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Elise Initial-Ownership Diary
Last updated 12-Apr-2000
22nd October - 9th November 1999
The last two and a half weeks have been quite a blur. I've put 1350
miles on the clock and the car is in for it's first scheduled oil
change today which has given me the chance to reflect on the highlights
of ownership so far.
So the car is in for it's first oil change and at the same time I'm
having the basic Armourfend
kit fitted. This includes the full bonnet, front spoiler, door mirrors
and driving lamps. I'm omitting the driving lamps to have
Pete Rowe's
driving lamp covers fitted instead. I've also left a list of small
niggles with the car not worth mentioning here. There's not enough time
to replace the windscreen but there aren't any cracks appearing so I'll
book it in again when it's more convenient. Haydon Daytune also tell me
that the front clamshell needs to be removed to replace the windscreen -
thank God the insurance claim is fixed-cost and doesn't affect NCD!
11th November 1999
I've had the car back for two days now and everything is hunky-dory.
Excluding the Armourfend,
the oil change came to £52.39. When I got back to the dealer the car
was ready, cleaned inside and out. I had about 10 minor niggles with
the car, all of which have been fixed. All-in-all I'm a happy punter.
24th November 1999
Last week I took the car to Autoglass so they could examine the chip in
the windscreen. They reckoned they could cure it without replacement.
Good news as it saves me £50 excess and the worry of convincing my
insurance company to let my dealer replace the screen. So I went to
visit Autoglass first thing Saturday to do the repair. My nearest
Autoglass is about half a mile from my home and naturally, the
inside of the car's windscreen was misted up. I decided to drive around
until it was fully clear.
Taking a detour through a retail park, I performed a U-turn in a big
junction, hit some black ice or oil or something and understeered
straight into the kerb at what must have been about 10mph. I think the
wheel glanced the kerb face on and we bounced straight off back onto the
road in the direction I was aiming for. Nothing felt immediately wrong
and I pulled over to check the damage to the wheel. It wasn't as bad as
I had thought, a 5mm scuff around a quarter of the wheel rim. I cursed
my bad luck and didn't give it much thought until the next day when I
drove the car again, this time on a fast dual-carriageway.
There was quite a pronounced vibration through the steering wheel at
over 70mph and then I noticed it right down to 40mph as well. I checked
the wheel to see if I'd lost the balancing weight. I hadn't so I rang
Haydon who suggested I bring it in for a check. I had the day off
yesterday so I took the car over. On the way to Cambridge, hurtling
down the A505 I heard a whack from behind me and checked my rear-view
mirror to see black mesh standing upright on the engine cover behind the
passenger's seat. Not wanting to lose whatever it was, I put on my
hazard lights and stopped on the main carriageway to collect the item.
It turned out to be one of the mesh engine covers, broken loose.
On my arrival at Haydon, I showed them the offending item being none to
pleased to have bits fall off the car after only 2000 miles. The rear
window seal had come away from the window earlier the same day when I
removed the hard top. On closer inspection of the engine cover, two of
the other mesh inserts popped out with just a tap. Since the
introduction of the VVC engines, the engine cover has been redesigned to
accommodate the larger unit. It seems that the mesh inserts used to be
held in from the underside and now they're fixed to the top of the
cover. The heat from the engine softens the adhesive and the rest is
pretty obvious - the same goes for the rear window seal. I'm taking the
car in this afternoon to have the engine cover inserts and rear window
seal replaced.
With the slight damage to the wheel, Haydon first checked the wheel
alignment which was spot-on. They then jacked up the car spun the
wheel. After a couple of rotations, it was obvious that the wheel was
bent! It seems that the spokes on the new wheel design can buckle quite
easily. So, one new front wheel required and I was praying that the
tyre wasn't damaged too. The wheel comes to £191 plus
fitting but Haydon could do the job today. They needed an hour to fetch
a new wheel and fitted an old, 5-spoke wheel so I could use the car
during the hour I would have to wait for the new one to arrive. I must
I had already thought as much but the new wheel arrived in an "Oz
Racing" box. My original tyre was just fine so with the new wheel
fitted the car is back to driving impeccably. And after all that
palaver, Autoglass didn't even manage to fix the windscreen. The chip
is just as big and just as visible as before. On a positive note, I
have managed to convince my insurers to let me have the screen replaced
by Haydon and not one of their "approved repairers".
25th November 1999
Picked up the car yesterday after Haydon again failing to realise that
if I need a lift from there to work I'll need a lift back again. In
the end they paid the taxi fare and they've promised not to do it again!
All four engine cover mesh inserts have been re-attached, as has the rear
window seal.
Driving to work this morning (on damp roads) I'm finding that my driving
style is finally changing to suit the Elise - it's only taken 2000 miles,
jeez! I'm at the point where I know how fast I can enter a corner so
that all four tyres will be squirming across the apex and the rear end
will be alive on the exit. None of this would be visible from outside
the car but the Elise provides your bum and your hands with so much
information that you can drive the car just beyond the limits of the
tyres. This is only in the wet, mind - I'd need to take a large number
of "brave pills" to try that in the dry on public roads. I'll leave
that sort of thing to track days. I'm also learning not to look at the
speedo too much when "pressing on". It only serves to scare me and then
I'm not relaxed at the wheel, resulting in missed apexes and mid-corner
corrections.
29th November 1999
We took part in Andy
Ballingall's 5th Fish and Chip Run on Saturday. The journey was
from Moreton, Essex to Aldeburgh, Suffolk and I've since learnt that it
isn't pronounced all-dee-burg! Dave also took his Esprit along
without a navigator so he was stuck to our tail for the entire trip, even
when we took wrong turns. We all had a great day out and the weather was
favourable enough to keep the roof off the whole time.
One of the most memorable moments was the crescendo of noise whenever a
few Elises (all equipped with sports exhausts) accelerated out of a 2nd
gear corner. Other moments that spring to mind were when cars coming the
other way fell over themselves to get out of the way on seeing 20-odd
Loti(?) heading towards them and the look of disbelief on peoples faces
especially when travelling towards the back of the pack.
You can see some photos from the trip and the route map itself
here.
7th December 1999
Went to Costco in Watford
21st December 1999
I was supposed to drive to Broadway (Hereford & Worcs.) today on
business. It's a 180 mile round trip that I've done a few times before.
The B4030 from Bicester to Chipping Norton is a terrific drive. Today
however, there's a lot of snow and sleet about! It was sleeting when I
left the house but it wasn't until I was properly on my way that I
realised the car was out of its depth. Driving down a straight country
B road the road surface was just wet, but whenever there was a gap in
the trees fresh sleet was lying on the road.
Even at 20mph the Elise wouldn't go in a straight line through the
sleet. This meant that I couldn't go much above 30mph through the wet
stuff to give me enough time to slow down for the sleet. My fellow
motorists didn't seem too sympathetic to my plight and I decided that
with another 170 miles to go I didn't stand a very good chance of
keeping the car within the constraints of the road width.
I concluded that there just isn't enough weight to press the tyres
through the sleet/snow onto the road surface. Where cars in front were
leaving tracks in the road the Elise made none. I won't be driving it
in the snow again if I can help it. It's at times like this when I wish
I had gone for the Impreza.
10th January 2000
When washing the car over the weekend I noticed that the rear tyres were
looking quite worn. I checked with a depth gauge and was shocked to
discover that the outermost groove was down to just 2mm. The car has
only covered 4100 miles! The innermost groove was at 3mm and both tyres
have worn identically.
I'm astonished at this rate of wear. If I had been on a couple of track
days then it might make more sense but I've not locked the wheels under
(dry) braking and only managed a very few smokey getaways. The car gets
a good dose of heavy cornering but this isn't reflected in the front
tyres which still have 7mm left.
On reflection, this would explain my wandering rear end in the sleet
before Christmas. I've booked the car in for a (geometry) check next
Monday to see if the dealer can explain it. I'll not be happy about
forking out for a new pair of rear tyres if something's been out of
whack. It looks like I might get the chance to try out the Michelins
sooner than I thought.
27th January 2000
I've had the car back to Haydon who can't find a problem with it and
politely suggested that my driving style was the reason for the rapid wear.
I'd probably resign myself to this but my fuel consumption indicates that
the car doesn't get the road to itself very often. I've averaged 33.5mpg over
the last 5000 miles. The last few damp and frosty days have been quite
entertaining with the rear end breaking away with very little provocation.
I've decided to get my money's worth out of the tyres and finish them off in
style at a track day. As it's my first time I've decided to go with
Easytrack to
Kemble Airfield.
This is happening tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it like a kid at
Christmas!
Easytrack have the added
advantage of offering replacement tyres at good prices. I'm going to try the
Pirelli P-Zero's again and monitor the wear rate very closely. At £100
per tyre I'm saving £40 over dealer prices which almost pays for the
£65 track day.
As this is my first outing I thought I'd better get some insurance for peace
of mind. I know there's nothing much to hit at Kemble but after browsing
through
Kathryn
Rosling's photos I changed my mind. My Norwich Union policy ought to
cover track days but after ringing my broker - surprise, surprise - they're
saying "no". Apparently I was given a very discounted policy because of my
"good driving record" and the cheaper policy doesn't cover track days.
A useful thread on alt.cars.lotus mentioned Competition Car Insurance gave
one-day
track day cover so I gave them a ring (0115 941 5255). I got £6000 cover
(excluding engine and transmission which are under warranty anyway) with an
excess
of £750 for £46. More than I wanted to pay but worth it for peace
of
mind.
Roll on tomorrow...
1st February 2000
Well, that was fun! I got to Kemble in about 2.5 hours with quite a numb bum -
although my tolerance has gone up from 1 to 1.5 hour's before I start wriggling
about in the seat. Jonny and Marcus (Easytrack) gave us a quick briefing in
Initially, plan B was to use a different, triangular part of the runway(s) which
would have given us a fairly large circuit. The problem here though was that
the
high-friction runway surface would be torn up by heavy cornering and destroy
tyres. There was no option but to use the Belfast loop and mind out for the
Jumbo. Given the space available this turned out to be no more than a slight
annoyance (and a little scary).
My first stint out on the circuit resulted in a fair amount of spins but it
didn't take long to get the hang of how far back-end could get out of shape
before it became terminal. As soon as I managed to unwind the steering wheel
quickly enough I had some satisfying power-slides going on. The day was all
about exploring the limits of the car including the brakes which seemed much
happier on the track than under normal road conditions where the pedal travel
and feel can vary a lot. I might invest in a set of braided steel brake line
hoses to get better brake feel.
By the end of the day my rear tyres were 75% slick which made for a lot of fun
(and I lost 2-3mm off the fronts). I had been practicing heel-and-toe
gearshifts all week and it really paid off when changing down from 3rd to 2nd
(70mph to 30mph). Wearing racing boots also helped a lot with the braking but
I had a problem with wearing my helmet. Basically, my head was pushed too far
forward by the seat's headrest and by the end of the day I had a really stiff
neck. It didn't help when I had a passenger ride in a supercharged 111S -
the neck-snapping acceleration got quite painful by the end of the session
(I wasn't complaining though!)
That said, I don't think I'll do another Kemble. It was great fun but I learned
what I wanted to. By the end of the day I was aching to have a go on a nice
twisty
race circuit with hairpins, chicanes, kerbs and all the other factors that make
driving
a car such a demanding and rewarding experience. I'll nurse my new rear tyres
for
a while and then think about what to do next.
Oh... and there's some photos from the day here.
10th February 2000
I witnessed a nasty accident on the way to work this morning. I had been to the
dentist and set off from Baldock just after 10:00. I was making good time with
the lack of traffic at that time but heavy rain after a couple of dry days meant
that the road was very slippery.
The middle part of my journey takes me across the A603 - a mostly straight and
wide single carriageway. I overtook 3 cars down one of the straights - Land
Rover Discovery followed by a Citroen Xantia, followed by a Subura Impreza
Turbo.
I looked behind to see the Xantia pull out followed by the Impreza who tailgated
the Xantia while they were both overtaking the Discovery. The Xantia seemed to
put up a fight and the Impreza took a good 10-15 seconds to get past the Xantia.
By this time I was half way up the only hill in the area and saw the Impreza
approaching... FAST. At the top of the hill there's a corner to the left with
some adverse camber which leads on to another straight where the hill descends.
I braked for the corner (which is unusual as I normally just lift - but it was
slippery). Once on the straight I actually watched for the Impreza to see if
he intended to overtake me. When I looked back I saw the car side on - at the
beginning of a spin. All I could do was watch and try to brake while he left
the road after a 270° spin on the tarmac followed by a 2 metre drop into
the field on the left and barrel-rolling twice before coming to a stop on its
wheels.
By the time I was able to turn round and head back up the hill, several other
cars had stopped. I called the Police and Ambulance as others approached the
car. The guy was conscious and talking but there was no way he could get out.
The Police arrived after about 10 minutes followed by paramedics and fire
engines 5 minutes after that. All in all there were 3 Police cars, a doctor
car, ambulance and two fire engines. The rear of the car was caved in over
the rear seats and the front was sufficiently damaged to necessitate hydraulic
cutting equipment to get him free.
As I was the only person to see what happened I had to wait around for 45
minutes before being asked about the accident. I had to say it was down to
excessive speed but even though he must have been travelling 10mph faster
than me he did have 4WD and I was surprised to see him lose it so dramatically.
But when you enter a corner way too fast only an ejector seat will get you out
of trouble.
Sobering...
23rd March 2000
The car is now at Haydon Daytune for its 9000 mile A service. I did 1100 miles
last week with a 5-day trip to France. I took up the Official Lotus Club
offer of a return Dover-Calais ferry crossing and 4 nights B&B at a hotel near
Le
Mans for £119 per person. Seemed like a good deal and I've always
wanted to visit Le Mans.
Packing for two was not a problem at all. We happen to have a soft luggage
bag which fits neatly into two-thirds of the primary boot space using all
the available height. We got all our clothes, toiletries etc into this bag
The drive from Calais to Le Mans took 4 hours coming home and considerably
longer than that on the way there. Embarrassingly long in fact. The Elise's
good fuel economy made up for it's small fuel tank managing the 280-odd miles
between Calais and Le Mans on a single tank. The only tricky bit of the route
is getting through Rouen as there's no ring road and lots of major routes run
through it. The roads in general are smooth and straight which is efficient
if boring. Overtaking is tricky but this is one time where a passenger is a
performance upgrade! I found that if I let a nutter Frenchman past me then
I could use him as a guide for when to pull out whenever he overtook the
car/truck in front. Trucks are everywhere!
Once you get South of the town of Le Mans the circuit is reasonably well
signposted. There's a museum at the entrance which contains a good sample
of Le Mans racers from the 1920's to mid-90's. As with most other tourist
centres in France, there's precious little information in English which is a
problem for me as my French is minimal.
It's a strange feeling driving round the public section of the 24-hour
circuit. It differs from "ordinary" road by being lined with armco
barrier, enhanced banking on corners and racing curbs. Even cruising
around at the speed limit it's an exciting experience; passing
blanked-off chicanes down the Mulsanne Straight and realising the enormous
scale of the 24-hour race.
The French are considerably worse drivers than their UK counterparts.
The Elise causes quite a stir wherever you go resulting in lots of
tailgating although this seems to be de rigeur. They also seem to have no
idea how to overtake and often employ the kamikaze technique. I've never
seen so many beaten-up hatchbacks in my life and didn't see any other cars
of note the whole time.
There's some photos of the trip here.
So, back to Blighty and the car's at Haydon Daytune for a service with 9071
miles on the clock. I've been waiting since November for a courtesy car so
that they can have my car for a week to respray some dodgy paintwork under
warranty. The rear clamshell has discolouration in a faded line from the
RHS indicator to the diffuser as well as osmosis bubbles under the paint.
Osmosis is also present on both doors. That's three-quarters of the car
needing a respray! I don't mind, especially as the rear clam suffered
quite a bit through the winter months, it will be good to have it as-new again.
As well as the paintwork, I'm having braided brake lines fitted to the car
in an attempt to improve brake feel and in particular make it more
predictable under heavy braking. I've heard a lot of good things about
braided hoses on alt.cars.lotus so I think it's a worthwhile upgrade.
Initially, Haydon quoted me £140+VAT just for the labour but after
telling them that Brooke
Kensington were selling them for £120 all-in they agreed to match
the price. The hoses themselves tend to cost around £50 so it seems
like a reasonable price to me and as this requires a change of brake fluid I
ought to save some money on getting the service done at the same time.
2nd April 2000
It took an extra week but I've finally got my car back. The paintwork is OK
(not perfect) but I'm left with numerous other problems:
All but the last item can be (or were) sorted. But it's the head-unit that
pissed me off the most. It's a Kenwood MASK unit (see
audio section) and I always blank-off the face when leaving it with someone
else. When I finally turned the key to drive away I noticed that the familiar
sound of the face rotating was absent and that the face was actually already
rotated but not illuminated. It was dead - Haydon checked that there was power
right up to the connector and the fuse(s) were OK.
What's strange about this is that the face was rotated before I turned the key.
It suggests to me that someone's fiddled with it and either put in the wrong
code too many times or something worse. I've left the unit with Haydon who can
either get it repaired or replace it. I don't mind living without music for a
little while but I've just replaced the
speakers and would like to make use of them.
The service itself came to £208, plus £120 for the braided brake
hoses. I don't know whether it's the new oil or that I've been using wheezy 1.2
litre Renault Clio for two weeks but the engine feels fantastic. It's now happy
to rev beyond 5500rpm up to about 6200rpm before giving up.
I've also had both rear dampers replaced as they had become quite loud and
generating the infamous "billiard ball" sounds effects. Something's not quite
right at the rear-end though. Coming out of a tight 2nd gear left hander on the
way home I experienced what I think might be "axle tramp". Under full throttle,
the rear tyres didn't just stick or lose traction but sort of bounced up and
down as if they were elliptical. My second set of rear tyres are also on their
way out after 3500 miles! Haydon now admit that this isn't down to me and
agreed to perform a geometry check while they had the car. However, their rig
broke before my car got to it. I'm going to have to take the car to the factory
service centre at Ketteringham Hall. That needs I need to take a day off work
and be stuck in Norfolk but if it sorts out the rear end and tyre wear then
it'll be worth it.
7th April 2000
Took the car to the factory service centre at Ketteringham Hall yesterday. The
geometry check takes 4-5 hours so I wanted to get there early. I set off just
after 06:30. It was a bright but frosty morning so I took the roof off to make
an occasion of the drive up. Had the heater on all the way up and had to wear a
hat and gloves but it was worth it (it's always worth it).
The 80-mile trip took less than 90 minutes and I arrived pretty much dead-on
eight o'clock. I caught up with a new Elise Sport
It came back at 13:30 with the results of the geo. The rear toe-in is supposed
to be set at 1.5mm - my wheels were set to 9.6 and 9.0mm. Everything was now
within tolerance and an engineer had flung the car round the track and given it
the OK. After some discussion (and phone calls to Haydon) Lotus agreed to
replace all four tyres under warranty as the car must have left the factory in
that condition. They only get 34 minutes to set up the suspension on the
production line. So after another couple of hours I had a new set of rubber and
a clean car to boot! I was really only hoping to get the rear set of tyres
replaced so to get all four was a bonus.
During my visit I had even managed to get a half-day's work done in the customer
suite. There was a desk and phone for me to use and I had brought the laptop so
I made good use of the time in pleasant surroundings. They even supplied some
sandwiches and crisps for lunch :-)
As usual however, things didn't go 100% to plan. As I got back onto the A11 for
the journey home and passed 80mph I started to notice a vibration through the
steering wheel. The front wheels were out of balance! I couldn't face turning
round so I carried on with the judder.
At lunchtime today I popped down to Haydon who rebalanced all four wheels (I
think!) while I got something to eat. Everything was done when I returned and
now everything's hunky-dory... welcome to the rollercoaster ride of Lotus
customer service!
Since the suspension geometry fix, the car has developed a tendency to
understeer which is something I never experienced in the dry before. The car
now handles as it is normally described and I can't say I like it much. That
said, it does feel much more planted in high-speed corners and it's lost some of
it's nervousness. Ultimately it grips better but I could do without the
understeer. Bigger front tyres or a suspension upgrade would sort this out but
as most of that is brand new I'll have to leave it for now. I think I'll
revisit this once the warranty runs out.
12th April 2000
Went on the 6th Fish & Chip Run to the Cotswolds on Saturday. Had a terriffic
day and more info to follow but for now I've put up the
photos here.
Lesson #1: When the car has been sitting in rain with
the hard-top on, do not drive away with the windows open. There's no
guttering on the roof and you end up with lots of water on your legs and
shoulders.
Lesson #2: Be careful not to drag your hand back
across the gear knob after changing into 5th gear. It's very easy to
knock the gear lever out of the gate.
say, I do prefer the new, 12-spoke style wheels. Incidentally, you can't
fit balance weights to the inside of the 15" 12-spoke wheels - there isn't
enough room for them to clear the brake calipers.
on Sunday and popped into their tyre shop while I was there. Costco
stock Michelin tyres and I've used them in the past as a source of good,
cheap tyres. I noticed that they had a new asymmetrical tread-pattern,
the Michelin Pilot Sport. The 205/50 R16 tyre was £135 but they
don't make a 185/55 R15. I'd quite like to give these a go but being a
new design there's no information on how good they are. If anyone's in
the need of a new set of rear tyres then why don't you try out the
Michelins? There's some information on
Michelin's web site.
the pilot's lounge in the tower. There was a slight problem however. Someone
had parked
"a chuffin' great jumbo"
on part of the taxi-way that's normally used as part of the circuit (the Belfast
loop). The 747 was being decommissioned with a team of workers dismantling and
removing all sorts of components.
leaving space in the boot for an empty rucksack in the other third and all
the ancillary space underneath the bodywork free for cheap booze and the
like for the journey home. We discovered that a box of 6 bottles of wine
fits very well into the passenger footwell above the footrest - in effect,
creating a larger footrest - very handy.
160 just off the A11 which kept me concentrating on the way to the factory!
Ketteringham Hall is an impressive place, a stately home inhabited by Lotus
cars. The calm and tranquill surroundings are occasionally interrupted by the
sound of a performnce exhaust... perfect! My car was whisked into the service
centre to have a quick tracking check done before commiting to a full geometry
check. The rear-end was out and so the car went off to the factory for a run on
the Hunter at about 09:00.
Liam Crilly© 12-Apr-2000 |