Winter Maintenance, part deux

Thursday, December 28

Today we made another stab at getting the Lotus back in shape. Our task list looks something like this:

  • Lotus
    • Front discs
    • Front pads
    • Flush brakes (maybe)
    • Drive belt
    • Change oil
    • Clean air filter
    • Mount the 2bular exhaust

In addition, we also have these to do as well:

  • Chrysler
    • Front pads
    • Flush brakes
    • Install windshield wipers
    • Rotate tires
  • Hyundai
    • Rotate tires

Again, we managed to get a fairly late start. Michael is on vacation, after all. We decided to delay the brake flush on the Lotus given that it was done in June. We can do it in April, before I have any more track days and remain on a more or less annual schedule. We also rearranged the priorities a bit, with the Chrysler’s brakes at the top of the list with the Elise drive belt second.

The Chrysler has been treated like the red-headed step child. I’ve only driven it about two thousand miles this year. I’ve been bad about keeping up the maintenance. I should be given a stern talking to about the state of the poor car. The front pads were beyond done and the front tires are worn to the cords. We did rotate them, so the bad ones are now on the back. She’s not going anywhere until I get her new tires.

The pads were an easy fix, but the bleeding took a while. We did it the old-fashioned way.

Next up was the serpentine belt for the Elise. We watched a video on YouTube earlier. It turns out the whole repair takes about as long as the video, assuming you have the part. We did not. The video we watched suggested taking the old belt to the parts store to get the proper size. Last weekend I went to the Toyota dealer. They said they show three different sizes. They only had one in stock, at about seventy bucks. They suggested I go to O’Reilly’s.

So we got the belt off and headed to Advance. The guy there was not very helpful. His computer didn’t list any options when looking under Lotus. We only found one option when searching the Celica and that belt was too long. He suggested the dealer.

So we headed to O’Reilly’s. The coin dropped for me on the way from one store to another. We needed to look at the options for the Celica for every year until we found a match. The O’Reilly’s guy started the search that way, but failed. Then he took the old belt into the back and came back a few minutes later with a match. Seems like the Advance guy should have been able to do that.

Oh, and it’s a good thing the dealer didn’t have any in stock. Instead of paying more than $70 for the belt, it was $16.24, including tax.

Michael had the new belt on in a jiffy. I figured we had enough sunlight left to change the oil but not enough for the exhaust. We finished as the sun set behind the mountains. As it wasn’t dark yet, we knocked off the Chrysler’s windshield wipers. So, not as much progress as hoped.

Friday, December 29

After yet another discussion of the tasks we want to accomplish, I agreed that I could clean the air filter without Michael’s help. It’s a pain in the keister, as you can’t really get to it from the top and you need to go in through the left rear wheel well. And the tire rotation for the Hyundai will have to wait that car isn’t on premise, being Genae drove it to work.

First thing to do for the exhaust swap is to remove the diffuser. You may recall that, during the Incident at Woody Creek, when we were towing the car off the track, we hit the only pothole in the place and the car came off the casters. The casters rotated up and back, clobbering the diffuser, denting the rear panel, and doing a bit of damage to the fiberglass.

While Michael started dismounting the exhaust I went to work on the diffuser to see what I could do for it. Apologies for the poor photo. This gets mounted with the right of the photo to the front of the car. I neglected to take an “after” picture, but as you can imagine there wasn’t much improvement. I’ve been thinking about getting a bigger diffuser for some time. This looks like my justification, but it will have to wait until after the Chrysler’s tires.

I also fiddled around trying to straighten out the damage on the rear panel. It wasn’t nearly as bad and I’ve done a passable repair to it.

This is now the fourth time we’ve swapped out the exhaust and we’re getting more practiced at it. I think it took us something like three hours the first time and now we’ve gotten it down to about an hour and a quarter.

All finished and the car put back together, we took her out for a spin to see what she sounded like. It’s been months so it’s not like I can make an accurate comparison between the fiberglass and the steel wool. But I think it’s quieter now. It’s almost as quiet as the stock exhaust, except that it burbles and pops nicely when coming off the throttle.

In the end, we didn’t get everything done that I wanted to get done. But I’m happy nonetheless.

A Glance Back

It was a tough year for the Elise. She spent 100 days in the shop for a camshaft replacement that went awry, resulting in a rebuilt head. The battery died and I didn’t know it was installed incorrectly, resulting it the battery bouncing around inside the boot at the track. I had the aforementioned right rear suspension failure, which was the same failure we had on the left rear back in 2011. The one good thing that happened was the left rear turn signal magically fixed itself.

This year I drove the car the fewest miles of any year since 2011. I’ve had the car nearly eight years. This year’s repair/maintenance bill amounts to almost a third of total maintenance spending since I’ve owned it. The high maintenance bill results in a total cost of a bit over a dollar and a half for every mile I’ve driven it. (For the record, that’s fuel, service, insurance, and taxes/license.) Looking at the bright side, I didn’t spend as much on it in 2017 as I did in any year I was still making payments on it.