Pauls Exige 410 Sport

[Paul_D]

I think it’s a Sealey one. 

What size hex nut have you got, 17mm or 19mm?

When I was looking at M12 x 1.5 taper nuts you could get the hex part in both sizes. I deliberately chose the 17mm version for that reason. 

[fjc27]

Yet I have 17 mm nuts. Thanks for the brand reference

[Toqcars]

Love your track silencer solution... pretty sure I will replicate it. Thanks for the idea 👍 

Just curious why Komo-tec states that their silencer can not fit the titanium exhaust. It might be material, titanium is softer/stickier to the steel. Have you used tje standard steel tube for the part inserted into the OEM exhaust?

 

BTW: you have some really nice mods on your Exige. Keep up the great work 😃

[Paul_D]

Not a mod this time, just a bit of fun. Decided that instead of my track day helmet being boring black it might be nice to have it done in a colour scheme which matches the car.

I know it's a bit sad, but it'll only ever be seen on track days.

 

[Paul_D]

[Toqcars]

Sprayed or vinyl wrapped? 

[Paul_D]

It’s sprayed. Seemed the cheapest and easiest option  

I’ve never tried vinyl wrapping and I’d probably have made a complete mess of it, especially with all the curves etc. 

[Paul_D]

Back to the functional modifications todays.

One of the things I have found difficult in this car is heel and toeing on track. I have just found it quite awkward compared to some other cars I've owned. I've been having a look trying to determine the issue. Firstly, I think the car itself doesn't help. I find it needs quite a decent 'stab' of the accelerator to blip the engine.  Secondly, because I'm 6ft it's harder to manoeuvre and twist my foot without hitting the steering wheel. Finally I don't think the pedal layout is quite as optimum as it could be for me. I can't do anything about the first two, but I can address the third one. 

Looking at the pedals, even with the brake pedal pushed down it's still a bit higher than the accelerator. This is quite hard to show in photographs, but...

There is also a reasonable gap between the brake and accelerator pedal, so there is the potential to close that up a bit.

I wanted to have a pedal that would close the gap slightly, but far more importantly give me the option to adjust the height.  I ordered these just for the accelerator pedal.

 

The original pedal cover is rivetted and glued on, so relatively easy to remove without damaging it. 

The new accelerator pedal would be bolted in place, so I had to drill some new holes in the pedal mounting.

The new pedal ends up about 7 or 8mm closer to the brake pedal. As it is in the photo above, it would be the same as the standard pedal. The advantage I have now is that I can fit spacers between the mounting plate and the new pedal. For now I've fitted about a 12mm spacer and it seems pretty good based on a few practice goes. The accelerator is level with the brake when I push down on it really hard. From here I can practice with it and then tweak the height as required.

Compared to some of the aftermarket pedals I've seen fitted, it doesn't look too bad. I don't think somebody looking in the car would immediately know that it's an aftermarket add on, and I can refit the original pedal back whenever I want. 

 

Hopefully now I'll be able to master heel and toe in this car and make my braking on track a lot smoother. 

[Jcx]

Did you drill the rivets out Paul?  

What are you using for spacers?

did you cut the bolts to make them shorter or is their length not an issue?

do the bolts have nuts on the rear?

TIA

[Paul_D]

Here you go mate. 🙂

 

[Jcx]

👍🤗

[Jcx]

I guess you could just drill through both existing plates. Then you don’t need to remove one. 

[Paul_D]

Yep, you could do that if you wanted. I just prefer mods to be fully reversible where possible so didn’t want to drill the original pedal. 

[lotus_exig3]

On 08/04/2021 at 20:58, Paul_D said:

First modification carried out last night, albeit not a particularly exciting one. 

Having read all the horror stories about killing the lithium batteries and the care they need, I thought any help keeping an eye on it would be worth having. So I ordered one of these:

 

 

Obviously very easy to connect, nothing more complicated than connecting to the positive and negative of the battery. (Although for ease of install, I didn't connect the positive directly onto the battery)

 

Then download and connect to the app, and it immediately shows the battery level. It says it automatically connects and updates when you are in range. As well as the live data and a couple of tests, you can set alarms to initiate at two different battery levels.

Hey Paul,

Do you have this Tracker on your car 24x7? Is it worthwhile only for lithium batteries? How often does do you normally take your car out for a drive?

Is this a good idea for standard batteries too?

Apart from the weight saving, do lithium batteries last longer than standard batteries?

 

[Paul_D]

@Gold

Yeah, the battery tracker is permanently connected. I'm lucky in that my car is parked quite close to my house, so at any point I can just check the exact status of the battery from the comfort of my sofa.

They do a version for non-lithium batteries, but I guess people don't worry about them quite as much. A normal battery isn't too expensive to replace if you kill it, but the lithium is £1000+. For how cheap the tracker is though, I think I'd fit one onto any car which may be left a while and might fully drain the battery.

Since I got the car it's been driven frequently enough to not be an issue, but that may change now winter is here. The other advantage of the battery monitor is that I can quite accurately gauge how long the car can safely be left without driving it or charging the battery.

I'm afraid I don't really know much about the properties of lithium vs standard batteries. I know that the voltage of a lithium battery is much more stable in relation to charge. So whereas a normal battery will have noticeably lower voltage as the charge drops, the lithium remains very similar to maximum. 

The capacity of the lithium battery stays the same regardless of discharge rate so you can use a smaller capacity version. This seems to give a decent overview: https://www.power-sonic.com/blog/lithium-vs-lead-acid-batteries/

 

[Paul_D]

I've finally done a very common and very simple cosmetic mod; the gear knob numbers. I wasn't a huge fan of the bare engraved look, and always liked the photos I'd seen where people had painted the numbers. I wasn't sure what colour to go for, but as I had the blue touch up pen with a fine nib I thought I give it a go...

 

 

 

 

 

[Paul_D]

I knew from my monitoring of the brake and tyre wear that the last track I did would be the final one on the existing set of pads.

Time to get the car up in the air again...

 

Pins out of the caliper, and out with the pads. Yep, I reckon I got the perfect amount of use out of those. 

 

If anybody regularly does their own brakes, I highly recommend getting one of this piston spreader tools. Makes that part of the job so quick and easy.

 

Then it was time for the new pads. I spent a lot of time thinking about what to fit. The DS2500 work pretty well, they're quiet, and they're kind to discs. On the downside the don't bite that hard, tail off slightly when they get hot, and only last 4 days.

I didn't want to get anything that would be aggressive to the (very expensive) discs, so I made the decision to give Pagid RSL29's a shot. I've used these before on other cars and can't fault them for performance. The main downsides are price and noise. The price may be justifiable if they last longer than the DS2500's. Time will tell, and I will monitor wear closely.

 

To make them perform as well as possible, and bed them in nicely I decided to do the job properly and give the discs a bit of a resurfacing using a flex-hone tool I bought a while ago. This should remove the old pad transfer layer, and give a nice honed surface for the new pads.

Before:

 

After:

 

I also measured the discs very accurately while they were off so I can monitor how much they wear with the Pagids.

And finally all back together looking as good as new.

 

 

[fjc27]

What is the disc thickness you measured after the (first ?) set of worn pads ?

[Paul_D]

7 minutes ago, fjc27 said:

What is the disc thickness you measured after the (first ?) set of worn pads ?

It was 31.85mm.
 

I don’t know exactly how close they are to the nominal 32mm when new, but either way it’s not a bad amount of wear for over 5000 miles and 4 track days. 
 

 

[fjc27]

thank you for the information.  Good to hear these very expensive discs are reasonably worn with standard pads 😁

[Paul_D]

Last week I decided to start booking my 2022 track days. I'm really missing doing them, so I've decided to book a couple of days early in the year and risk the weather. I've got Snetterton on 28th Feb, and Bedford on 21st march. If the weather is really bad it's not the end of the world as the  trackdays are cheap that time of year.

With that in mind, I needed to do a couple of quick jobs.

1) Replace the rear pads, and give the rear discs a bit of a clean while I'm at it.

As well as the disc needing a bit of a clean, the drum area was a bit corroded

After a quick honing and wire brushing

Discs refitted with new pads.

2) The other thing I wanted to do was swap the wheels over from left to right. The left tyres wear more quickly as most tracks are clockwise, so I wanted to even things up a bit to maximise tyre life. The problem with the Exige, is that doing this is actually a bit of a pain. Because the centre jacking point lifts the entire side of the car up, you effectively will end up with all four wheels in the air once and the car 'balancing'. To get around this, I purchased a set of hub stands so that I can lower one side back to the ground without the wheels on it. Getting all four wheels off at once is now quick and easy. The stands should easily take the weight of the car, but I did keep my second jack there to take some of the load as a precaution.

 

 

 

[Paul_D]

Today I changed the stereo head unit in the car. (Yes, I know I only fitted one a few months ago)

The previous Pioneer was quite a clever unit, but after regularly using the Apple Carplay unit in my daily driver the Pioneer felt a bit 'clunky' in terms of user interface. 

Like a few other Lotus owners, I decided to fit a Pioneer AVH-Z7000 flip screen head unit. I wanted a unit with wireless Apple Carplay but this wasn't supported as standard by the Pioneer.

After a bit of research, I ordered a Carlinkit wireless dongle. This attaches to the headunits USB port instead of the USB extension cable.

I first checked it out on the bench to make sure everything worked ok. Success. 

Then it was just a case of swapping the head units over. In theory this should have been simple. I didn't even need to change any wiring as the same connector is used on the old and new units. The problem was simply space. The AVH-Z7000 has a separate box for the aerial connections. I also had the Carlinkit dongle. Trying to get all of this shoved in behind the head unit was awkward, but I got there in the end with some 'persuasion'. I'm not sure what state everything is in behind there, but it's all working.

 

Overall I'm really pleased with the AVH-Z7000. Having Apple Carplay on a nice big screen will be great, both for music and navigation. It's also nice having a 'proper' volume knob rather than push buttons. Yes, the screen catches on the indicator stalk unless you hold it out of the way, but then I would want the screen up all of the time anyway so it's not an issue.

 

[Brendonian]

That looks pretty good Paul. I wouldn't want to block the vents like that as a little heat on my hands is very much appreciated this time of year. Wish I could find something similar with a much smaller screen. CarPlay is the only thing I really miss from my Evora.

[Paul_D]

Yeah, that’s fair enough, but I’m a bit surprised that anyone is that bothered about the central vents to be honest. My HVAC set permanently to ‘windscreen’, and I find the cabin is so small it gets warm quickly anyway. 
 

I drove to work in the Exige this morning, and even with temps at 3 degrees I didn’t give a thought to the centre vents being partially blocked. 

[Brendonian]

My car very rarely has a roof in place, even at this time of the year! I need my hand heaters