Finally Got A New Toy To Replace The RX7

[sciff5]

Alright so started in on the control arm dissassembly, and like I said to get to some of the control arm bolts on the chassis you really need to pull the undertray. The whole car has a flat underside, consisting of 3 aluminum sheets, and the diffuser.
So I figure while that stuff is down I'll change the oil, like I said in my last post.

I pull the undertrays, no problemo. get the car up high on stands.
Get under there and see that the car has an aftermarket pan on it. Nice piece!
Aluminum pan with a nice drain plug. Drain the oil and it looks old, and then I say after the fact... ohh I should run a magnet in the drain pan and it picks up all sorts of metal fragments.
So I begin to freak out a bit, but remember I didn't clean that pan out so I don't know if they came from the oil or it was just dirt that fell on the drain pan and was there already.
See below for the drain pan, you can see all the pieces in the shiny oil. I'm still freaking out a bit inside because I'm not sure if this came from the engine or it was there:



So I decide I need to pull the pan and see what's at the bottom of the pan
Takes me 5 minutes to pull the bolts and 3 hours to work a putty scraper all the way around to break the seal from hell held in place with some whicked RTV:


So I pull the pan, and it's a nice trapdoor pan like the one I had for the rx7.
But I put a magnet down into the bottom of the pan swirl it all around the bottom of the pan and I 2 small metalic items are stick to it about the size of a small grain of sand... Hmm still left a bit wondering if that crap came out of the oil or not....But it seems a lot cleaner in here than outside.
I dump the rest of whats left in the pan into the drain pan and I notice some red/orange globules, they don't feel like anything just can't figure out what they are so I took some pics:


Any idea what those might be, like I said I see them, and they stay together on their own but I can't feel them.


Well anyway I got to the job at hand, and unless you guys tell me otherwise, my thought is to throw some new oil in it, run it the rest of the summer unless I run into issues and then pull the pan again this winter when I rebuild the car and see if there's anything new in the pan.

Thought this was interesting, where the front of the control arm mounts to the chassis. It actually bolts to a removable box that then bolts to the frame in 4 spots, making the suspension parts, part of a modular system so you can ruin the rim, ruin the control arm, even ruin the mount and still unbolt it from the chassis. I'm sure the rim and control arm are designed to fail before the mount, which is designed to fail before the chassis. I really really like the way this car is built, it's more race car than road car. I do not dare touch my daily driver, or my wife's, but again, this car makes sense to me. In a ton of ways it's just like the rx7 (I know I've said this before)



Everything is unbolted the control arm is just connected to the spindle at the ball joint. Just need to seperate them, and the lower control arm should fall right out. Then need to seperate the ball joint for the toe link and it should fall right out too. So I can replace them:




So I'm leaving this up to the crowd smarter than myself. should I just throw some oil in it and go, or should I pull the windage tray and pull some of the rod bearings. I've never done it, but it seems pretty idiot proof. Rod bolts should be right there once I pull the windage tray.

[wickedrx7]

Did you cut the filter open? Anything in the oil pickup? I'm not an expert but that doesn't look like bearing material to me.

[digitalsolo]

Agreed.   Not sure what's in there, but it doesn't appear to be bearing material.

I'd run some high detergent oil (like Rotella) for a 50-100 miles and cycle it out, then check that, personally.

[sciff5]

Check and check, will do exactly those things. I'll cut the filter open and see if it's filled with shiney goodness.

And I'll throw some new oil in it, and run it and check it shortly after and/or send it in for analysis.

I'm also going to go around the car and do a bolt check. Just disassembling everything I found the lugs on one wheel super loose and one of the bolts on that lower control arm mount i could spin with my hand.

[freeskier7791]

Red stuff could be silicone, I would run a magnet on the filter as well

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

[sciff5]

Well I was pushing myself on friday night, and I was over-tired and still pushing. I found a way to take the bolt that's used for the brake caliper (rear slide calipers) and drive it in one of the mounting points for the lower A arm. Btiched the threads up on the bolt but found that when I tried the correct bolt, it threaded in surprisingly nicely and torqued to spec. That being said I'll probably change that out this winter.

It was a massive freakout moment, though because everything on this car seems to take a month to get from the UK, and I figured this bolt would be the same. Find out though that it's a standard metric bolt, but hardened. I tried home depot first just to see, but they done have fine pitch hardened bolts.

So just for fun I try my local hardware store. This place is amazing place that while being small, seemingly has everything in the planet you could ever want in life, from liqour to landscaping supplies, and apparently not only 8.8 M10 x 80 with a 1.25 pitch hardened bolt, they even had the same bolt in 10.9. I love this place.

Thread it in, and we're back in business.
Reassemble the suspension on that side with the new toe links installed (the stock lotus elise/exige toe links like to break suddenly)
But here's the old arm with the new arm next to each other:


Then installed the toe link on the other side which requires pulling the brakes. And I absolutely mangled the  boots on the outer ball joints on both sides trying to get them off, so that will just have to be another job for the winter.
The rotors also have a centering screw on these cars like the Rx7 and like the Rx7 this one was siezed, then stripped out even after heating it up. Started drilling/EZ out and it came right out after most of the head was drilled out.
Promptly went back to the other side and added anti seize to the threads of the bolt on the other side.

Will have to run without for the rest of the summer

Toe links installed




Then reinstalled the pan, new oil filter and the undertray. To put the undertray back on you need to take it off jack stands, and I then installed the diffuser. Bad photo but I'll take a better one tomorrow. It really looks good without looking ridiculous for a street car or ricer at all:



Backed the car down the driveway again just to feel it rolling. Man it feels smooth. This car changes speed without drama. I dumped the clutch slightly at the bottom of the driveway at maybe 2500 rpm and without seemingly any weight transfer or drama it just gripped and I was at the garage door very quickly. The lack of weight allows you to just do things that would be difficult in a heavier car. Hard to describe.


If UPS isn't slow as shit, I'll have my RMV forms from the insurance company to register the car tomorrow. And I'll have the car registered tomorrow/get plates. Then it needs an alignment bad. The side I worked on looks like it has visible negative camber and visible toe out. Don't know how these double A-Arm cars adjust camber. I'll have to look it up

[sciff5]

Got the car registered, and then it actually made it to the alignment rack:
[smg id=9275 type=preview align=center caption="IMG 0607"]

Had a great day, drove the car maybe 10 miles total just got some gas in it, tested it out. Still no WOT.

Car felt great but they weren't able to get negative camber. Said they need shims to do it. I look it up and you take out shims to get negative camber so I don't know what they hell they were talking about.

Was going to bring it back, but I see a puddle of oil under the car after it's been sitting a few hours. Shittt.. must be something I did because the car never had a leak before. Will have to check the oil pan and the oil filter, those are the only things that I touched in the oiling system, unless something is leaking because it's now being pressurized.

Car held temp, about 195 consistently, but need to pull the diffuser/undertray again tomorrow and look around. I have to laugh at this point. I wasn't actually expecting this car to be a "project" but it certainly is.

[freeskier7791]

Car looks good, that wing is massive!  I figured you used camber shims for adjustment, maybe some need to come off the upper control arms and go in the lower control arm mounting points.  Do you have an oil pressure gauge?

[sciff5]

Car looks good, that wing is massive!  I figured you used camber shims for adjustment, maybe some need to come off the upper control arms and go in the lower control arm mounting points.  Do you have an oil pressure gauge?

No gauges in the car, other than factory. I'm sure it has a low oil pressure/low oil light on these cars, but I think I was just rushing getting the car back together.
 After reading more I didn't give that black RTV enough time to set up correctly, and I didn't do a good enough job prepping the surface, and I bet it just never sealed.

I'm going to just get a cork felpro gasket from autozone, and use that. It'll seal immediately and at worst it'll weap slowly over time, but dropping the pan with a real gasket is legit a 10 min job vs 3 hours trying to break the RTV seal from hell with whatever assortment of putty knives you have lying around.

BTW the wing is kinda big. I would never go wingless usually but when I look at the car from certain angles with the roof off, it kinda feels a bit like the supra from the first fast and furious which is not what I'm going for obviously.
That wing actually comes from the later exiges I believe so it is an OEM part surprisingly. I think I want a wing out back, but only if it's functional.

[scuter83]

Did he give you the U S with the sale, or do you have to purchase those to round out the L O T on the trunk, haha?

[sciff5]

Did he give you the U S with the sale, or do you have to purchase those to round out the L O T on the trunk, haha?

I like to say, it will take a "LOT" of time or a "LOT" of money to make it a LOTUS again 
Those stupid chrome letters are $100 so I'm waiting until the body work is done and it's repainted before buying them, until then the car will be driven with half the front end missing and I can use that joke to get me by.

[freeskier7791]

No gauges in the car, other than factory. I'm sure it has a low oil pressure/low oil light on these cars, but I think I was just rushing getting the car back together.
 After reading more I didn't give that black RTV enough time to set up correctly, and I didn't do a good enough job prepping the surface, and I bet it just never sealed.

I'm going to just get a cork felpro gasket from autozone, and use that. It'll seal immediately and at worst it'll weap slowly over time, but dropping the pan with a real gasket is legit a 10 min job vs 3 hours trying to break the RTV seal from hell with whatever assortment of putty knives you have lying around.

BTW the wing is kinda big. I would never go wingless usually but when I look at the car from certain angles with the roof off, it kinda feels a bit like the supra from the first fast and furious which is not what I'm going for obviously.
That wing actually comes from the later exiges I believe so it is an OEM part surprisingly. I think I want a wing out back, but only if it's functional.

That makes sense, I use the 1 minute gasket stuff from Permatex and it works really well if you want to try that instead of the cork one.  I assume that wing is functional, but a more traditional racing wing may look better like the one on the white one you posted earlier

[wickedrx7]

I would ditch the Lotus on the back all together.

[sciff5]

I would ditch the Lotus on the back all together.

If it was a different color I probably would but if I stick with my plan of repainting it black. This car would be my inspiration, and the chrome Lotus on the back looks good against black:
http://www.lotustalk.com/forums/f94/sold-amazing-award-winning-lotus-elise-sale-feeler-125937/

That makes sense, I use the 1 minute gasket stuff from Permatex and it works really well if you want to try that instead of the cork one.  I assume that wing is functional, but a more traditional racing wing may look better like the one on the white one you posted earlier

I was thinking of using that stuff but I read it's even more glue like than the standard RTV and I already bitched up the pan slightly and the bottom of the block just trying to get this off the first time. Nothing major, but if I did that 3 or 4 more times I might actually need to go over it with some sand paper.

[sciff5]

Pulled the pan again, in about an hour and a half this time.... I'm making progress.
Got Great stuff and I got the cork gasket just to have both options. Took one look at the cork gasket, and said there's no way that'll seal. Prepped the surface. I noticed where the pan was leaking there was a raised ridge on the oil pan from me prying on it both times. So I took some 220 grit to it and knocked it down. Then went around the mating surface on both sides with some and cleaned them up with some brake cleaner

Got the great stuff on and put the pan on quickly. Focused on tightening it down a bit more this time. So far so good. Don't know if it's still leaking but I didn't see any leaks  under the car so I took it out with my wife for a ride. It's a nice night.
Went out for about an hour going on our favorite back roads, down to the beach and then along the coastline and looped back. Car ran 180-190 the whole time, got to go wide open throttle a few times.

Checked the wideband and the AFRs seemed to settle in around 12-11:1 as boost came in, so I know it still has the right tune in it.
But there were some kinda weird drivability things, especially around throttle tip in where it would sputter initially before going, sometimes idles bounces a bit, and the 2 times I went all the way to redline in 2nd and tried to go to 3rd, and all I got when I got back on the gas in third was backfires/ sputter. But once I get off it, goes back and idles fine, cruises well etc. So there may be some tuning left to do. It also did this a few time while revving high up in neutral.

Still working on getting used to the car. It doesn't feel fast but it feels quick. The supercharger does A LOT to make it not feel like a wimpy 4 cyl. It likes cruising at 40mph in 5th for example and it's fine. So it has torque even at idle like a nice 6cyl or small v8
It might be as fast as my RX7 was with the stock motor, but like other higher revving motors you need to work at it to get the most out of it.

My wife just got this short video, just punching it in 2nd, got u to about 6,000 rpm in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZENd_gwkA8&feature=youtu.be