After a lot of dismantling, cleaning, painting and a bit of assembly of parts it’s finally time to start fitting parts back onto the Elise. There’s quite a few parts though which includes a fair number of nuts, bolts and washers. So first I took the time, with the help of my glamorous assistant, to […]
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, […]
With all the preparation done. Finally it’s time to actually get some paint on these parts. Obviously the wishbones are a bit of an awkward thing to paint so I attached a bit of fishing line to each of them so I could hang them while painting and to dry. This was a great idea […]
Having removed all suspension components from the chassis, the next thing to do was start breaking down what was left into single components for cleaning and refurbishment or replacement. The first thing I needed to do was come back to the ball joint that had refused to split and broken my trusty old ball joint […]
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, […]
If you’re not already aware, A Subaru Forester is basically a jacked up Impreza with a slightly larger, boxy body. Those are the things that attracted me to one, the performance and tuning potential of an Impreza but with more space in the back for stuff. Being ‘jacked up’ and the ‘larger, boxy body’ both […]
The brake caliper needs to come off first, starting with the clamp for the brake hose. Then the two caliper bolts. With the disc off too next was the disc shield. As expected, the bolts were not keen on coming out. After cutting a slot in the head of the bolts I used my drill […]
(First posted on MLR forum in July 2015) After spending a while tweaking the ride height and camber of the new coilovers I thought I’d check the caster to make sure everything is as it should be. The mount for the camber caster gauge is magnetic so I made some steel plates and extended wheel […]
(First posted on MLR forum in March 2012) There was a bit of play in the inner and outer bushes of the lower rear arms. Not too bad but I hate it when things move that shouldn’t so got some replacement powerflex bushes. I know the standard ones are spherical/rose joints which are good for […]