RobinB5

These cubes are not moving. cubes.mp4

Good that your e/hand brake was working that well! Interesting question though... what minor manual adjustment/modification could you easily make to render the car undrivable after hotwiring that wouldn't be identified easily by the thief? Short of taking a wheel off

An interesting article from an electrical engineering perspective: https://www.eetimes.com/pushing-the-limits-of-weight-power-delivery-in-ev-hypercars/ Some more detailed info about the Evija e-powertrain. The use of wind-bandgap Silicon Carbide in the inverter is leading edge, much lower switching losses than Silicon, less cooling required for a given energy throughput. Plus integrating the inverter with the motor further reduces parasitic losses that you find if the 2 are separated. Not that Lotus themselves designed it, that was done by Williams Advanced Engineering with the hardware supplied by Integral Powertrain ltd.

Assuming the motor isn't rated at IPX7 or IPX8, the viscosity of the water in the gap between rotor and stator would completely cripple the performance,

First trip to one our offices in yonks. 220 mile round trip, didn't miss a beat. Temp crept up a bit but stayed below 90. Anyone else get right foot cramp whilst toddling along at a constant speed on the motorway for ages?

I took off and put back the door seals when I did the carpets last week. Started at the 90degree corner then worked my way round pushing it in. Ended up with a surprising amount of slack which of course meant that a section wouldn't push back on. Took it back off, kind of pulled it back on itself bit by bit when pressing it in again, took 3 goes but managed to get rid of the slack. The whole thing is a bit more stretchable/compressible than I had expected!

Out of all the things I might have found in a 26 year old Esprit (unused wrap of coke, £50 note) I only found your 10mm spanner and a screwfix pencil. Bah!

@Steve V8's carpet were top quality and have made such a massive difference to the whole feel of sitting in the car. Ironically the black background is now hardly noticeable, but it highlights the cream leather and lines of the cabin trim in a way that the previous (rather tatty) brown/cream carpet simply did not. The car looks 20 years younger and I'm sure drives a little faster now

The left hand side sill was riveted in (unlike the RHS that was screwed, so had to drill them out. The sill has a 1/4 cylinder bit riveted to it that goes up by the door hinge end. One of those rivets was getting familiar with one of the pipes that run through the sill: Damage was superficial (famous last words). Ground down the offending rivet and taped it over. Useful note: don't glue down the carpet on the sill at all near the edges of the sill so that the screw/rivet holes can be accessed easily on refitting. Similarly for the sill carpet near the door hinge end to ensure the piece over the above mentioned cylindrical piece of the sill can be glued under the sill carpet itself (well, that makes sense to me ) The thing I was most dreading as an opportunity to screw things up was the trimming by the door seal area. Ended up trimming the carpet back to line up with the top of the bodywork at the bottom of the door. Then trimmed back a little, but not too much, so that the door seal trim could grip over the carpet when put back, without leaving a gap. Pushed the seal down a little more to ensure a straight line afterwards (looks a bit bumpy in the above picture). All in all, despite a non-perfect carpet cut line, I was happy with the end result.

Forgot to mention about the side tunnel carpet on the driver's side. Where the throttle cable tube thingy goes along the tunnel, there was a single hole cut into the carpet: Short of detaching the throttle cable (which I'd probably screw up), I decided to bodge it can make a slice in the new carpet from that point upwards. Then slide up the new carpet over that point: Once it was glued back down you can hardly see the join. And yep, you've got to remove the 2 nuts holding the footrest assembly then make 2 holes in the new carpet to get the 2 bolts through. Even without the chairs in, the Lotus position was like some kind of extreme chiropractic torture.

For the rear bulkhead, started by securing the carpet unglued by removing the 2 screws in the rear window cover, insert the carpet behind it, then screw the cover back again. This held the whole carpet up quite nicely. Cut 2 slices for each speaker area (making sure the slices did not go beyond the 2 speaker holes. The tricky bit was the central pocket. I'm sure there's a better way but ended up putting the 2 tunnel side trim pieces back on so that I could rest the central pocket on top of them, abutting the bulk head. Then taped the extents of both tabs of the pocket: Then cut 2 slices between the tapes. Lifted the slices up an pushed the pocket tabs under them, then screwed them down. Well, I was happy with it The area around the rear cover release lever was quite tricky. I couldn't get the entire lever cover loose, only the bottom part of it (and didn't fancy undoing the bolt from the back). Suffice to say heed Steve's instructions that state not to trim too much too soon to make that hole (I ended up with about a 5mm gap between carpet and lever cover on the bottom of it. Used a screwdriver to push the rest of the carpet under the cover then screwed it back on. Wheel arches... uurrgghhh. Some of the horse hair type sound insulation came loose when removing the old carpet. I glued that back down and left to dry fully. The carpet goes right up to the top of the arches, they're quite 'tall' In trial unglued fitting I realised that you have to push the carpet right up there between the various gubbins and the arch itself. No chance of doing them when glued. So, pushed it up all the way unglued, then just glued the bottom half. Used the adhesive can to separate the carpet from the arch during the 2 minutes activation time:

So here are some pictures of the process. I post them here for others who, like me, are equally unskilled as a carpet layer as they are a car mechanic. As @Steve V8 said after I was pestering him with some quite nooby questions, 'it's not science'. Having completed it I totally agree with him! Just a bit of common sense is all that's required. After the ball ache of the carpet removal, the first pieces to set are the tunnel sides (as per Steve's instructions, which are better than the LEW carpet fitting guide imo). After propping up the side carpet, I cut a hole for the seatbelt thingy, put a bolt in there temporarily, lowered the carpet, glued both carpet and tunnel sides, waited 2 mins (any longer then it was very unforgiving if you tried to adjust), then pressed them together from the bolt area along, ensuring no air gaps and a nice smooth connection. Practice for all the other subsequent sections.

Good to know, I'll use one next time!

Finished. Will post some more pictures and comment on the experience later. But for now here's before and after: Very happy and I didn't break anything

Only to complement the contact adhesive spray high I was suffering. Doctor's orders.