Karl's Lotus Elise

DIY Seat Refurb and Recolor

2008-04-17T14:21:00.002+01:00

The original gray leather seats in my car were starting to look a little worn with age and had a bit of damage due to wear especially the drivers seat you can see this in more detail in the pictures below. I don’t have the money to get the seats completely re trimmed by Lotus. It was £250 per seat and I don’t have that amount of cash lying about maybe one day as there was some great designs in the brochure the lotus dealer showed me.

I decided to have ago myself to see if I could make the seats a bit more presentable. After a quick search of the internet I came across the answer. I found a website selling a kit to repair the damage and recolor the leather as I now wanted black seats. I decided to give it a go and ordered a Satin Black kit that came with everything I needed for £50.

The first job was to get the seats out of the car; this wasn’t too difficult to do just a bit fiddly. I had to use every extension bar I could find for my ratchet to get the passenger seat out.

Once the seats were out it was time to prep them this was done in 3 stages the 1st involved rubbing them down using with a solvent solution to remove the protective layer applied to the leather. The next stage was to rub it down using alcohol cleaner to remove any of the finish that was not removed by the solvent. This left the seats with a dull matt appearance. The 3rd and final stage was to fill any deep scratches with the leather repair compound and give any raised areas a rub down with some wet sand paper. Once this was done the seats were left for 10 mins for any excess solvent / alcohol to evaporate.

Now it was time to put on the 1st coat of the new colour this is applied with a sponge it can look a bit streaky at first but it was only the first coat. This was then left to dry for 30 mins. This process was repeated until each seat had 3 coats.

Once the 3rd coat had dried it was time to even up the finish using the airbrush that was supplied in the kit. I applied several more coats to the seats using this method (I think 4 in all) leaving 5 mins in between each coat as instructed. Once I was happy with the finish the seats were left for an hour to dry before the next stage.

When the seats were dry it was time to apply the protective finish in effect replacing what I had removed with the solvent and alcohol earlier. In my case I had chosen Satin finish but you can get Matt and Gloss also. The finish is applied using the airbrush and each seat was given a couple of coats. The seats then had to be left for 24 hours before they could be used to allow the finish to fully dry.

Below are some pics I took while doing this project. I was really pleased with how they turned out. If you want a closer look at the seats you may bump into me at one of the NORLOG meets and I would be only to happy to show you.

My New Sill Pads

2008-03-17T20:17:00.001Z

I thought my old sill pads that came with the car were looking a bit tired and worn so I decided to get some new ones. I ordered the new pads from Christopher Neil Lotus. They took a while to arrive but when they did i was extremely pleased with them. I especially liked the Lotus logo that had been stitched into them at no extra charge.

The old ones were removed very easily it looked as tho they had been taken off before as the previous owner had stuck them back down using silicone sealant. So after i had peeled all of this off it was time to fit the new pads. This was a very easy task as the new pads came with double sided tape already applied to the back. It was a simple process of peeling off the backing tape and sticking them in place. The tape is quite strong so you need to get it right first time really but i had no problems getting them into position. Now that they are in I think they look great, now saving my pennies to get the seats done.

Above is a slide show of the new sill pads.

Leaky Lotus - Water Water Everywhere

2008-03-05T10:39:00.000Z

The sun had gone and the rain had arrived and boy did I know it not having a garage meant the car has to stay out on the street in all weathers. We had had a few showers I the first few months of ownership and I knew that the car wasn’t water tight but it had only bin a few drips and had never bothered me that much. I had had a go at adjusting the windows to make it more water tight and thought I had succeeded. All that was about to change! In the heavy downpours we had in the winter my car started to leak like a sieve but only when parked whilst driving it was fine. Every morning I would come out to the car and the inside was wet the sill pads were soaked as was the seat and the carpets were getting damp.

This inside was not the only problem tho I was having trouble getting the car to start and originally thought that it was a battery problem. So I had the battery tested and it was fine so it was off to the forums to look for other suggestions of what it might be. Most of the people on the forum who had similar problems said that it was water getting into the ignition components spark plugs, dizzy cap etc… after a quick check on my car this also appeared to be what was causing my problem as water had gotten onto the spark plugs.

This was the first thing to get sorted I would worry about the inside later. The first thing I did was to get all the spark plugs out and dry them off. In doing this I noticed that my HT leads were not in the best condition ; a piece of plastic came away from the second lead and fell down into spark plug tube it took a good half hour with a screwdriver wrapped in cellotape to get the thing out as the spark plugs are set quite deep in the engine. Once the plugs were out they didn’t look to cleaver either so I decided to replace the lot: Spark Plugs, HT Leads, Dizzy Cap and Rotor Arm. I also decided that I would refit the original spark plug cover as the 3rd party aluminium one fitted by the previous owner didn’t seal very well although it did look nice.

Once all the bits arrived I set about fitting them took me all morning I am not the most mechanically minded and have never really done any maintenance on a car so took it slowly and made sure everything was right. The biggest problem I had in the whole job was getting the HT lead from the coil onto the dizzy cap nearly had to dislocate my arm getting it onto the coil but after a few minutes of fiddling and a lot of swearing I finally got it on. Now it was time to test a quick check to make sure I hadn’t missed anything and turn the key whoo!!!! It started first time and was now idling much better as well probably because everything was now dry!

That was the engine sorted we have had quite a few heavy down pours since and the problem has never reoccurred. Thanks I think to the new HT leads that had a better seal onto the dizzy cap and spark plugs and also the replacement of the spark plug cover that helped stop the water getting in, in the first place. Now it was time to move to move onto the other leak and see what I could do there.

Getting the inside of the car water tight would take me weeks!!! No matter what I did I just couldn’t get the water to stop coming in. My 1st attempt was to adjusted the angle of the windows front to back to make them line up better with the soft top this seemed to improve matters but the water was still getting in.

I then decided to tackle the soft top the fabric had come away from the front plastic strip in the corners and this seemed to be were the majority of the water was getting in. So one day when it wasn’t raining off came the soft top into the front room were I sat with it on my knee with a needle and thread and sewed the corners back down yes sewed not what I was ever expecting to do on a car repair either!!! Once this was done the soft top was reproofed with some tent water proofer before going back onto the car. This again improved the cars water tightness but the battle wasn’t over yet.

Even tho I had adjusted the windows front to back they still didn’t seem to be making proper contact with door seals on the frame. I quick look in my service manual reviled that I could tilt the windows inwards by adjusting 4 screws on the bottom of the door. These were adjusted on both sides to get the windows touching the seal all the way up. Success the car was now 98% water tight some water seemed to be getting in under the door seal on inspection son of the seal had come away from the pillar slightly these were stuck back down and success the car now appears to be water tight!!! even in the heaviest of downpours.

All of the above took me weeks to get sorted and there were times when I would have quite happily have gotten rid of the car. I have to use it everyday and getting into a wet car every morning was just wearing me down a ruining my enjoyment of it. Thankfully with a bit of time and effort the car can be made water proof it just takes a lot of fiddling to get everything set up just right. After you drive the car again after all of the troubles you remember why you got it in the first place it is such a joy to drive it always puts a smile on my face its even better now it doesn’t leak.

I think I broke It

2008-03-02T23:33:00.002Z

The worst day I have ever had since i have had my lotus was the day that I crashed it.

It was late September and I was on my way home from visiting my parents. I had decided to take the country lanes home as is a much more enjoyable than going on the motorway. I would soon be wishing that I had taken the boring root home.

I was winding my way through the country lanes near my parents house when I rounded a bend and a fox ran out across the front of the car, my natural reaction was to swerve to avoid it big mistake!!! on a narrow country road. My passenger side wheels went onto the damp grass and that was it I had no traction I was sliding straight towards a tree. Luckily I wasn't going very fast and the Elise had slowed down quite abit by the time I hit the tree that didn't stop it cracking my front clam shell and damaging the front crash structure.

Luckily the car was still drivable so I reversed back onto the road and continued on my way home. When I got home I rang the insurance to too start the ball rolling on getting the car fixed. Had to ring them back in the morning tho as the claims department wasn't open till the morning. Rang the insurance the following day and they were brilliant, they wanted to send the car to local body shop for repair, but I wanted it to go back to Christopher Neil for its repairs as they were a Lotus garage and felt more confident that they would do the best job. The insurance were fine with this I just had to get a quote off Christopher Neil and send it across to the insurance company.

Took the car to Christopher Neil to get a quote for the damage to the car, it needed a new front clam shell and crash structure lucky there was no other damage and these parts had done there job and protected me and the car.

The insurance authorised the repair work no problem and off my little car went to the garage to get repaired. They had the car for a couple of weeks took longer as I had asked them to have a look at my Stack dash unit as the LCD light had not worked since before I brought the car. It got sent away but unfortunately couldn't be fixed without replacing the unit so decided against it. Have now sorted this problem with abit of DIY. Car looked and drove exactly the way it always had when I picked it up after its repair good way of getting rid of the stone chips on the front of the clam.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I hadn't swerved to avoid the fox. I think the car probably would have suffered similar damage if I had hit it. No doubt that it would have damaged the front clam plus i would have had to scoop a dead fox out of my front grill yuck!!!

So pleased to have my car back exactly the way it was, I will have a few Strong words with that fox next time I see it needs to learn to look both ways before crossing the road.

Sound Upgrade

2008-03-02T23:16:00.002Z

One of the first jobs i did when i first got my Elise was to upgrade the stereo. It didn't have a CD player only tape this had to go.

I decided to ger myself a pioneer stereo with blue tooth so i could answer the phone in the car. The stereo install was a peace of cake plugged straight into the standared socket on the Elise's wiring harness and that was it the trouble I had was locating the mike for the blue tooth I settled for clipping the mike to bottom of the dash as i dint want any of the wires showing. Another problem I had when I first tested the system was getting the phone to work everything appeared fine I could search my address book on the radio head unit but couldn't hear anything through the speakers when people answered even tho they could hear me perfectly. The answer to this problem proved to be extremely obvious the radio as setting the fader to all the front speakers when using the phone option this presents a problem in the Elise as it only has rear speakers. I quick thumb through the manual and i had adjusted it so all sound went to the rear speakers, problem solved.

The blue tooth seems to work really well as long as you are doing sub 40 miles an hour above this the engine noise means you have to shout quite loud for people to hear you. I am now considering moving the microphone from its current location to some ware nearer the steering wheel the dash panel for the heater controls is looking favorite at the moment.

Oulton Park Track Day!!!

2008-02-21T19:33:00.009Z

The day we had been looking forward to since picking up our lotus had arrived and it was time to set off to Oulton Park to go to the track day Christopher Neil had invited us too. It was a lovely day so we took the roof off the car and set off. It was a lovely drive through all of the country lanes to get to Oulton Park.

When we arrived we were greeted by Jeff and Steve the Christopher Neil sales guys. They had brought along two of their Lotus Exiges - both the same car but one with a hardtop and the other with the roof off. After a quick chat with Jeff we headed off to the reception area to sign in and get our wrist bands.

Once we had our wrist bands it was time to hop into the passenger seat and get out on the track. We got about 4-5 laps of the track in each car and i have to say it was absolutely brilliant. The cars were fantastic and we had a great time. The cars performace was really impressive and kept up with lots of other far more expensive cars, and they hadn't even been modified - they were just standard showroom cars.

I had wondered what the point of the foot rest on the passenger side of the car was for but I found out on the track day as you were literally lifted out of your seat when the car braked, it stopped that quickly, and I found myself pushing against the foot rest to keep my bum on the seat.

Me and Caz had a great time at the track day and really enjoyed our rides in the Lotus Exiges. After we had had our goes in both of the cars we decided to have a wander round and look at all the other cars that people had brought along like TVR's. I had not seen a Ferrari up close before and could not believe the size of the engine - it was huge!!!.

All in all we had a great day and hopefully we will be invited along to another one soon!

1st Week Niggles

2008-02-20T14:23:00.007Z

During the 1st week we had the car we noticed that it had a couple of niggles - nothing too major. The passenger side window would stick if you wound it all the way down and the backlight for the LCD screen that showed you how much petrol you had left was not working. Not a problem in the day time as you could see it perfectly, but a bit of a pain at night as you had no idea how much fuel you had left.

I didn't notice this on the test drive as it was a lovely sunny day and looking back through the service history it had not worked for some time. We had been invited to a track day by Christopher Neil Lotus when we purchased the car (more of this later) so thought we would mention it to them when we went.

Popped into Christopher Neil on the way home from the track day to let the service guys have a look at the window and the LCD in the dash. Much to the annoyance of my g/f Caz who wasn't too happy spending an hour of our day off sat in a garage. The window* was fixed easily but they could not find out was was wrong with dash as it didn't appear to be a loose connection.

*The windows of the elise (as I found out later) would be one of my major DIY tasks in my attempts to get the elise water tight.

Meet my Lotus Elise!

2008-02-17T19:15:00.012Z

This photo was taken on the weekend that I first got my lotus. This was the start of what can only be described as an obsession.

The car itself is an 1997 Lotus Elise in midnight blue with gray / black interior. That we got from Christopher Neil in Northwich our local lotus dealer.

I spent the first few days of ownership giving all my friends and family rides around the block much to there delight (any excuse to drive it). Luckily the weather was brilliant when we first got the car so the roof was hardly ever on it lucky really as some people can only get in and out without the roof. I have now mastered getting in and out from the drivers side many describe this as a controlled fall, although i still have trouble getting in and out of the passenger side must be due to the lack of practices as its difficult to prize me away from the drivers seat.

The picture shows the car before i started any of my DIY projects that i will go into more detail about later. The car still looks pretty much the same now as it does above except for the addition of headlight covers thanks to the M62 and a stone robbing me of my drivers side headlight one evening so thought some protection for them was in order.

So if you are a lotus freak like me or just interested then i will use this space to keep you up to date on all the lil projects i carry out on the car. I have a few things already done so need to do some catch up posts so watch this space!