As with any car, when the ride height is changed the suspension and steering geometry will be effected. I have set the Elise ride height a bit lower than standard and though I’ve done a full alignment including the front camber and toe. This doesn’t do anything to compensate for the hubs having effectively been moved higher compared to the body and therefore steering rack. This ‘offset’ in rack height to hub height, compared to the original ride height hub locations, can and usually does have an adverse effect on bump steer.
Fortunately the Lotus engineers must have thought about this or at at least wanted to keep their options open for final rack location and designed the tub with slots for the bolts that hold the steering rack. This means the rack can be unbolted and the standard rack locating plates can be removed then replaced with plates that raise the steering rack up to the top of the slots in the tub. This then puts the steering arm angles back/closer to their original setup.
Firstly these are awkward to get at which means sort of lying over the sill so a nice thick dust sheet to protect the paint and aluminium anodising.
Drivers side original rack locating plates and rack bolts.
Passenger side.
They’re threadlocked in so this is a quicker way of getting them out.
The rivet at the bottom of the original plate needs to be drilled out. Only the lower rivet the upper rivet is for the other bracket that is bonded in place.
Original rack locating plate removed to reveal the slots for the rack bolts.
Elise parts rack raiser plates with new rivets.
Passenger side rivetted in place.
Repeat on drivers side. This is more awkward with the pedals being in the way.
Now refit the bolts with a bit of threadlock.
The bolts should be torqued correctly which required one or two extensions on the torque wrench.
I found the bolt torques here (very bottom of the page).
All bolts in place and torqued up.
I expect most people don’t bother refitting the rubber trim back and I probably shouldn’t have bothered either but I can’t help it.
Finally a comparison in the rack location before and after.
Before:
After:
The change in gap between the back of the top rivet and rack is clear to see.
After this I adjusted the tracking/toe and that was it.
