Engine Mount Bolts Sheared

[nickh]

Well finally back on the road as of 23rd Dec! Took much longer than i expected mainly due to sourcing parts and generally there's a lot of labour intensive work to carry out.

I have replaced the water pump and had the pas pump refurbed-i believe this was the main source of my oil leak! Also had valves shimmed and changed cam belt-removed air con pump as this was redundant anyway(available for sale if anyone's interested!).

Removed exhaust manifold for bead blasting and replaced all studs\nuts with stainless. Replaced turbo\air intake pipe-this proved to be the biggest headache sourcing an alternative to the stupidly overpriced origional item-which i did for a total cost of £38 and i consider to be a very viable alternative!! Unfortunately this was only available in blue but as it can't really be seen i went for it anyway. If anyone wants details on this-let me know.

The gearbox was sent away for stripping and needed new synchro rings for 3rd\4th gears which had to be purchased from SJ as after prolonged searching i was unable to source anywhere else!! Also on the strong advice of my very experienced gearbox man i have refilled it with 20\50 mineral oil-make of that what you will!!! On that note i have also used the same in the engine-having spent quite a while reading as much as i could find about recommended oils.

Needless to say the whole engine\box\bay have been thoroughly cleaned\repainted where apropriate.

The car now drives so much better than ever before-smoother\more responsive off the throttle and the gearbox is superb as it pretty much 'falls' into gear! Unfortunately due to the apalling weather over the last week i have been unable to give the car a 'proper' test as its just too wet!!

I do have a couple of niggles that i am aware of so far-firstly i don't think i am achieving full boost due to low engine temp again so will have to check\replace thermostat again(i did this only a few months ago so assumed it would be ok!).

Secondly-my oil press guage now seems to read completely differently than before as in it doesn't read as high when engine is cold or at higher revs but then again it hardly drops off at tick-over. Any thoughts on the cause of this would be appreciated.

I will try post some photos when i work out how to do it!

Thanks for all the tips\hints along the way guys.

Nick

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2609149186428.2126223.1185925987&type=1&l=cfdb41679c

[rogerch]

Nice work, now repear after me :-

"I must not let it get that dirty again"

"I am ashamed of myself for allowing my "Lotus" engine to get so dirty"

"I must do better in future."

[jonwat]

The gearbox was sent away for stripping and needed new synchro rings for 3rd\4th gears which had to be purchased from SJ as after prolonged searching i was unable to source anywhere else!! Also on the strong advice of my very experienced gearbox man i have refilled it with 20\50 mineral oil-make of that what you will!!!

Well done on getting it back together but there's no way I'd run the transmission with that oil. It needs synthetic transmission oil or it's going to overheat. Lotus recommends only Castrol TAF-X

I do have a couple of niggles that i am aware of so far-firstly i don't think i am achieving full boost due to low engine temp again so will have to check\replace thermostat again(i did this only a few months ago so assumed it would be ok!).

The thermostat is probably fine, you need to run Freesscan to check it out.

[nickh]

John-i did read that passage beforehand but was assured by my gearbox man that it would be fine! I told him that i was prepared to use this on his specific 'say so'. He did tell me that if the car was being used for track\racing he would recommend the use of ATF in the box-the only downside to this would be more noise. As he said-if you're not happy with it then simply change it as its no more difficult than changing the engine oil.

Im not sure i concur that it will overheat because its not synthetic-the main benefit of a synthetic oil as far as im aware is that it won't 'break down' over time. He told me that many modern day vehicles have sealed for life gearboxes and hence use such oils.

As i am only doing approx 3000miles\year and would intend changing gearbox oil every 2nd year then im happy that a mineral oil will retain its properties over this period.

Of course its all down to personal choice at the end of the day. I am from the school of thought that there is an enormous amount of bt out there regarding the supposed benefits of oils of all types!!

Each to their own i guess!

[Bibs]

Lotus tested a whole host of oils for the transmission and due to the extreme pressures at the CWP only TAF-X was of the required specification.

Crown wheel & pinion is around £1,500 for the part, will you be buying that or your gearbox man?

[nickh]

so again it would have to be Castrol TAF-X as any other fully synthetic 75\90 gear oil would not have the required properties?

[Bibs]

Yup, that's the one and only oil Lotus recommend. It's cold and (very) hot properties are within spec of what they wanted too.

It's a very similar gearbox to the UN1 seen in Renault cars but Lotus specified different materials for many of the parts to improve it. 300 lbft of torque goes through the CWP and that takes TAF-X to retain lubrication, nothing else was suitable.

This info is from Brian Angus at Lotus, Brian was the Esprit platform manager for 25 year so knows his stuff. You can get TAF-X from any Lotus dealer, it's around £11-2/litre.

[nickh]

I appreciate what you are saying but on the same note i wonder what those at the factory would say about for example:-

Chipping the ECU

Use of a de-cat pipe

Ram air upgrade

Removal of EBP valve

etc etc

These to name but a few of the upgrades\enhancements talked about in great detail through these pages. Are any of them approved by the factory-im sure Lotus have the technology to put a vehicle to market that is the best it possibly can be yet many of us choose to 'improve' our cars in some or all of the above ways.

[Bibs]

Do you have 15 volumes of regulations to pass to be able to Type Approve a car and do you offer a warranty on the work you do? Lotus do so have rules to follow... all of those examples are emissions related, they HAVE to do them so sell new cars... The cars they raced were the best they possibly could be and those wouldn't have a hope of being sold for public use for a million reasons, production cars are a compromise at best. All the same, I'm sure the race cars which used UN1 boxed used TAF-X...

Anyway, your money, bon chance

[nickh]

Again point taken-so this obviously wouldn't apply to 'recommended' lubricants!

On another note-if anyone has viewed the pictures of my engine then you can't have failed to notice the incorrect cam timing and wrong positioning of the tensioner. This job was last carried out 2and a half years ago by a 'Lotus approved' specialist!

Im just saying.....!

[Rich H]

I too used mineral oil after gearbox reassembly, the lubrication properties are very similar but it breaks down faster than proper gear oil. Also gear oil is designed to work better over lower temps than engine oil.

I ran it as engine oil has more detergents in it and it'll clean out some of the accumulated gunk in the box. I didn't run it for very long though, I swapped mine out for TAF-X after a couple of hundred miles and it was already pretty dirty! Mind you I don't think the car had ever had a box-oil change before (I've changed it 3 times in 2 years for various reasons.)

It actually shifted better on mineral as it happens... make of that what you will.

[jonwat]

It actually shifted better on mineral as it happens... make of that what you will.

Ir's thinner, it would.

[Rich H]

Nope, it's not.

75W90 is approximatly the same viscosity as 10W40.

Gear and engine oils use different scales

[nickh]

Rich-i was very interested to read your thread on the 'none' availability of Castrol TAF-X and the recent replies-needless to say i go along with your line of thinking re 75\90 being the same no matter who happens to make it!! Hence my point earlier asking if it would have to be Castrol?

I am now wondering who i should listen to as apparently a different oil is now recommended by Lotus-and presumably when that one is phased out then a different one again-and so on and so on!

I am sure we can all quote a 'reliable source' to meet our argument so for my twopennyworth here goes:- A reputable oil company rep once told me that many of the oils he sold were exactly the same but just put into differently labelled bottles!!

As i said imo there's a lot of nonesense talked about oils in general-but one thing i do know for sure is ANY oil is better than no oil and im fairly confident we won't all be rushing off to buy new CWP's in the much nearer future than we would have been anyway!!

Still-it keeps me amused if nothing else

[Rich H]

I too was interested in the counter argument that the 75W/90 is only measured at 15 and 100 degrees and the two oils quoted details varied significantly at 40* and undoubtedly at 150*

That said I very much doubt my driving style gets the box to 150*!

Edited January 10, 2012 by Rich H