#84

Thanks @Alfa2Evora! That was the inspiration I needed. If it hadn’t been for the red calipers I would have been convinced that it had been my car 🙂 When I knew what to look for, I saw I can source the externa splined nuts locally. And for more frequent work on the race track I can use a set of steel nuts on the Braid Fullrace rims, which have more space.

I noticed that Evo magazine had a huge semi slick test recently, which I missed. Anyone here who read it and wants to share some reflections?

Do anyone use the standard Evora "Classic" rims with stud bolts? It seems like all coned M12 nuts have a 19 mm hex grip. And a 17 mm hex socket barely fits in the screw wells (?). Comments?

Thanks @SZ for your input! That was not clear from the instructions, or from any feedback when I approached them with this issue. Well, I used the white plastic adapter for the master cylinder and I have used as much stroke as I can. The end position for the pedal is fixed, what one can play with is the start position. Side note: My "local" (400 km) Lotus workshop highlighted that if you deviate from the original pedal position, the clutch position sensor may send wrong signals to the vehicle stabilization system. I set my pedal about 10 mm further out to get as much stroke as I could. Which didn't help. So, I will keep an eye on that potential issue once I am up and running again. I happend to meet Tilton at SEMA in Las Vegas back in November and talked with their representative. He said that there is an initial travel, before the cylinder closes towards the fluid reservoir, which given the lever ratio, is about 6 mm dead travel where the foot presses the pedal. That can be worth knowing when one is sorting out "sponginess". So, his conclusion, based upon my description was 100 % mechanical failure. 😞

.. almost there with the harness bar. And. I did what must be the final test before I go for a complete engine out operation. I held a finger on the clutch release arm while my dad started the engine. I could feel some axial movements. Not super evident, but when I pushed the arm in the direction for clutch disengagement, I could clearly hear a whining mixed with squeaking noise and some vibrations in the arm. I still haven't seen the clutch + release bearing etc, but of all tests I have carried out, of all money and time I have spent, this might be what I would recommend everyone to do as one of the first test if the clutch fail to disengage properly.

Maybe a bit late comment, but I went for the red Innovative (75 Sh I believe) engine mounts, when I replaced my engine a few years ago and I wouldn't say that it disturbs me. A droning Lotus Motorsport "silencer" dominates NVH by far, followed by road noise and intake sound/noise from the BOE Cold Air Intake (foam filter). Since then I have also elaborated on different suspension upgrades and that makes everything a bit more critical; rattling panels and so. However, I have read some comments somewhere about issues with broken Innovative mounts and poor response from the producer. That is all I know.

Is something about to happen here?? Well, the car has been standing still since .. August with all the dust and dirt from some daily commuting, so maybe this is an appropriate level of project to get going again. The blue Sabelt 3" 4-point harness has been on order since late July and has been promised to show up in two weeks since before Christmas. Which hasn't happened yet. It seems like a carbon fiber tail gate and the new ECU Master unit is also about to be delivered soon. Let's see.

I had an intention to keep the pace in this thread and update on the progress in the chassis development project, but obviously not much has happened since mid August. I sadly realize that the Evora has been standing still since 17:th of August. The clutch had been a bit noisy ,when disengaging, for a few weeks, and I had some feeling that it didn't disengage as much as it used to. I had experienced difficulties to get 1:st gear in a few times. That evening I parked the car on the driveway to cool down during dinner, then I was supposed to drive it into the garage. But no. Totally impossible to get it in 1:st gear. I stopped the engine. Pumped the pedal like 10 times, started the engine, released the clutch and drove in. Since the master cylinder is infamous for failing, I ordred an upgrade kit with air freight from BOE Fabrication in US. Took the painful decision to swap it myself. And. No. As soon as I started the engine the pedal got spongy. I bled the circuit in all imaginable ways. To be 100 % sure it wasn't the hydraulics, I also swapped the slave cylinder. Same result. Right now I do not know for sure what is wrong. However, after reading several clutch trouble shoot manuals, talking F2F with Tilton about how their master cylinder should behave and talking to several Lotus owners and mechanics (no one have experienced this issue..) I now believe it is a mechanical failure that knocks back the slave cylinder just slightly when the engine is running. I loose just over 1 mm in slave cylinder travel when the engnine is running and maybe in combination with clutch wear, it is sufficient to disable the functionality. So. Engine out is the recipe right now. I just have to finish my Alfa 155 Q4 engine rebuild and get it off the lift, so that the Lotus can get its treatment 🙁

Thanks for your input @Bruss! When thinking more about it yesterday I believe that the fact that it gets worse after putting the car on the ground, tilting it dramatically when lowering the front first, speaks in favour of poor bleeding. I just went over to an Exige S2 owner in the neighboourhood and borrowed his kit with combined pressurization and vacuum. Let's see what happens during the day. I know from the development of engines and valve trains with awkward oil circuits that pumping oil from the lowest position is the only way to get rid of trapped air. With multiple local highest points, adding vacuum in the other end doesn't hurt. With low viscosity brake fluid, it is probably more likely that the fluid could flow "on the floor" under an air bubble if the velocity is low as it probably is with only vacuum on the slave cylinder bleed screw. A lot of speculations .. 🙂

A few weeks ago I suddenly couldn't get in gear when I was about to to just drive the car into the garage. I had noticed the infamous squeaky noise from the clutch lately (as mentioned in other threads) and sometimes issues to get in gear during the summer. Given all testimonys of failing master cylinders, I ordered the Tilton kit from BOE in US. Once fitted, it seemed to have fixed the issue. Until I put the car on the ground and was about to drive. Spongy feeling and short stroke. Continued to vacuum bleed from the slave cylinder. Still the same behavior. Ordered a new slave cylinder and fitted. Did both vacuum bleed and pump - hold - bleed - release, the traditional way. It feels super firm and gives 8 mm stroke, I started the car on jacks and once started, the stroke falls about 1 mm, but I could get into 1-4 + R easily and changed in between them with 30-40 gear changes. Again I put it back on the ground and tried to drive a away, but the pedal feel is now super spongy and the stroke too short to engage the reverse. If I stop the engine, it works. There are no brake fluid leaks on any of the joints betweens pipes and hoses. The pipe nipple on the pipe going from the front cabin wall - down - back was not super hard tightened, but before the last try today I tighten it as much as all the other ones and did the bleed mentioned above. Any clue what it could be?

Nice! Do I understand it right if the wing (OE Lotus?) comes with all the fittings and what you have to sort out is to drill in the right location and in carbon fiber? I just ordered the Evora GT style OE Lotus tail gate. That's why I am curious 🙂

@Francesco ITA I am really sorry to hear about the engine failure for such a new car. Even though the insurance company and the manufacturer may pay attention to the details you mention, i.e. running in procedure and service intervals, it doesn't have anything to do with this type pf failure. At least if it is caused by pre-ignition / knocking. If so, it is all about temperature in the catalyst/exhaust manifold region and air/fuel mixture. Check 1 - Remove the lambda sensors after the catalysts, inspect each catalyst and see if it is damaged. Damage normally start from the end. Check 2 - Check the lambda sensors, especially the ones before catalysts. Problem here is that they can behave well when at ambient temperature, work well again for some time, and then completely fail. I am not an expert in this topic, but more sophisticated equipment may find the problem. Otherwise you check it with a gas burner and a volt-meter. Maybe a faulty injector could cause the problem, but most likely it is temperature. When it was discussed in the forum some years ago, my impression was that Italy was over-represented in piston failures and if you combine track days with hot climate and maybe add tracks with higher average engine output, that should increase the probability for this failure to occur. Unfortunately.

@electro_boyWell, it isn't that straight forward to retrofit a pneumatic cam-less valve train on an engine. For lab use, you can do it, but otherwise you either need to make a bespoke cylinder head from scratch, or manufacture a large number of special items. A V-engine is worse since you have to do it twice. During my 5+ years I think we received almost one conversion request today from entusiasts, or motorsport teams, even though we since the new website was launched in March 2020 explicitly stated that we didn't offer that kind of service. 🙂 The biggest challenge is that you have return pressure in the pneumatic system under the valve cover. Standstill pressure can reach 10 bar. Then there are minor issus such as that the engine oil circuit is separate from the valve train, so that all oil feed/return to the cylinder head has to be blocked. And a few other details.

Suspension project recap. This is what I have tried: Nitron R1 (46 mm / 1-way)- Hofmanns 900/1100 lb/in - std front ARB 900/1100 lb/in - BWR front ARB 900/1100 lb/in - BWR front ARB and no rear ARB 600/850 lb/in - BWR front ARB Nitron CS (40 mm / 1-way) 425/625 lb/in - BWR front ARB 475/625 lb/in - BWR front ARB Nitron R1 front / Nitron CS rear 475/625 lb/in - BWR front ARB Besides all of this, I have sweeped the damper settings, from time to time worked through step 1-4 of 5 in the front BWR Anti Roll Bar stiffness, varied toe and adjusted ride height with camber following it. Since I am still in the middle of the process to develop the damper valving and sorting out other settings, I won't go into detail with that. What I can say is: Track width and ride height effects are far from sorted out Camber, especially front at 1,65 degrees, is not near being sufficient for the cornering speeds that other modern track day cars are capable of The 46 mm R1 kit is given the aggressive spring rates surprisingly comfortable until suspension droop exceeds a certain speed The 40 mm CS kit out of the box super capable for Fast Road exercises and for shaving off a second, or two, on the track day. Since I am after the ultimate lap time pace for a fully sorted out road going car, the testing and development goes on. Many lessons learned so far.

I planned to post some pictures of the barge boards that were fitted after x years on a shelf in the garage, comment how well all newly manufactured components have worked and maybe write a few words about the latest and greatest in spring/damper testing and development. However, biggest change right now is not in the garage, or on the race track. No, after just over 5 years with Freevalve and developing and promoting cam-less engine technology - that story has come to an end. From today on I have taken a tiny step closer to Hethel and represents Aurobay, Volvo Cars and Geelys powertrain division. My time in between jobs had the upside of allowing 6 track days in 8 weeks, but now the focus will off course be a bit different 🙂