Evora 400 transmission noise

[Corsu]

@Alfo86

To be fair, you're not alone. One of my friend owns an Evora 400. The car is a nightmare  No issue with the IPS Gearbox but for the rest, he's got all you're talking and many others; battery issue, fuel trap issue, opening trunk issue, windows issue (air noise), HIFI sound system crappy, A/C issue, etc ... The car spend a lot of time to the dealer.

Before owning the 400, he owned a Evora IPS MY2013, the "Upgrade one". Since year 2013, Zero issue, may be some minors issues, that's all, nothing that you can fix easily, a very pleasant car Now, he's thinking selling the 400 for the new Aston Martin Vantage with the Mercedes engine, sad.

May be JM Galles is a cost killer but also surely a quality killer

[Alfo86]

@Corsu OMG. I understand the problem. 

In fact, I'm just concentrated in the major issue. If I've to told you about all little things, is necessary to write a book. Same issue on air flow noise on driver seat, same creepy wifi (no particular issue but sound terrible for a gt car on that price range), the cookpit/console is noisy, cracking seat, clima ac noise, battery already ,  fuel sump.

I solved:

- battery (changed)

- fuel sump (changed)

- ac that work intermittent (hedgehog changed)

solved in part: 

- cracking seat (amend applied but not completely solved)

not solved:

- gearbox noise

- ac noise 

- console noise 

not submitted (I've understood that with lotus you can't solve everything in the same time)

- windows air flow noise (is it possible to fix?)

- hi-fi (I will change if I decide to don't sell car)

 

car stopped per from September. I personally made videos for noise, reworked and packaged, maybe 100 calls (national and international) with the local dealer for updating, maybe 10 visit to dealer for check car status.

Simply Ridicolous!!!! ????

and they still think to reach Porsche owner.... please stop joking.

 

after I spent over 100k with 3 years guarantee, where is lotus?????

[Corsu]

@Alfo86 Don't believe you're alone. Every time, the dealer must fixes issue by himself. Many year ago, my dealer did that on my car by, helped by others Lotus owners. In France, the Neubauer group (Ferrari & Lamborghini & Maserati & Rolls & Peugeot Paris) has sold the Lotus cars before firing them. Same thing for Ferrari Cannes many years ago. These dealers belong to large financial groups who have no sense of humor  A Lotus dealership must be more passionate than its customers to sell the cars of the Lotus brand

Some "good friends" reported to me that some dealers doesn't want to sell the Evora 400 anymore. Too many issues, the car isn't reliable and too expensive for the quality offer. The car is a (bad) joke

Edited January 16, 2017 by Corsu

[Taylor]

What was the update on the Lotus Engineer visit?

[Alfo86]

Hi guys...today is the day!

after three months, the lotus engineer just arrived to my dealer. after luch, I'll be here to understand more about it.

I'll keep you updated.

as I know, lotus sent some days ago an update about the tie-rod likage that has to be mounted before the engineer coming. it seems that the gear linkage engagement system sometime fail, make a bad pressure in the gear that make rotating the selected gear together with the syncronizer. that could be the rattling noise.... but we'll see after.

stay tuned and pray for me.

 

 

[Taylor]

Good luck ?

[Alfo86]

Hi guys,

today I met Gary, a great technical engineer that visit Italy and my dealer. 

He made a car trip with me, foggy day, 7 degree outside. 

We made 30 km with car together and he told me that the gearbox/clutch is noisy, but not so much to justify a fixing under guarantee. He told me that is a "caracteristic" of the car. I told him that when coming hot it will be worst, but he told me that we'll see in the future if it will be as described.  Imagine my face when I listen to it.???

additionally, I asked about the following issues, and i had the reply below:

1) clima that on hot on full air flow speed make whistle: he told me that all evora 400 make it and a lot of complain about it and is caused about the flap that create some turbolances, probably caused from the new air conditioning box design and a flap positioning issue... but hear that... they don't know how to fix it ??? please note: if you place direction on feet, it became silent.

2) seat leather that going out from their location/ borders: he suggest me to put glue (some dealer do it) so we can block it in the location. They know the issue, as the cracking seat, but cannot solve it. ???

3) issue on clicking wheels: as @JayEmm suggest, clean it to remove noise.

4) console noise: don't hear that ??? so we're all crazy, me and dealer.

 

So tomorrow is still there... I don't have any word about the services... absolutely not sufficient and not aligned about the car segment and value. I waited 3 month to hear that its noisy but not so much.... WTF, and that my cat is better than the most evora 400 in circulation? Wow.... lucky me !!!!!!!

 

Any suggestion about how to proceed?

do you suggest some additional insulation (maybe below the back seats) to try to reduce gear noise and insulate the cabin from that?

any of you have the same clima whistle issue? He told me that a lot of customers have, but anyone fix it.

 

please help me.

I'm frustrated and sad about their poor approach. No words. Close to sold everything.

[JayEmm]

The seat leather likes to unstick itself from the seat. My solution is replace the piece of %$% Sparcos with new seats.

[Alfo86]

What kind of seat you place? You managed it under warranty?

have you also the clima whistle issue, not cough (that I solved) ? Just to know if they play with me  and my patcience or not.

[JayEmm]

I'm sure they are playing with you and your patience. That seems normal. And not exclusive to Lotus.

I never had the whistle problem with my A/C. To be fair, my A/C unit was replace by Lotus as their choice because they knew it WOULD be a problem in the near future.

It is my dealer who are helping with the seats because I gave them a simple option - fix the seats or take the car back. It was sad that it came to that but I had 6+ months of empty promises for new seats from Lotus.

[Taylor]

To be quite frank, Lotus have had this gear noise on the Evora since launch in 2009. Why the hell wouldn't they sort it by the time they got to releasing the Evora 400 in 2016? Makes no sense to me.

 

A rattle that progressively gets louder when warm is surely curable or at least in some way a design fault which they've have 7 years to play on?

[Alfo86]

He told me that is too expensive to design a dedicated gearbox, and that this gearbox coming from a Camry diesel where is always noisy but covered from the diesel noise angine and from the gear positioning, not so closed to the cabin.

could be this a justification for a angry customer? 

I understood this guy, that isn't the responsible of the fault, but why they're so fast to steal our money sold car, and so slow to fix some issue under guarantee? 

No words. 

[Taylor]

I wouldn't suggest they're steeling your money but I understand your frustrations. I guess Lotus owners have become tolerable to some faults and this brand leads towards you feeling a little sympathetic towards them and more understanding.

Not an excuse for them but I guess they only have so many resources to focus their developments on and this wasn't one of them or at least a big enough issue to want to solve.

Im guessing this is your first time with the Lotus Brand?

 

[Alfo86]

8 hours ago, Taylor said:

I wouldn't suggest they're steeling your money but I understand your frustrations. I guess Lotus owners have become tolerable to some faults and this brand leads towards you feeling a little sympathetic towards them and more understanding.

Not an excuse for them but I guess they only have so many resources to focus their developments on and this wasn't one of them or at least a big enough issue to want to solve.

Im guessing this is your first time with the Lotus Brand?

 

Yes, my first experience. 

To be honest, I prefers that they told me: Alfonso, we don't have money to fix that. Please wait an year, and we take care of it. 

What I hate is to being laughed. Additionally,  after spending a lot of money, trusting on their job, on their honesty.

I thought wrong.

[phenoyz]

On 9/17/2016 at 16:16, Alfo86 said:

 

Here you can listen more about the noise... is clearly audible. 

Hello Alfo86

As I listened again to your car, my 2014 Evora (NA) DOES NOT MAKE THAT KIND of NOISE...

 

[Neal H]

Wouldn't you be better off just selling it and buying something else? Your life would be a lot less stressful!

[AndyP]

Hey, you should do the marketing for Lotus! 

Seriously though, listening to Alfo86's recording it does sound pretty awful. However, it's difficult to know at what revs the noise tails off to know if I would ever drive the car within that rev range regularly. Sounds like a Gear Rattle problem and it sounds like Lotus need some NVH engineers to sort this out, as they obviously don't have the in-house expertise to do so. Is there anyone around the East Midlands that suffers a similar noise problem? I'd be interested to listen to the problem first hand.

Andy

[Taylor]

That sounds like both a gear rattle plus an old differential sounding whine too like you use to get on the old Land Rovers.

Whilst the rattle charecteristics are not unusual in Lotus manual gearbox the audible level of it seems a lot louder than it would sound like in normal usage.

Does it really sound that loud in real life? Is the phone or device your using to record just a little more sound sensitive?

I can't imagine a Lotus Engineer just disregarding this if it really was as loud as it sounds.

 

[Alfo86]

10 minutes ago, AndyP said:

Hey, you should do the marketing for Lotus! 

Seriously though, listening to Alfo86's recording it does sound pretty awful. However, it's difficult to know at what revs the noise tails off to know if I would ever drive the car within that rev range regularly. Sounds like a Gear Rattle problem and it sounds like Lotus need some NVH engineers to sort this out, as they obviously don't have the in-house expertise to do so. Is there anyone around the East Midlands that suffers a similar noise problem? I'd be interested to listen to the problem first hand.

Andy

Hi Andy,

around 3000 rpm it start disappearing. I don't know if because is covering from the engine and exhaust music or because it really disappear. It increase at hot temperatures. 

Me and dealer thought that is something on gearbox, but the inspector told that for him the gearbox is ok at this noise level, and normal for Evora 400.

He thought that could be the springs in the clutch plate that can have some play and could viber creating this kind of rattle.

I don't know where is the true and if this story could be a possibility because they don't want to dismount engine under warranty. The only thing is that when I change transmission oil, to be invest I didn't found any bad things inside. Oil was good without any metal part inside. 

They "ensure my dealer" that if the problem increase they could try to pass gearbox under warranty. I don't think so but I don't have any other chance.?

Someone in the forum told my noise is normal, someone not. I don't have any pssibility to compare car to understand if that's normal or not. ?

[Taylor]

I'm afraid, you'll never know whether is normal or not unil you find another 400 to test against.

I would try searching your country locally to see if you can find any other owners alterntively, reach out to 400 owners on this forum to video the sounds in their car at low revs.

[Alfo86]

2 minutes ago, Taylor said:

That sounds like both a gear rattle plus an old differential sounding whine too like you use to get on the old Land Rovers.

Whilst the rattle charecteristics are not unusual in Lotus manual gearbox the audible level of it seems a lot louder than it would sound like in normal usage.

Does it really sound that loud in real life? Is the phone or device your using to record just a little more sound sensitive?

I can't imagine a Lotus Engineer just disregarding this if it really was as loud as it sounds.

 

Hi Taylor,

in the last test it seems a little bit less respect to the video, probably because is winter now and the video was registred when was warm temperatures outside. But the video don't exalts noise. It's exactly noise like in the video, probably less then in the reality. 

It seems exactly a traktor transmission, or a 4x4 dirrerential. 

In the next week I will try to isolate the back seats a little bit more with some acoustic panel, in order to reduce a little bit bad frequencies. Respect to the Evora 350/s/280, the back seats were tiny (the past seat had at least 5cm foam sponge), and this could affect noise on the cabin.

 I don't exclude that my Evora, because is one of the first 400 in Italy, is a prototype... that because as a told you they change the gearbox cable engagement with "the one in production line", before inspector engineer arrived in my dealer. 

They ensure me that it's a production car, but I have serious doubts ?

 

Anyway, he told me that my car "is not so bad" respect to other one (wtf) and the noise for him isn't a gearbox noise, but maybe a clutch noise.m cases from some spring vibration resonance.

 I really not be able to understand the true, and I'm alone in the dark. I've only you guys! ??

[AndyP]

@Alfo86 this problem must be really frustrating!

I've never even driven an Evora, let alone one where the owner has a similar noise to yours; so it's really difficult to comment on your case. However, I've driven lots of cars with drivetrain rattle problems; either drive rattle like yours or rattle on over-run (more common).

Reading up a bit more on other posts, it seems that the S1 doesn't suffer this (or is it S1 NA don't?). That's it's interesting if true.

Hopefully I'll be testing a few Evora 400s in the next month or so. I'll report back if I come across any with a rattle problem and I'll try and record the sound and compare notes.

PS. I've read stuff about this gearbox being used in the Avensis Diesel, but does anyone know if this gearbox is used in any vehicle application with the same V6 engine (albeit not supercharged)? 

Andy

[phenoyz]

maybe this can help to compare a little bit....

 

[DJW]

On 18/09/2016 at 00:16, Alfo86 said:

 

Here you can listen more about the noise... is clearly audible. 

My Evora S was exactly like this and I also had numerous Lotus engineers state it was normal. I also wasn't happy at the time.  It sounded like a tractor going up hill , at low revs, with transmission under load.  

However the test drive I did of an Evora 400 manual the sound had been dampened somewhat , but still present.

I've gone the Auto route and there is no such noise.   Have you considered exchanging for a second hand Auto ...they are very impressive.  

[pickle]

On 02/02/2017 at 22:58, Taylor said:

That sounds like both a gear rattle plus an old differential sounding whine too like you use to get on the old Land Rovers.

 

I think that the whine that you're hearing might be the supercharger spooling up.

@Alfo86 How was the car when you recorded the video. Both windows up or down? Sport engaged or not? Car up to temp? Etc... I'm not promising anything but next time I'm out I'll try to get some video of mine so that you can compare.

Also, what phone did you use and was it just the phone mic? Will try to get as close to like for like as possible.