Lots of trouble, usually serious - hopefully not! My Elise ownership log

It was time to find out how much damage I had actually wrought. To get the splitter off, I ended up having to make some space and move the Maxton around so I could get the Elise up on the ramps to get the splitter off and identify which nuts & bolts were missing from the undertray, because I remembered there were some.

Time to assume the Lotus position:

The splitter is already off in the pictures, it was only held on by eight bolts that were accessible once I pulled the undertray off. Relatively simple job if you either have a lift or ramps.

Hardly any visible damage on the splitter I pulled off, they almost look identical:

The fun bit is that new carbon fibre splitter actually feels like it weighs the same or less as the sad remains of the one I took off the car. Next step, I have to get a good drill to drill the mounting holes in the carbon fibre, get some shorter mounting bolts as the 6x25mm ones that were on the car were a little excessively long for my taste, and then put the whole thing back together. Well, after replacing two missing bolts for the undertray as well.

I suspect that someone may have put on the splitter as a sacrificial piece of plastic after what looks like parking lot or curb damage. There's a little flat piece missing from the corner of the clam (see second photo below) that may or may not have been due to my agricultural excursion, but either way I'm pleased by the relatively minimal clam damage.

I've not really worked with fiberglass before, so how would one repair the scraping damage? I suspect that eventually, water might get in there and make things worse, so I will have to fix it sooner or later.

I'm still waiting for a parts order for the car, so there's not been much progress. I'm hoping to be able to fit the splitter this weekend so I can at least move it off the ramps as I have to work on both my Harley and the X1/9 and need to get the Lotus out of the shop for a few days.

While I'm waiting for some of the interior bits to show up - the car came without sun visors, and I really need them in place to correctly place the interior rear view mirror - I was poking around the engine bay because the air filter setup looks somewhat ... different. The snorkel was gone, and it looked like it may have the TRD air box. As I'm planning a full service when done, I wanted to figure out which air filter I needed.

Well, it turns out that someone hacked up the stock airbox to make a fake TRD one. The TRD cover and air filter are still available from Lotus for around $200 all in, but in order to make their own version, someone hacked up a $500 airbox . Photos to come, but I'm a tad disappointed to say the least. So right now it looks like I'll either end up buying the TRD bits or have to find a used stock airbox to put back in. And then I get to figure out what someone did to the hose that connects the airbox to the intake, because I'm pretty sure Lotus doesn't make this out of bits of pipe and silicone hose.

On the positive side, another nice piece of Carbon Fiber has arrived from Greg's Race Parts to replace another shonky, slightly broken interior panel.

The Elise has sun visors?

My Speedster has the same window frame, but sun visors were never even an option.
A tinted sunstrip is all you get, sir!

Regarding the intake hose - I would not dare to guess what Lotus did or did not do 20 years ago

In reply to Gzwg :

At least the US models have (maybe optional?) sun visors. Mine has the mounts and a tinted strip, but no sun visors. The lack of sun visors has annoyed me for a while and as I have to also reglue the interior mirror, it was the right time to try and get the pair of sun visors while they're allegedly still available.

The parts diagram knows what Lotus did twenty years ago, and it wasn't a piece of aluminium tubing and a couple of silicone hoses . I have to check over on Lotustalk, I think someone not too far from here is selling a complete, intact airbox with the intake hose. Might be worth a quick road trip.

They do exist, and boy are they cute:

That's driver's and passenger side sunvisor and a 2007+ interior mirror, which is a bit smaller than the absolutely honking one that was fitted to the 2005.

Now, the eagle eyed reader might already have spotted a minor issue with the sunvisors...

Hint: the 'step' area is where the mounting pin engages with the sunvisor. The sunvisors are also curved to accommodate the curvature of the windscreen, and are laying interior facing side up.

So you now have a left one, and a left one?

My interior mirror was (crudely) removed from a previous owner, I fitted one of those small "Baby Monitor" mirrors. Not much detail, but you can check if someone is behind you.

Yep, despite coming in a bag with the part number for a LHD passenger sunvisor, it appears that the passenger one is actually a RHD one.

Let's see what the person at the parts counter at the dealer has to say about that.

I actually did buy one of those tiny mirrors - a VW Bettle mirror fitted to an Elise mount - but decided against uing it because it lacks the dimming function. And with the mirror being the perfect height to reflect any and all headlights from the SUV or pickup truck right behind me into my face, I really do want a dimmable mirror so OEM it was.

I believe the visors were standard in the US but they were deemed more of a nuissance than a benefit. They don't block much sun, but they do block the stop lights. Most owners seem to have tossed them. 

In reply to cyow5 :

They do seem to cover the exact height of the green coloured strip at the top of the windscreen.

I'm currently pretending to be a completionist and if I don't like them, I can take them off again once I used them to position the new mirror properly.

Whew, it's on. The splitter, I mean. And yes, I'll eventually post a less potato-y photo.

I didn't make the job easier for myself by trying to reuse the existing mounting holes as I didn't want to add more swiss cheesiness to the original front clam. Took a bit of creativity to mark the holes properly on the splitter itself as they don't make a sharpie that's less than an inch long, at least one that I'm aware of.

I'm not 100% happy with the fit, but I think that might be more of an issue of me not really being familiar with working with fiberglass and carbon fiber. If you look very closely, there is a bit of a gap between the clam and the splitter on the driver's side. But in the words of Mediocrates, "eh, good enough for now" as my main goal was to get the splitter back on to prevent further damage to the front clam.

Got to pack up the wrong sided passenger side sunvisor tomorrow and get it back to the dealer. I already talked to them and they didn't seem to be overly surprised that I seem to have received a RHD passenger sunvisor with a LHD part number. It's going to take a few weeks to get the correct part though as it has to come from the UK, and that's obviously after they verified that I indeed did end up with the wrong part.

First, a less potato-ey photo of the lip as it is attached to the car:

Finished most of the interior refurb other than putting the passenger seat back in. That one still needs a good clean with leather cleaner and then it's ready to go in, but it really has to be the last piece of the puzzle because it's a lot more fiddly to put the "random items holder" that also holds the 12V power plug back in if the seat is in. I didn't like the grey plastic stock version, plus its mounting ears were broken anyway, so out came the credit card for another order at Greg's Race Parts. IMHO it was worth it.

The passenger footrest is now properly velcro'd down again - yes, that's the official way of attaching it to the car - and both carpets on the driver's side have been replaced with brand new OEM ones, too. I have to say, the new carpets make it a nicer place to be.

Next job after putting the interior back together is to get a proper alignment to make sure that it's reasonably within spec and more important, nothing can't be corrected to be back within spec before I start on the mechanical side of things.

For some reason, I fell into a wormhole when I tried to drive the Elise back on the garage and it took ten miles to get there. Odd, that. That did highlight why I bought this car, but it also highlighted that something's deficient in the brake department. Yes, it stops, but it feels like part of the braking effort has left for tea.

Those of you following this thread off and on probably remember that I keep saying that I can't catch a break with this car. Yep, it happened again.

Normally, this car is parked in my shop or the garage for the unfinished MIL apartment. For the last four weeks it was parked in the main garage in the house where my wife usually parks her Jeep, as said Jeep was away having new engines and other new bits fitted. I had notice that someone rodent-y seem to have chewed their way through the garage door seal, but I couldn't find any trace of it/them. Well, I did find an expired one on the weekend, and today I found where it's been camping out.

Yep, you guessed it, the passenger cabin of the Lotus. Can't say that the rat - because that's what it was - had bad taste, but the freshly cleaned interior of the Lotus had a fair amount of rat droppings in it and it chewed through the fabric of one of the door cards. There's a pretty good upholstery shop the next town over (plus the owner's husband owns an Exige) so hopefully they can repair the damage, otherwise I'll have to find at least one used door card as IIRC these are not available new any more.

Unsurprisingly I'm pretty hacked off as I now have to rip the interior apart again and deep clean it a month after I had finally finished scrubbing it and put it back together with a lot of fresh carpet. I don't know what it is about this car that seems to attract all the rodents, but this is getting really, really old.

My wife reasonably pointed out that maybe I should spend some of the money I usually spend on vehicles on rodent proofing the shop and the house. We've got rodent traps around the house and the shop, but even since Debby blew past, we seem to have a lot more rodents as I keep finding dead mice in the shop and now the expired rat in the main garage. Bit odd, but definitely something to discuss with our pest control company.

The only saving grace seems to be that the rat seems to only have visited the Lotus as so far, I've not found any traces of its presence in the 997 that was parked right next to it.

I guess the feeling of making progress on this car was nice while it lasted.

Ugh, I have never had rodent problems in my shop until this year.  One cut my 02 sensor wire, probably had soy based insulation.

Sounds like you just need to get rid of the Lotus, I'll clear a spot for it.

Time to get a cat that likes to hunt.  When I lived on the East Coast I had a long haired calico that maintained a 200 yard kill zone around my house.

If your door card cannot be fixed, let me know.

I had doorcards for that car, but gave them to a local Lotus-focussed Club.

If necessary I can ask if they still have them, and check if it is the same colour (I remember them being a bit more brownish?).

docwyte said:

Time to get a cat that likes to hunt.  When I lived on the East Coast I had a long haired calico that maintained a 200 yard kill zone around my house.

We used to have a couple of cats in the neighbourhood that liked to hang around my shop building. Come to think of it, I haven't seen either for a few months now around here. They might've found more productive hunting grounds.

Maybe it's time to see if there's a barn cat up for adoption somewhere.

Gzwg said:

If your door card cannot be fixed, let me know.

I had doorcards for that car, but gave them to a local Lotus-focussed Club.

If necessary I can ask if they still have them, and check if it is the same colour (I remember them being a bit more brownish?).

 

Thanks, appreciate it. It'll be at least 3-4 weeks until I know if it's fixable as of course this had to happen a day or two before I have to go on the first of multiple work trips.

It's funny, my Elise has spent around 8 years of cumulative time in shops during my 12 years of ownership and very little of that was actually Lotus' fault. Poor things just are bad luck magnets. 

Yeah, I think 2025 is going to be the year where I either get to use it for what I bought it for, or it gets sent on. It's taking a little too much of my time right now that would be better spent on the other two projects.

On the good news side, it passed WV inspection fine, although I'm not super happy with the brake feel. Brakes are definitely on the list for the winter, right after I get the service on the ND done.

I realized that I actually never posted the photo of the intake. I'm pretty sure that pipe that looks like it's from the plumbing supply store or something you'd use for a chimney doesn't have a Lotus part number, and neither do the silicone connectors:

You're also not supposed to see the stock airfilter from the side duct. I'm sure that's going to be filtering extremely well if I ever get to drive this in the rain. Yes, the photo looks like it was taken on a potato and then processed by another potato. Sorry.

Got to decide if I'll try to find a used stock intake and leave it at that, or if I try to get the TRD intake from Lotus which IIRC is still available. I don't think the 05 ECU can be flashed so I doubt it's been "tuned" other than by using a hacksaw.

The expansion tank also went on the "while I'm in there" list. It looks mostly OK, but you can tell that the plastic has aged and if I ever get this thing on the track it'll probably be a competition between the expansion tank and the plastic end tanks on the radiator as who is going to self-defenestrate first.

What I actually was trying to do was to start looking for a reason for the really soft brakes. First theory to investigate was to see if it was low on brake fluid. I mainly did that because it was easy as this would've also affected the clutch, and the clutch felt fine. After I remembered how to get the two covers in the front off, I found brake fluid that probably wants to be changed a year or three ago, and an interesting way of how the reservoir was "fitted" to the car with a special lightweight dorifto-spec zip tie. I'm not quite sure if this is OEM so I better go dig into that a bit:

I also found more rodent damage, which very much made me not happy. I suspect I'll be pulling the front clam off - which I have to do anyway if I want to change the radiator - to investigate further, and replace the plastic grilles with the mesh ones that GRP sells. The good news is that it looks like the damage is mostly confined to the pipe insulation, plus it looks like someone pulled off a lot of the loom tape on the wiring loom. I'm just hoping that this isn't a sign of things to come.

Well, knock me down with a feather.

That zip tie has a Lotus part number. Yes, that's how the brake fluid reservoir is supposed to be mounted.

Looks like the first SCCA HPDE for next year is 3/1 & 3/2 at Summit Point. I guess I need to get my skates on, or order a rollbar for the Miata unless I buy something else I don't have to cut up.