MartynB

Certainly the recent soft tops have been variable in terms of fit and tightness. I can feel a draught coming past the front edge at 70 on mine so without some adjustment I wouldn't trust it at twice that

Sounds somewhat plausible. It does appear to come from the general gearbox area, but only does it while driving, and then only in a narrow band of usage. Engaging 2nd gear once the revs have dropped and doing around 20mph

Hi Stefan Did anything come of this issue? I did a trackday a few days ago and coming back to the car again this weekend I find exactly the same thing you describe. Did yours go away or get worse? Did you need to get anything done?

Ha ha. I'm about 10s slower round Bedford in the Lotus than the Caterham. Seems once I've got the quiet exhaust options sorted, I have some platform learning to do. Interesting, as I had assumed it would be 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. It will be very interesting to see if I can push the Exige beyond the Caterham. It's not a totally fair comparison though, as the Caterham is on ZZRs vs the somewhat "rain tyre" like Corsas, and while I have around 20 trackdays in the Caterham under my belt, I'm a total mid engine newbie, driving a car that I really don't want to bend.

Amen to that. I was getting better and better at Bedford on Monday. The occasional overblip, but definite progress.

Dude. If they have holes that big in the end, you may want to try a different brand.

I wouldn't want to do a trackday without it. For a few reasons: we'd need visors and wouldn't be able to hear each other or the instructor buffeting and ruined aero aircon would be useless wouldn't want to use the soft top over about 100 mph or so Hopefully you'll have the OEM grey sleeves installed

I made a temporary solution and found my original parts which are in pretty bad shape. Here's how I did the temp fix, with heat shrink sleeve... This will rattle Heatshrink ready to go Gun set to 130 degC Much less rattly ... how's that for a dull photostory?

Alex, my wife also had a few goes.. In other news, the Flame Red goes nuclear in bright sunlight

Definitely had a good day. Static was 95dB, drive by wasn't a problem. I nannied it in the morning, leaving it in Tour and shifting/easing when I heard the valve open. However, after lunch and discussion with @Blowfish, who was giving it the beans with the valve full open, I swapped to Race and went with it. Result, no black flags and we went home once we were knackered. Very hot, and it's actually harder work than driving the Caterham, which surprised both of us for some reason.

How do you tell the VIRB where the start/finish line is? Do you preset it along with the track layout, or do it on the fly?

So, did you ask your No.1 question? If so, what was the answer?

Needs Signature Orange highlights!

"In the cabin, the instruments are now white on black. That means you can now actually read them at twilight. A change 21 years too late in coming." Err, right. Never let reality get in the way of a good quip. I thought they changed that towards the end of the S2 era. 2007, 2008 ish? Still, he seems smugly positive.

Well, it's in the press release... http://www.lotuscars.com/news/engineering/lotus-exige-sport-380-supercar-killer ... but spec can change over time, so I'd caution anyone ordering to check things like that and provide "guidance" to Lotus via the dealer

I could be wrong, but I suspect it has to do with the way the ECU reads the throttle requests. My theory is that it's not just the request angle that matters, but the speed of the blip to that angle. Of course that may be due to ECU programming of the drive by wire, or simply due to the throttle body being before the supercharger. Dunno. Plus I don't think the mapping is linear anyway. There is certainly a more eager response available in Sport mode vs Tour, which lends Sport to over-revving on a blip, while you're learning it. That does mean that it's probably best to pick a mode and stick to it, to get the blips really consistent.

OK, OK. Keep going... and best of luck

@Seriouslylotus Do you have less noise + no power loss in any iteration? That could work

Actually, @Bibs is this something you can help with?

Awesome. Great setup. I forget, does it have a LSD?

Have they shipped anything apart from the standard 265/35/18 and the 285/30/18 on the Cup 380? I doubt you'd have a problem getting the 295/30/18 PS2 on there, given how massively stretched the 265 Corsa is on the forged wheel. However I don't think you'd be seeing any worthwhile increase in grip over the 285/30 Cup 2. In fact due to the slightly harder compound I'd expect it to fare worse. YMMV

When I had the softtop grommets fitted, I took the hardtop back off once I got home, and managed to mess up at least one of the anti rattle sleeves that go over the front pins. These are part A117U0507F (aka page 120_04, part 16a in the parts diagrams) Now, I fully intend to get a few more of these, but expect that to take a while. My thought was to use card or heatshrink temporarily for the trackday on Monday. Any idea if anyone has these tiny bits in stock? I can imagine it taking quite a while to go via the dealer route.

That looks lovely I assume you do rinse between Snow foam and Wash stages though

Damn AutoComplete, I typed pillo*** Email sent

Thanks Tom. Yeah it'll be interesting to see the differences. Our 7 is the SV so a bit more stable than the S3 and has the AP big fronts and ZZRs, so that may have spoiled me a bit. I'll be needing to short shift at Bedford, but I'm expecting crazy pace along the back straight, given that the 7 hits the rev limiter at 125 having started to hit the air wall around 110. Really looking forward to it now. Need to charge the GoPro batteries.