first TD at combe in TTS Exige...

[EX51GE R]

So our first TD outing was at Castle Combe on thursday, first though the two days that led up to it...

Tuesday, GEO day- Darren and i had spent a whole day the weekend before getting the car back together ready for John Shorrocks to visit TTS to do the GEO :clp
One of the reasons i employed John was because i'd used him before on my old S/C'd Plans motorsport s2 Exige and his knowledge of the lotus platform is second to none! If there was a probem i knew he would find it!

Whichof course he did :wall :wall :mumble :mumble :cry :cry :lol :lol

Problem number 1 - All 4 bearing packs were somehow not OE spec but pattern parts and in Johns opinon really shouldn't be on a car with this power on track, bugger! Couldn't get the SKF ones the same day so it was decided to do the GEO on the existing ones and then swao them out the next day.

Problem 2- the steering rack rod ends were S1 items, therefore too short as we are using S2 K running gear, only on by about 6 threads! :wall This is the problem with assembling a car over such a long period of time, you forget whats been swapped out for the correct items and whats not! Cue trainee being sent on a mission to eliseparts to collect OE items, new OE ones are now all one length so we can't cock that up again!

Problem 3- when we decided to rebuild the car i specced a fast road set up for the GAZ monotubes, which means the springs are a tad soft really, so the cars been set a bit higher than we wanted as we really want the arch liners intact for now! Will be making a call to warren at GAZ soon for some stiffer springs.

With all that sorted John worked his magic and left TTS a lot later than i would have liked! Thanks John ! :clp (y)

So onto Thursday, meaning a 5am start for me to get to TTS at Silverstone to collect darren and the car (i have the tow car) Darren was late even though he lives about 20mins away!

At Combe after arriving late, quick signing in and the briefest of briefings we took the car through scrutineering for a sound check, DB limit for the day was 100DB, We measured......


100.7DB

He let us through with a wink! (y)

Back to the paddock for a spanner check before the first drive of a 600BHP car with LOTS of untested development parts on one of the scariest tracks in the UK with Darren driving!!

Nice dry track, through the pits, onto the back straight and........

Holy fk, you thunder thats fast!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On about 70% throttle

In fairness to Darren he took the first few laps quite steady, he even let people pass him, which is unheard of! :lol

Back into the pits for a spanner check, Darren and john had paintmarked everything, nothing had shifted, test one passed (y)

I could feel a nasty vibration through the passenger seat though, so we had a look couldn't see anything obvious, so decided to swap out the rear tyres, luckily in the morning i'd decided to pack the spare rears we had, now i thought we just had spare tyres as the brand new set of wets on new TD's were stacked on top, i discovered they were in fact mounted on a spare pair of wheels !:bc It's amazing the things you forgot you'd bought! Probably while pissed on ebay!

Couple more sessions with Darren driving , he's getting braver and faster, still not using full throttle though.
problem number 2 arises and the battery isolator spits it's dummy!, Darren bypasses it and we decide to ditch it for a better one in the future.

Break for lunch and i know i'm going to have to drive it next!

Now i'm being honest here and i'm not afraid to admit i was stting myself! I've not driven anything remotely quick in 2.5 years let alone this bonkers thing and it's started bloody raining! Plus i was worried i'd hate it and want to sell it!

So not having wets with us i wimp out and go out on the circuit in the instructors S2000 with him driving so i can get some tips, Darren follows in the Exige. (thats the video at the bottom)

Luckily the sun comes out, dries out the track and i decide to go out for my first drive :barf

My biggest fear was that i'd mash my foot down and end up backwards in an instant! My fears were ridiculous! A) the power delivery is so linear it's no worse than driving a Corsa and B) i completely forgot how much grip there is with a Lotus On R888's!
Darren was never happy with the stiffness of the Toyota shifter mech in the cabin but i am over the moon with it! It's so slick, night and day over the S1 one, not sure what's made it better his gearbox mech design or the Toyota shift mech and cables? But it feels OE :clp He is determined to fab a billet one with a shorter throw over the winter break though!

Now it's my turn to get a bit quicker over the next few laps, Darren has to tell me to slow down a bit! The way it picks up speed in any gear at any revs is ballistic, the laps fly by and we decide to come in to look more in detail at this vibration.

Still nothing obvious, apart from the amount of free play in the driveshaft, probably only 2mm in and out, maybe bottoming out in the gearbox cups? Will only discover that when we take them out and see if there are any witness marks, it was only a problem on the power out if the corners so likely it could be that, fairly simple solution if is to get shorther shafts.

Darren goes out again, i stay in the van and sort out some stuff, i can hear the car around the whole circuit! Cue the next problem.....

Darren appears, black flagged :cry for noise, on a retest it's 110DB, day over (n) so thats another problem to sort!

So all in all i think we had a hugely succesful test day, the problems encountered aren't huge, nothing major broke, the car was hugely quick and next time we will up the power a bit too and get on full throttle!

The video is the only one we got as some idiot left the camera on for 40 mins and it went flat! Darren in the wet session following the instructor to get some lines...

http://vimeo.com/73476065

Thanks for reading if you got this far! Marc.

P.S a huge thanks to Darren for risking his relationship and sanity
to build this car (y)