You can also get live data and see that it’s f**ked as it reads zero.
Again I’m just bypassing this sensor with an Emerald now as I want to have some fun over the summer but my original intentions were to keep the car standard… Now I would have been stuck at 5.5k rpm!!! Which is NO fun what so ever
So no I don’t need to find the cause of my misfire, the ECU is thinking there’s a misfire
Herman, that’s exactly it, just a few little things that mean you can really enjoy the car I don’t mind shocks, bearings, bushes, the odd gasket here and there, wear and tear and parts going wonky… But all this woe with engine management shouldn’t happen, even if there was an option to remove the misfire detection kit IYSWIM
ps
Randy – did you ever actually sort your misfire or did you just newk it by going Emerald??
I did have an intermittent misfire which, no, I never got to the bottom of and since I have had the Emerald it hasn’t happened again. Probably overkill but I needed to upgrade to 190 spec at some stage anyway and I would have chosen an Emerald to do that with every time.
ps
Randy – did you ever actually sort your misfire or did you just newk it by going Emerald??
I did have an intermittent misfire which, no, I never got to the bottom of and since I have had the Emerald it hasn’t happened again. Probably overkill but I needed to upgrade to 190 spec at some stage anyway and I would have chosen an Emerald to do that with every time.
If it hasn’t come back I’d say it was the Wheel Speed Sensor causing it… See, the misfire detection kit will cut the injection to the offending cylinder to stop the CAT from being melted and then it seems like the car is missing all the time… Which it is but the ECU is causing the miss IYSWIM.
If it hasn’t come back then that’s what I reckon it is
RL… i wasn’t specifically discussing your own ‘misfire’ but more generally I was making a sweeping statement about all the others you mention against the background of some of the things you were saying… anyway, i understand your point - awerabest
BTW how much is a wheel speed sensor?
Anyone know exaxtly how/why the ECU uses this offending article? Why does the ECU decide to goto gethome mode and revlimit if this sensor is duff??
Anyone know where Nick Adams hangs out these days?
Ce La Vie!