While I had the Elise apart for the suspension refresh I was on the lookout for anything else that might need some attention. I had already noticed the dirt that had got behind the headlamp covers and that one side was letting water in so I was going to have to deal with that. What […]
To be honest I couldn’t see or feel much wrong with the original rubber wishbone bushes, they didn’t have any excessive movement and hadn’t aged badly. But to properly prepare and paint the wishbones they had to be removed so some replacements were required. I had a good read about the various replacement options and […]
After a few days wait my mate Steve turned up with a box for me. 🙂 I’m really happy with the colour, it ties in nicely with the original red seats in the car and means they will stand out a little under the car. Though nobody else is likely to ever see them I […]
When the Lotus designers decided to build the Elise using extruded aluminium they really ran with the idea and used it for more than just the chassis. The suspension uprights or hub carriers are one such example as extruded aluminium hub carriers was and still is out of the ordinary. My guess is that nowadays, […]
The Nitron Street Series, fitted to my Elise by a previous owner, are very well liked by Lotus owners for road use and they certainly feel pretty good to me. So as I only intend to use the Elise on the road and the dampers had only covered 11k miles I didn’t see any reason […]
Corrosion of the Elise/Exige/VX220/Evora chassis is a thing and it’s something that I think should not be ignored by anyone looking to buy one of these cars. Also anyone who owns one that’s done a fair bit of winter road miles or is just a good few years old now should consider inspecting their chassis […]
There’s plenty of helpful information out there on various websites and forums when it comes to buying guidance. But when I was looking before buying, it seemed one particular point didn’t really come up that often. Maybe it’s my experience with Classic Mini’s and old Japanese cars that means I can’t shake this particular concern? […]
As I said in my previous post I decided on using POR15 on the wishbones and other steel parts. The main reason I chose it was that I could do it all myself. I am also not a fan of powder coating which is one of the other common options. In my experience with powder […]
With the wishbones now bare I could get on to examining them and preparing them for the full POR15 treatment (why I chose this coating over other options I will explain later). I was pretty confident the wishbones were not suffering from any serious corrosion as my Elise is at fairly low mileage of 53k […]
As soon as I got the Elise I got it up on the lift for a good look over and found a few little jobs that needed doing including replacing some suspension parts like a ball joint and track rod ends at the front and a couple of toe link rod ends at the rear, […]