Lotus Ownership Blog

Its been a while since I've had a chance to update the blog but the Elise has been a bit poorly lately. It decided to blow a hole in one of the coolant hoses a few weeks ago, luckily it happened when parking at home. I called the AA and got taken to a local garage to get the hose replaced.

Firstly the hose was massively expensive to replace, apparently the original supplier to Lotus has gone bust and Lotus had to remake all the tooling. Luckily for me the AA warranty was paying so I wasn't too upset of the price of the hose. The really bad news came once the hose was replaced - the garage confirmed that the head gasket had finally gone.

The car was taken from my local garage to Andy@Quantum to fix the HGF; it hadnt blown in a massive way but had gone nonetheless, I'm still not sure if the HGF caused the hose to blow or vice versa.

Since every cloud has a silver lining I had some other tweaks done while the head was off:

- Fix HGF and test head
- Head skim
- Uprated gasket
- Uprated head bolts
- Head ported and polished
- Aluminium inlet manifold, ported and matched to the head
- 52mm throttle body
- New cam belt (it was due a new one in 6 months anyway)

I've had the car back a while now and aside from a loose cable (easy fix) its been trouble-free once again. The power has definitely increased, not massively but enough to be noticeable. The new bits should also make things a little more reliable.

Back on the road for the summer now

Summers on the way - the hardtop is finally off!

Need to give the car a wash now, its stinking.

The car's been with Andy at Q-Mech for a few days this week.

- B Service
- New MOT
- New front discs and pads
- Fit new steering wheel

105k miles and still going strong

Only advisories were 1 rear tyre and rear toe links. All being done in the next few weeks.

The Elise is having a bit of a bad start to the winter. About 2 weeks ago the rain got into the plugs so I replaced most of the ignition system:

- Distributor cap
- Rotor arm
- Spark Plugs
- HT Leads

Today the battery has gone flat. The AA came out and confirmed that the battery is past its best and needs replacing...but it's covered under the P&L warranty