elan+2 130s NBW 190M

[mark030358]

“An S2 Elise is on my bucket list. I'd really like to swap info”

Hi Satyr,
Sorry for the late reply, I must have missed the threads.

There are quite a few S2 Elise’s to choose from, mine is the VVC engined 111S and in all honesty the best car I have ever driven.

It has around 158 bhp and about 130 ft/lbs of torque so not massive, however for the 760 Kgs it comes in at, it’s pretty good. The only thing I would change is the gearbox (groans ) for the closer ratio B4BP but with a longer 5th, but in reality it really is good in standard guise. It’s agile, small and gives all the thrills without the need for massive horsepower. I have a V6 Exige which puts out much more power, but around the Alps it does not come close to the Elise. What does let it down a bit around the Alp, is that with two fat guys, a full tank of fuel and luggage it doesn’t pull half as well up the slopes, similar I guess to what you mentioned earlier. But still, a great car.

Going back to the 5 speed lever, you mentioned “pushing it further down into the box”, do you mean just compressing the bellows? I’m not quite sure of what you mean. Also you’re right about the oil, I am using some very expensive MT oil as recommended by others on here. My 5th is very very good, it’s just the other 4 that are not up to snuff and it’s a big noisy as in dB, probably due to it alloy construction. I’m due to drop the oil soon so I’ll try some 20/50 and modify a spare lever if you tell me what to change on it. If it’s no better the 4 speed will go back in.

Cheers
Mark

[mbell]

Thanks Satyr,

I happy that it will all be fully clear with the box in pieces in front off me. Until then i just "think"i understand it.

Thanks for the comments on 3rd gear synchro collar. I've actually experience that issue help a friend strip down a box. Spent a few minutes, fiddling with no luck. Then managed to get it out, so must have moved the 3rd motion shaft back a bit.

On the input shaft/bearing I think I have all the parts to change it over with out any machining. I bought a eclat gearbox with shredded 1st motion gear. To fix that i bought a used input+1st motion gear assembly. Which I then fitted. So I think if I use the 1st motion gear from current box with the shaft removed the eclat box i can convert it.

My memory is that it was slightly stiffer to engage/disengage reverse and engage 5th but not very bad. It would only disengage 5th with very strong tug.

Hoping to get to stripping the gearbox backend of this year. First job is to drive the a bit before weather gets too bad now its working, while working on improved gearstick design. Now had friend 3d print me prototype and bought spherical bearing for it. So some progress is being made. Need to collect the 3d print and do some testing/measuring. Probably few adjustments and get it machined.

Thanks for you offer of help, I let you know how i get one when i do get to it.

Mark

[JonB]

My memory is that it was slightly stiffer to engage/disengage reverse and engage 5th but not very bad. It would only disengage 5th with very strong tug.
Mark

Hi Satyr. Thanks for posting your explanation, very informative and I appreciate how much work goes into writing something like that. You can be certain that if I still had the car I would be pulling the gearbox for a look.

My Plus 2 suffered from needing what I called a "manly tug" to get from 5th to 4th gear like Mark's car, but it was easy to get into 5th or reverse. So I take it that this wouldn't indicate a problem with that sliding detent mechanism. At the time, Mark advised it was quite normal as it (the 4th synchro) had to "spin up the entire input shaft", as he put it. See https://lotuselan.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=40681&f=51&start=45#p284561. The fix I ended up with (weaken the 5th gear detent spring) worked, but only after some fettling to stop it jumping out of 5th. I was never happy with it, and despite what people were saying I could not really accept the box had the 5th-4th gearchange stiffness from new. I didn't read any contemporary reviews that mentioned it, and I think they would have done. This suggests to me that the difficulty going from 5th to 4th occurs after the car has done real mileage and thus can't be considered normal behaviour.

[Satyr Nouveau]

Hi Mark,
''Going back to the 5 speed lever, you mentioned “pushing it further down into the box”,


Yes, compressing the bellows and selecting any of the gears WHILE MAINTAINING that compression to the bellows very often seemed to normalize the shifting of all gears. Very easy to conduct this experiment with the box still in the car but I consider this to be an unconfirmed perception. Absolute confirmation would mean dis mantling the lever and removing the bellows so there is no preload to overcome. I have to use two hands to do this experiment, one hand to compress and the other to complete the shifting. Hardly the the way anybody would wish to operate this box ''in the field'.
The lever and the shifting will seem very odd without the preload but you would be able to confirm if the shifting is indeed easier with the lever fork deeper in the box without the double handed aberration affecting the 'perception'. You would be at liberty to experiment with different depths of insertion. ( OMG, am I still allowed to use that last word?)
I intended to do this full experiment with the Ebay box I purchased but came up against the inevitable time element problem.

You mentioned ''noise'' from your box so just for the record I'll give you the data on the Ebay box on the test drive to Portugal.
First important thing to bear in mind is for the entire 3,000 mile return trip, the transmission tunnel upholstery and associated sound absorbing material was removed so I could hear everything that was happening in the box. I could actually see the alloy casing etc. at the bottom of the dash.
This was because I was not impressed with the sound of the box on the two or three short test runs I had time to conduct. At various stages of the 'run' I also used an infra red temperature sensor to monitor the temp. of the box. If anything was drastically 'bad' with the box it may have expressed itself in the form of excess heat and given me the chance to abandon the road trip before any terminal damage.
During the 150 miles from Kent to Poole (M25 and A3) at night, the box/casing temp. was 40-47 C. In France it went to 50 C and across Spain ( have another look at the pics I posted earlier and guess the velocity) at ambient of 35 C. and constant speed for 2 - 3 hours, the box temp never exceeded 55 C. I think this was a good result.

The sound however was becoming very irritating approaching the Spanish frontier. I did this trip with one, two hour stop for 'shut eye' and refreshment and two, one hour stops. Important meeting waiting for me in Port. I covered the 1,200 miles from St. Malo to my ''crib'' more or less in one shot.
I detail the perception parameters here because my empiric is, extreme fatigue tends to bend 'perceptions' well out of shape so I need to partially discount how ''irritating'' the box noise seemed.

There is a huge amount of data regarding the various sounds from these boxes and how they vary under varying conditions which I might be able to go into with a complete saga of the purchase procedure of the Ebay box, initial assessment at point of purchase , inspection, obtaining bearings, dismantling, observations etc. etc. at another time. For example, a box that is noisy in 5 under power but goes quiet on overrun indicates something quite different to a noisy box in 4 and so on.

To complete the ''trip/box'' saga above, after NBW sat still for a few days and I had to use it for a short journey in Port. and I recovered a few nights of sleep, the sound was normal. These boxes are never going to be quiet because they never were in th first plce.

Will have to continue this later, just ran out of time again.
Regs Sayr Icon

[mark030358]

[quote="Satyr Nouveau"]Hi Mark,
Yes, compressing the bellows and selecting any of the gears WHILE MAINTAINING that compression to the bellows very often seemed to normalize the shifting of all gears.

Hi Satyr,
I am fortunate to have a really good spare gear lever, with a near perfect bellows that I can move up and down by hand. So if I am correct in what you are saying, is that I need to add some kind of "packer" between the underside of the circlip and the top of the rubber bellows. I'm guessing the easiest way here is to get a split collet fabricated and fit in between. If thats the solution, I'll get one made.

thanks
Mark

[Satyr Nouveau]

I am fortunate to have a really good spare gear lever,

Hi Mark,

Apology to anyone waiting for reply, Central Portugal caught fire, you probably don't see this on news. My Fortess of Solitude was on fire.

Mark, if circlip is already removed and bellows can slide up or down shaft, just fit lever to box in normal way and try shifting gears with the lever at different depths in the box. This is only an experiment to determine if Lotus got the leverage ratios a bit wrong. If it works better, you may want to modify the gearstick so it can operate at the new depth.
Any packing or shimming between the circlip and bellows will just increase the pressure of the bellows. The whole experiment should only take 20 minutes if the bellows is already free, mine is seized solid so I did not want to take the risk of destroying it.
This experiment does not risk damaging anything whether the box in in the car or on the bench. Just don't try driving the car anywhere with the G/stick in the experimental condition.

At a point in time in the past I was running a 2.2 Esprit and a Twincam Europa. The back end of the Europa was set up and shimmed the way it should be. Like your Evora/S2 Elise experience, getting out of the Europa and then driving the Esprit made the Esprit feel like a pig in comparison. I know this is heresy to say it but the Esprit was clearly a heavier car and way too wide for comfort. It just did not handle the narrow 'SPAGHETTI' Kent roads like the Europa.

For any +2 readers here, when I had to replace the steering rack on NBW, I opted for a Europa rack which has a higher ratio rack and pinion. The steering is noticeably quicker but heavier in the Asda carpark, love it.
When I go shopping I use Suzuki van.

Regards
Satyr Icon

[Satyr Nouveau]

Thanks for posting your explanation,

Hi JB and MBell,

The easy bit to remember with the 5Box is that the slider key/lock mechanism ONLY controls and has any effect whatsoever on 5 and R.
Slider key goes up for 5 (or tries to) or down for N and R (or tries to). The key can seize in the UP position or the DOWN or in the middle like my Ebay box was. When the key is seized in the middle of it's travel, both R and 5 are stiff to get in AND out. If 5 is easy IN but tough to get OUT, the key is being prevented from achieving it's upper travel. It does not necessarily mean the key is seized solid, narrowing of it's bore at the top of the lock is just preventing it's full upward travel. The upward travel lets go of the 5 selector shaft so it can slide through the lock and pull the sych hub and baulk ring onto the back of the 5 gear and thereby, the engaged condition of 5.
R will often be normal engagement and disengagement.

If you have trouble fast down shifting 5 to 4, you have a compound problem, (two separate issues disguised as one). Once you have 'gorilla' shifted out of 5 and into N, you have escaped the influence of the faulty lock/slider mech. and are instantly dealing with a separate malfunction if having difficulty engaging 4.
This is likely, but not limited to, rounded off synch./ baulk ring teeth.

A third shift problem with 5, R and 4 and sometimes 3 is the tongue which lives on the main selector shaft at the top of the box develops a D-dent of it's own on the rounded faces of the tongue that come into contact with the three selector shafts. This is usually a product of lazy or improper shifting by the driver over time.

Also, the shimming of the lock mech. (between the casing and the mech.) is not as well calculated as it could have been from the factory with the result that the gear lever needs to be pushed as far as it can go toward the driver to select 5 or R.

I don't see any reference to this shimming procedure anywhere on this forum but just for the record, this shimming will ultimately decide how far to the right the lever needs to moved to engage 5 or R. Too much or too little shim can lead to the D-dent fault on the face or faces (front and rear) of the selector tongue.

Out of time again.
Regards
Satyr Icon