First Oil Change, and a design flaw is discovered!

So in a nutshell, the Elise is badass, one of the things that make it badass is either 1 or 2 oil coolers at the front of the engine, oil coolers are great, right? Well in my opin not when they make up 44% of the oil in the system, and there is no way to drain them. Who the hell designed that part of the car? So i have historically been SUPER anal about oil changes... I let the old oil drain out for hours, to make sure every last drop is out, then I run 1/2 of a quart of fresh, new, expensive oil through the system, some through the oil filler on the valve cover and some through the oil filter pickup reservoir (from my BMW days where there is a reservoir with a filter element, and not a metal canister filter) to get out the reamining driplets of the old. Once that has drained for at least 30 minutes, THEN I close everything up and put the new oil in. When you check the dipstick it looks like new oil, there is maybe 1% of the old stuff stuck in nooks and crannies, but I am ok with a 99% - 1% ratio of new to old. I also routineyl (maybe once a year or every other year) use Amsoil oil flush which completely breaks down your oil to make it the consistency of water, thus getting even MORE of the oil out of your motor.

Now I have been posting back and forth about this on LotusTalk, here is the whole thread.

If you want just the juicy bits, here it is;

"I would never do it every oil change, I tend to do it every 15k-25k miles or so, and what I am concerned with with this whole topic is motor longevity. You can take filthy, disgusting, gnarly oil and put it in an engine with 10k miles on it and then run it for 3k miles and it will most definitely be OK. Its a almost brand new engine, and is at the very beginning of its life. But I am thinking 100k down the line, 200 track days later, and while having old oil in a motor will seldom have an immediately negative impact its kind of like smoking. Eat 3 steaks in 1 day, or even do it for 6 months, it wont have any immediate affect, but do it every day for your whole life, and there is a pretty good chance you are going to have yourself some problems. That's how I see oil, its like eating healthy, but for your motor!

Its also not like the engine will suddenly seize up 1 mile past at 100k just because you only changed your oil every 15k or 20k miles. But as parts start to wear, and things start to break (which inevitably WILL happen) having old, dirty, broken down oil running through the system throughout its life will definitely have an impact. I am not an engineer, but I have a close friend who is a chemist, and he has always drilled into my head the importance of having 'fully functioning" (as he calls it) oil in an engine. I have to say, he gets an obscene amount of miles from his automobiles before they start having problems, so I tend to listen to what he says. I also think that engines under normal load conditions driven lightly (such as 99% of all drivers on the roads) will be affected far less from dirty oil. But in my opinion high performance cars where you are constantly bringing the engine to the peak of its efficiency, temp, and RPM range will be affected by not having clean and uncontaminated oil in the system.

I just did some research, and the manual states that our engine holds 4.4 liters of oil and the oil cooler and lines leading to it hold 3.5 liters. It also states that the oil from the lines/cooler/s isn't drained out on an oil change. That's 56% in the engine and 44% in the oil cooler/lines.

Again, maybe I am alone here, but that's like going to get an oil change at Jiffy lube, and if your car takes 7 quarts telling them to only drain out 4, and to leave 3 quarts of old, dirty, broken down oil in the engine. That's ludicrous, never in a million years would someone WANT to leave that much of their old oil in.

I did some comparative analysis today of my oil BEFORE the change, FRESH oil, and then 20 miles AFTER the change. See what each looks like in this pic;



I also plan on sending the BEFORE oil (which most likely was about 5k miles worth of use) and the AFTER oil to BlackStone Labratories to see what they say about the oil.

So while I understand that this is the way oil changes go on Elises/Exiges and that everyone simply goes with the flow and swaps out 56% of their oil per change, it definitely bothers me, and unless I can find some already existing method for draining the whole system, I want to look into engineering some part and/or process to get it all out. Now understandably there is always some oil left in the motor itself, there isnt much you can do about that, I am OK with leaving up to maybe 5% of the old oil in all the nooks and crannies in there, its the 44% PLUS the potential 5% stuck in the motor that scares me!"

More thoughts on the initial ECU Dump

In response to SuperGoober's comments about the ECU dump;

I wonder about the validity of that report though. So if you look at the engine speed section you are referring to you will notice that the first number doesnt have a descriptor (so we assume thats 1-2500, but I have a feeling its actually 1500-2500 given the other ranges listed, and that 0-1500 is left out).

You also will notice that the engine speed scale ends at 7500 rpms, so anything between 7500 and the sky isnt listed (which is so ridiculousy lame IMO, these are the numbers I care about the most, and its left out, WTF?!?).

I added up all the hours and minutes and got 184 hours and about 36 minutes. The total engine time is listed as 262 hours and 32 minutes.

So 262 minus 184 is 78 hours of rpms that are either below 2500 or above 7500. Your guess is as good as mine (assuming we are interpreting these charts correctly) as to how that 78 hours is allocated between those 2 extremely different ranges!

The ECU dump from 9970 miles right before I bought the car.

Here is the ECU dump you can do on a Lotus. Its pretyt impressive the data you can glean from this thing.

Here are some data points of interest;

Top Speed = 108 mph

Fastest 0-60 = 2.8 seconds?!? Come on, clearly thats wrong, unless it was on a dyno perhaps!

Total engine running Life = 262 hours, 32 minutes, and 43 seconds.

Standing Starts = 1 [This is the one that Lotus sees and denies warranty work for supposedly, 1 aint bad from what I hear]

100+ hours at 2500-3500 rpms

only 9 minutes at 7000-7500 rpms

4 highest revs;
--8720 rpm - 31 hours 5 mins 52 seconds ago
--8696 rpm - 31 hours 5 mins 47 seconds ago
--8688 rpm - 50 hours 42 minutes 31 seconds ago
--8640 rpm - 143 hours 15 minutes 15 seconds ago
[These first 2 sort of bother me, they were within 5 seconds of each other, chances are the person slammed through a couple of gears and the rpms wandered above redline (which is 8500 supposedly)]

NOTE: The ECU dump isnt perfect, you will see that there is 1 more highest rev, but for some reason it cut off the number, it was 30 hours 57 minutes and 37 seconds ago. so clearly whoever was driving that car on that day was really pushing it.

I cant wait to get another ECU dump every 6 - 12 months and keep comparing the notes, to see many revs i have put on the motor, what new speeds I have attained, and a clear picture of my driving style (i.e. at what speed and at what rpmp the majority of driving come from)

With the Elise comes the blog.

Well I did it. I have been talking about it, threatening it, and promising it. But I finally did it. I bought an Elise.

Last Sunday my buddy Mike sends me a link to an Autotrader post for an 05 Elise, 9970 miles, Bordeaux Red, grey racing stripes, Sports Package, no Touring Package, Body color matched shift console, Maxogen/ITG Carbon cold air intake, complete StarShielf and Lotus Stage 2 Exhaust.

Its in Seattle, I start making calls, I completely bail on my Sunday plans for this car, and next thing I know I am flying Virgin America (first class mind you) to Seattle Monday morning at 7am, and by 3pm I am the owner of a used (and slightly abused) Elise!

Now granted, it aint no showroom perfect car, nor is it someone's baby that has been meticulously cared for, but I got it for a good deal, and it is going to be a track car that sees street use on occasion. here is a pic of it, looking filthy living outside in the Seattle weather.

Here is a quick little video i made walking around the car;

MY FIRST DRIVE / MY IMPRESSIONS OF THE CAR;
So my impression of the car after my first drive is that its loud, REALLY loud. The Stage 2 exhaust and the Maxogen Cold Air Intake make the thing nutty loud. Plus it doesn't have the touring package which adds some layer of sound deadening. You can hear the air filter 'whooshing' air into the car with a quick blip of the right pedal, and the exhaust groans like crazy and start wailing when you hit the second cam at 6000 rpms. When I mean loud, I mean loud enough that I could NEVER have a phone conversation while driving this thing the way it is. Whether I am OK with that or not is still up for debate. On top of that it does the little "lift throttle burbles" that P. so dearly loves.

My second impression is that these seats suck for comfort. I mean suck dilly sucktastic. They feel like pieces of metal with 1 inch of padding and some cloth thrown over em! If I wasnt so thin it might not be so bad, but when you feel your belt pressing into your pelvic bones, you know pain is on the way.

My particular car has crappy tires on it, Toyo Proxes F4, tires I would put on a Yaris, maybe, but definitely not an Elise. I tell you this because even with those crappy tires the thing is on rails. Thats my 3rd impression and the most important one, the thing frickin handles, its inasane how well. Also, because its so loud and I am not used to it even being at 30 and accelerating to 50 feels like a rush, its a measly 20 mph but the noise is so invigorating that you forget you aren't actually driving fast at all!

The car isnt perfect, at all. Its been used decently hard I am sure. The idle sometimes wanders a bit, and requires a little blippety-blip to get it going smooth. But hey, its got a CAI and an exhuast, I wouldnt expect it to idle perfectly. The seats have a little noticeable wear on em, but I doubt there is much you could do about that, and the body has lots of little road rash dings and scratches, which are mostly in the clear Starshield, so if I want to spend the money I could have pieces of that replaced. But its going to be a track car, and is going to see dirt, flying debris, and will get more mechanical attention than beauty attention, thats been my M.O. for my tracks car in the past.

WHY I WAS SO STOKED ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR CAR:
Well, for a few reasons. I have been looking for a car that had the Sports Package and NO Touring Package. The Sports package is key because it drops 20 pounds from the total weight of the car, and all of that is in the wheels. I personally like the look of the sport wheels much better, and it weighs substantially less, look at this comparison, stock vs. LSS (Lotus Sport Suspension);

STOCK

	Front	Rear
Dimensions	16" x 5.5"	17" x 7.5"
Bolt pattern	4 x 100	4 x 100
Weight	15.17 lbs (6.88kg)	20.94 lbs (9.50kg)

SPORT

	Front	Rear
Dimensions	16" x 6.5"	17" x 7.5"
Bolt pattern	4 x 100	4 x 100
Weight *	12 lbs (5.44kg) *	14 lbs (6.35kg)*

That's 3 pounds lighter up front per wheel and almost 7 pounds lighter per wheel in back! Thats 20 pounds of unspring weight, THATS HUGE! Thats the same (some say) as taking 80 pounds off of the car itself! Not only that but the fronts are an inch wider and come with more rubber (195's vs. 175's)

The Sport Suspension also comes with coiliver suspsension (Bilsteins), though it is not adjustable at all it is still supposedly stiffer than the stock. Most people say going with Nitron's makes a big difference, but then again I am a guy who ran stock ///M Coupe susspension for the entire time I had the car on the track and never felt like I "needed" coilovers. So we will see how long I keep these LSS coilovers.

Now the other thing is that the Touring Package adds 15 pounds to the car with sound deadening, leather trim on the seats and door panels, and it does have electric windows, which supposedly weigh less than the milled aluminum window cranks on the stock version like mine.

But really by having one and not the other I am down 35 pounds from a regular elise with just the touring pack, which is how most of them come. My car also has the stage 2 exhuast, which supposedly does absolutely nothing for power, but saves 8 pounds from stock, and is louder, these stats according to Sector111.

Now you have to understand that the vast majority of these cars have the touring package and NO sport package. I now know that I would probably be OK with a touring package with Sports package, and I would just remove some of the carpeting from the interior, and after I experienced the crazy loudness of my Elise I might have been OK with the sound deadening. But I REALLY wanted the sports package, because I think I'll end up running the Sports Suspension for quite a while before I feel like I need to upgrade, and the wheels, I dislike the stock wheels immensely and LOVE the look of the Sport wheels (and I love the lightness and wider fronts). To get a decent looking set of aftermarket wheels looks to cost about $2k, and I am just not willing to pay that for such small wheels when the Sport Wheels look so good IMO.

I also loved this car because this is one of the 5 colours I wanted for the car. Plus, I was already thinking of doing the racing stripes, so when I saw this car was Dark Metallic Burgundy WITH grey racing stripes it was one step closer to being mine.

WHAT I NEED TO DO TO THE CAR;
First thing for me is to take it to 3 places, one is a pin stripe repair shop, two is a Lotus mechanic that can give it a thorough inspection and do a complete fluid change for me, and three is an auto upholstery place that can add some padding to the seat and maybe make it even slightly more comfortable!

I called some shops and it looks like the BEST place for me to go is Sticker City, they specialize in automobile vinyl and the owner Andy is supposedly a Lotus nut, has an Exige himself. This is pretty obvious when you realize they have a page dedicated to all their Lotus product offerings! I need him to fix some of the racing stripe, and then to redo some pinstriping, these pictures make it clear as to why;

Once thats done I plan on taking it to one of 3 shops that came very highly recommended in the area to go get the final inspection and all the fluids swapped out. I really want them to go overboard, remove the underside panels, check all the bolts for proper tightness, give the engine a real inspection, remove the ITG filter, clean it, and respray it, clean the MAF, the works.

I just need to find a good upholstery shop that can add my padding and maybe add some more leather or perhaps alcantra on the worn parts of the seats.

Then I feel like its read for its first track day. I plan on running it in its stock configuration for the first day, leave it the way it is, with the less-than-stellar tires and all.

Stay tuned for the next blog post about the car's history, and all the items I already ordered and plan on putting on the car at the earliest opportunity........